Chapter 13

 

After quitting Hutchinson’s doom-laden company, we went in search of a proper meal. We were soon tucking into plates of pork, bread and their strange, pickled cabbage. I think we were all too tired to worry about the future then. Once my stomach was comfortably full, I went to my room. I slept for twelve hours straight and woke to a vastly different city.

By then five thousand wounded had reached Konigsberg, many piled high on sledges and carts, undoubtedly emitting groans of pain at every jolt in the road. Yet more were still struggling on foot behind them, and thousands would not complete the journey at all. The tales they brought of battle and slaughter spread fear throughout the city. Already this advance party of injured men made up a tenth of Konigsberg’s population. Space had been tight before with other refugees, but now when I looked out of my window, I could see wounded men, with nowhere else to go, huddled in an alley opposite for shelter. Wilson suggested that he and I share a room and soon six wounded Russian officers were filling my old attic chamber. Any sense of noble charity we might have felt diminished that night as we were kept awake listening to their moans and wails through the thin plank walls. A Prussian doctor called the next day and the resulting screams as he carried out the necessary ministrations and surgeries were so loud, we had to go out. We could not bear to listen to those agonies; we both knew the random nature of warfare and how easily we could have been in the same state. Over the next few days I saw three bodies carried out of that room wrapped in blankets, but as any vacancy was immediately filled with a new casualty, it is hard to say how many survived.

The day after we reached the city the rest of the Russian army began to arrive. Bennigsen immediately put them to work improving the defensive earthworks and the artillery was dispersed to strengthen those ramparts. By then the number of Russians outside the city nearly matched the Prussians inside it. Meanwhile, the number of wounded in the city had already doubled from the previous day. The bloody trail of men still arriving from the south showed no end. Worryingly, the tsar’s forces still had no supplies. Appeals were made for food from warehouses and even the citizens’ own households – anything that could be spared. It looked impossible to meet the needs of the army. Already parties of desperate soldiers had gone out into the countryside raiding farmsteads, stealing anything they could find and burning the rest for warmth.

Feeling refreshed and with Russians filling the city, I thought it was high time I went to find the recipient of the letter in my pocket. The poor woman was probably already searching in vain for her husband. I changed into my best uniform; I could hardly break the news of widowhood in a jacket covered with his blood. Then I set out through the crowded streets. The address was a large town house that was now packed with injured Russian soldiers. An orderly told me that no women were inside and so I knocked on the neighbouring doors. To my surprise I was told that Dorothea Benckendorff was now a guest at the royal palace. Now doubly pleased I was in my best duds, I made my way through the throng outside the royal residence.

Brandishing my letter, I was granted admittance into an icy-cold entrance hall. The space was full of court officials scurrying between old Prussian generals, who were urgently debating the state of the war. The Prussian army had still not returned to the city. I was not sure if L’Estocq was still feeling slighted by Bennigsen’s refusal to stand, or if he was wisely seeking food and supplies somewhere else. As I waited, I saw men carrying various chests and trunks up and down the stairs and wondered if the king and queen were planning a return to Memel. Eventually, some bewigged major-domo found me and haughtily demanded to know my business. I showed him the address on the letter and explained that I understood the lady was now in the palace. He tried to take the document, but I snatched it back. “I fought with her husband at Eylau and promised him I would personally deliver this to her hand,” I told him. This was not entirely true, but I was keen to see more of the palace, not to mention this mysterious woman who had so enchanted my former comrade.

The courtier looked me up and down with suspicion, as though I was some itinerant snake oil salesman. Then to my amazement he announced, “I will see if the countess is willing to see you.”

