The Great White Army

by Max Pemberton

Now this was a dreadful thing to hear, and one which sent every man in the church leaping to his feet—those of them who could stand, for there were many who could not. We did not stop to ask ourselves by what means the Russians had entered Slawkowo. Well we knew that they had been upon our flanks all day, and it did not seem impossible that they had made a sudden descent upon the church, and were already in the suburbs of the city. If that were so, our case was parlous. We knew that they would burn us out like rats, and would sabre every man who crossed the threshold. Can you wonder, then, that a great silence fell for an instant, and was succeeded by a wild shout of "Aux armes!"

I have lived through many a dangerous hour for the Emperor's sake, but never one, I think, so full of the sublime and the grotesque as that instant of alarm in the church at Slawkowo.

To see men, who had been brawling and singing but a moment before, spring to their feet and stagger towards the door, bayonets fixed or swords flourished; to hear the oaths and curses of drunken brutes, who believed that death had them by the shoulders; to be carried everywhere in a mob which slashed and hewed at an imaginary enemy, and even cut down its comrades in a mad debauch of fear and frenzy—all this, I say, surpassed experience.

Yet such was the result of that wild alarm.

The Cossacks were at the gates; the church was fired. From without and within the roar and the brawl waxed deafening. Those in the snow beat fiercely upon the doors, and splintered them with axe and musket; those within fired their pistols from every window, and called on God and the devil to help them. When it was apparent that the doors were giving way, a panic ensued such as the meanest mercenary might have been ashamed of. Men howled in fear or supplicated an enemy still invisible; others flew to the bottle, and drank prodigious draughts; some capered like women round and round the fires in a drunken pæan of death. But all surely believed that the Cossacks were there; and we of the Guard, determining at length that assault was better than defence, threw the doors wide open and charged headlong through the blinding storm.

Ah! what a night that was—what a mockery! Perceived but not seeing, for the aureole of light must have shown our figures clearly to the enemy, we slashed and hewed at hazard—here in snow to our knees, there falling upon the slippery ground, now locked arm in arm with the aggressors, or again standing alone seeking vainly for an enemy.

Whence the assault had come or by whom we knew no more than the dead.

Either the light blinded us or we stood in such black darkness that a man might have slain his own brother unawares.

In truth, we had been doing this all along, and we must have fought a full ten minutes before someone cried out that we were killing Frenchmen, and instantly there arose a terrible uproar and the ghastly truth was discovered.

It had not been the Cossacks at all who had come to the place, but a regiment of chasseurs of the line, of whom no fewer than forty now lay dead before the porch of the church. Who can describe our chagrin and dismay when this was made known? Our own comrades! Many a man there would as soon have slain his own children.