“Countess?” I repeated in surprise, feeling a sudden pang of alarm as I wondered what I had got myself into. Benckendorff sounded German; perhaps my late friend was a member of the German nobility now fighting for the Russians. That would explain why his widow was so welcome in the Prussian royal residence. I was just puzzling this when a flunkey led me up the stairs to a drawing room. I was left alone and began pacing up and down, cursing myself for not coming sooner. Would the countess already know she was a widow? How the hell was I to break the news if not? There was bound to be a hell of a fuss and I would probably get dragged in to tell the king and queen – for all I knew Benckendorff could be related to one of them. Perhaps I would be blamed for not protecting him. I was just starting to imagine myself shackled in some dingy cell, when the far door opened.

In walked a radiant beauty and her maid. To describe the countess does not do her justice. Her neck was a little too long, and she had large ears that she tried to hide with dark ringlets that framed her pale face. I was only twenty-five back then and I guessed she was a few years younger. She wore a loose dress that hid her figure, but it was her dark eyes that grabbed your attention. Those lively black orbs surveyed me as she approached with the casual ease of someone used to power. Despite, or perhaps because of her imperfections, she was quite stunning to behold. I realised that I was staring and hurriedly brought myself to attention.

“I am told you have a message for me that you must deliver personally,” she enquired, smiling in amusement at my obvious distraction. That happy face reminded me of the grim tidings I had to impart. It was obvious that she had not already heard, and I had thought of no better way of telling her than to come straight out with it.

“Countess,” I started, wishing now I had just handed the letter to the major-domo to deliver. As she looked at me curiously, I took a deep breath and continued, “I very much regret that I have to inform you that your husband has been killed.” I had been expecting her to scream or become hysterical, but while her maid gave a gasp of surprise, the countess merely frowned.

“Why would an Englishman bring me such news? If such a thing were true, one of my husband’s officers would have told me.”

“Well, I am not sure that there were any officers left,” I explained. “I came because I was with him the night before the battle and also when he fell.”

“Are you telling me my husband died at Eylau?” she enquired, still unconcerned. When I nodded, she offered me a seat and told the maid to fetch me a brandy as though I were the grieving party. As she sat down beside me, she reached out and touched my arm. “I can tell you are sincere, sir, but I must inform you that I had a message from my husband this morning, dated yesterday. He has certainly survived the battle and I am sure is in good health. I fear that you will have to give this news again to someone else.”

“But I have this letter,” I explained, taking it from my pocket. Her eyes widened at the now brown stains of blood. Then when she saw her name still clearly visible on the front of the note, her delicate hands took it from me as though it was a shard of the thinnest ice. As a brandy was put down beside me, she whispered something in Russian to the maid. The girl hurried from the room. When I turned my gaze back to the countess, I saw those dark eyes now filled with tears.

“Karl was not my husband,” she whispered softly. “He was a friend of my brother’s and we became close growing up. My husband is away so often in the army.”

“I see. Well…er…from what he said, he very much admired you,” I concluded lamely. I could see now why Karl was besotted with Dorothea, for I felt more than a little admiration myself. Her obvious grief stirred a deep pang of sympathy in my normally cynical soul. I felt a sudden urge to protect her. “Ma’am, you can rely on my complete discretion in this matter. I give you my word, no one will hear of this from me.”

She tucked the letter unread inside her blouse, close to her heart, and wiped away her tears. Summoning a smile that did not hide her infinite sadness, she asked me my name and then to describe how her lover had died. I gave a noble account, explaining how at the last we had decided to step into that breach together to save his regiment. She was suitably impressed and so I told her that he died in my arms, her name the last word from his lips. Of course, it was a load of tosh, but what woman would not want to hear that compared to the brutal truth?

By the time I had finished, the tears were pouring down her cheeks. She got up and rushed from the room. I sat there unsure what to do next: should I leave, or would she return? After a while the maid re-entered. On behalf of her mistress, she thanked me for my time and gave me a small purse of gold coins for my trouble. I was back out in the street a couple of minutes later.

Back then I had no idea how that brief encounter with the countess would change events to come. Why, at that point it seemed that the history of the entire Prussian nation was about to come to an abrupt and humiliating end. Bennigsen was still marshalling the defence of the city, but few put much hope in his demoralised and hungry soldiers succeeding in stopping the French. The Prussian armouries had been able to provide little fresh powder and ball to replenish Russian stores. The tsar’s men would have to rely on their bayonets. Even their officers began to lose confidence in their own soldiers. Some of the aristocrats were concerned that if the army were taken prisoner, their serfs would learn more of the revolution in France. The last thing they wanted was such radical ideas being taken back to their own estates to cause unrest. The Russian bishop travelling with the army was summoned. He was instructed to preach that Napoleon Bonaparte was the spawn of Satan and all those that served him were devils.

The next two days were ones of panic and rumour across Konigsberg. Twice it was reported that a French army had been spotted nearby. The streets immediately filled with citizens rushing in all directions. Then we heard that the royal family had left and when that was proved untrue, there were fresh claims that plans were afoot to surrender the city to the French without a fight. As darkness fell men could be seen scurrying around the city with bundles of possessions that they were planning to bury, or perhaps they were the valuables of others that they had just dug up. I even went to the port to see if there was any hope that a vessel might get away. However, I soon discovered that the ice was set solid around the ships in the harbour, while out in the lagoon, where the water was saltier, I was told there was a foot-deep layer of icy slush. One master was doing his best to release his vessel. He had his crew smashing the ice around its hull and lighting a series of fires to melt the ice between the ship and the harbour entrance. I found a British master who, puffing on a pipe and watching proceedings, predicted that the endeavour was doomed to fail. He was right – as soon as the fires on the ice burned through, they disappeared with a hiss into the water below. Minutes later a new film of ice began to form around the floating burnt sticks that remained.

The following day a new rumour circulated that the French were retreating back west. At first we gave it the same credence as all other gossip, but by late afternoon we received reports that Cossacks had ridden to Eylau and found it abandoned by all but the badly injured and the dead. Bells rang out across the city that evening to announce our deliverance.

In just a few hours Konigsberg was transformed. That morning we had anticipated a whole army taken prisoner and the oblivion of the state of Prussia. By nightfall we were all free and safe. It was clear now that the French army had been weakened at Eylau much more than we had thought. The winter marches and the battle itself must have taken a terrible toll, as they could not risk another confrontation with the Russians just twenty miles north. Instead, they had turned around and covered the same ground that two armies had already denuded of supplies for seventy wintry miles, to return to their original winter quarters near the Vistula River.

The two sides had battled each other to exhaustion so that neither was able to continue in the field. They were like two prize fighters who had fought each other to a standstill. In fact, when I heard of the epic thirty-five round Cribb and Molineaux bout, I was immediately reminded of Eylau. Those who had argued that we should have stayed on that hillside and forced the French to withdraw, were not slow to point out that they had been right. Wilson only mentioned it half a dozen times that evening and I was sure that the more aggressive Russian generals were making the same point with Bennigsen.

Despite this good news, by the following morning a ‘draw’ was not enough; our deliverance had to be proclaimed with calls of victory. A procession marched through the city, led by Bennigsen and a hundred Russian and Prussian officers to accept the adulation of the relieved populace. Behind them tramped several thousand Russian soldiers, some with feet still wrapped in rags and many showing the marks of battle. When the procession was marred as a number broke ranks to pillage a bakery, it was clear that they were also still hungry. In front of the palace six captured eagles were displayed, while the king and various generals made speeches, as their men shivered behind them.

This civic backslapping did little to diminish the divisions within the forces. Russian generals now had even more reason to detest their Hanoverian commander. L’Estocq was still fuming and doubtless told his monarch that with more resolve they could have liberated most of his kingdom from the invader. Meanwhile various Prussian generals and courtiers, who had lost nearly everything with their own reckless endeavours, sneered at the Russians as amateurs in the art of war. To keep these conflicting parties united and effective would take a diplomat of exceptional skill, I realised. Unfortunately, we had Lord John Hely Hutchinson.