The Green Gallant: Russian Eagles, #2

By Dinah Dean

Brilliant soldier Major Vladimir Karachev, of the Imperial Russian Army, is fighting for his life. Stuck serving under an incompetent Colonel and defending his homeland against the mighty and seemingly unstoppable French under Emperor Bonaparte, Vladimir must use all his wits to survive. 

 

When the Allied forces chase the enemy into France, Vladimir finds a beautiful woman hiding in a closet! Blanche de Marain is caught in her late husband's house after she returns for a picture of her late husband and is left behind. A night of passion cements Blanche and Vladimir's instant connection, and Vladimir sends her with nuns to safety in Paris. 

 

It's a long and complicated war for Vladimir, made worse by uncertainty. Did Blanche reach Paris safely? Will he reach Paris intact, and find her if he does? Little does he know that winning peace and reaching Paris will be the beginning, not the end, of his challenges. 

 

Rich with military history and rife with tension and strategy, this epic tale of war, love, and loss drives forward the story of the Eagles brotherhood to a tragic climax. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cover & Page
• Release date: Jan 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215382554

Book preview

One

AUTUMN, 1813

Major Vladimir Karachev attempted to relax his face into a friendly smile, and found it damned difficult after years of assiduously cultivating a total lack of expression. Besides, his feet and back and head ached, and his insides were not in any too good a state after nearly two days of the tension of battle.

He turned his eyes away from the friendly grins and blue coats of the fellows on his left with their peculiar iron contraption mounted on the top of a small hillock, and concentrated on the battalion column of his own dark-green uniformed Russians on his right. They were standing easy, as they had been doing for most of the time during this interminable battle, in the intervals of marching about the undulating and marshy country around Leipzig.

The city lay about two miles away, almost due west from where he stood on the rising ground, with a couple of villages in the nearer landscape and the toy-like formations of the various armies moving in a seemingly aimless way between the rivers and roads which all converged on their own objective, the city and its vital bridges.

The heavy rain of the morning had eased and stopped, and the sun, shining fitfully on his face, had that hazy, tired look which it often has late in the year, intensified now by the drifting fog of powder smoke around the areas where there was actual fighting going on. As he watched, a regiment of Bonaparte’s army began to move forward, oddly unsupported, breaking into a run as the officers waved their swords: and shouted to the men. They were Saxons, to judge from their uniforms, but there were so many different nationalities represented here that it was difficult to be sure. The French regiments on either side of them in the strong defensive line gave them a cheer, but their drums were not beating, and as they reached the advanced posts of the Allied armies, they held their muskets above their heads and shouted — their voices came faintly to Vladimir across nearly half a mile of countryside.

‘They’re deserting — coming over to us!’ said an excited voice in his ear, and he turned his head to answer Boris Kalinsky, who had been standing beside him holding the Regimental Colour in an attitude of studied elegance, which he had temporarily lost in the excitement of the moment.

‘Well, I suppose it’s a good sign,’ Vladimir admitted rather grudgingly. ‘I should think most of Bonaparte’s allies are a little discouraged by now.’

‘He’s not beaten yet,’ Boris pointed out, recovering his calm exterior, carefully modelled on Vladimir’s own admirable self-control. ‘Though you’d have thought after the trouble he was in when he returned from Moscow last year…’

‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said a diffident voice in execrable French.

Vladimir turned.

It was the burly, blue-coated, red-faced English officer in charge of the strange object next door, who had been smiling at him in the interests of Allied friendship on and off for the last hour. ‘I — er — I thought I should warn you that we’re about to fire.’

‘Fire what?’ Vladimir enquired. He looked across and saw that the large iron framework, shaped like two capital A’s joined with a crossbar at their apexes, now supported a row of metal cylinders standing in a top-heavy fashion on the ends of long wooden poles, like a rack of artillery swabs, only bigger, and more pointed.

‘Our rockets.’ The Englishman looked embarrassed. ‘They’re Congreve rockets. They sometimes misfire, but when they do go off, they make a rather peculiar noise. I thought . . .’ he tailed off.

‘Yes. Thank you for the warning.’ Vladimir thought to himself that this campaign seemed to bristle with oddities and extraordinary features, what with the assortment of nations involved on both sides; the use of French as almost the only common language among the Allies, who were fighting the French Emperor; the fact that his own Regiment was detached from the Russian army and serving with the Army of Poland under the Hanoverian, Bennigsen, while the reserves immediately behind were mostly Swedes, commanded by an ex-Marshal of France, who was now their Prince Royal — and now this most odd-looking new weapon, manned by Englishmen! He managed a slightly frosty smile, and went over to the little group of officers round his Colonel to pass on the warning.

Colonel Damkov greeted him with an unpleasant scowl and replied to his ‘The English battery is about to fire, Excellency,’ with a curt ‘Very well,’ but was then overcome with curiosity and added ‘What English battery?’

‘The Congreve rockets, Excellency,’ Vladimir indicated them, hoping he had remembered the name correctly, his face showing no sign at all that he reciprocated his Colonel’s dislike. ‘Oh, God!’ he thought, for the thousandth time, ‘How could the Emperor give us this fool in place of Nikolai Volkhov!’ and he allowed himself a few seconds to wonder how Prince Nikolai was now, how far recovered from the terrible wound he had suffered over a year ago, at Borodino.

There was a sudden rushing, rending noise, like a giant sneeze and the ripping of a vast calico sheet, and he swung round towards the English battery, too late to see the rockets leave their frame. Colonel Damkov swore violently and everyone ducked, some of the men falling flat on their faces, and then scrambling up again rather foolishly.

The English soldiers were watching the flight of the dozen rockets, and Vladimir turned again to follow their gaze, just in time to see the warheads land on a French square over near the village of Paunsdorf. He watched with sick disgust as they burst with a scatter of shattering explosions, spraying jagged metal through the close-packed ranks. There was a stunned silence for a moment, and then the English gave a cheer as the remnant of the French square broke up and scattered, running back towards the shelter of their own artillery, leaving a mass of dead and wounded, and their precious Eagle lying in the bloody travesty of their former neat formation.

Vladimir collected himself, and turned to his own men, tearing off his kiver (the Russian shako) and waving it in the air. The men responded with a deep-chested, ‘Hurra!’ curiously like, and yet unlike the ‘Huzza!’ of the Englishmen.

‘I’ll thank you to keep the men quiet, Major!’ Colonel Damkov snarled, in French. Vladimir replaced his hat and saluted without a word, and the men fell silent. Most of them understood some French, and the tone spoke for itself. He felt a wave of resentment from them on his behalf which a less insensitive man than Damkov might have interpreted as a threat.

‘Hell!’ he thought. ‘How long can we go on like this? I resent every word he says, every blunder, every order, every insult, and it’s not only because he isn’t Nikolai Volkhov! He obviously hates me, but God knows why — I’m damned careful to see that I don’t show what I think of him!’

He was far too modest a man to understand that the muddle-headed, inefficient Colonel resented his orderly methods and clear thinking, feeling that his every word and action was being weighed against the standard of both the Major and his own predecessor in the Colonelcy, and found wanting.

Vladimir’s thoughts were interrupted by another salvo from the rocket battery, this time directed against the enemy batteries round Paunsdorf. They fell short, and there was a to-ing and fro-ing of messengers for a time, and then the English dismantled the iron frame, and began to move forward. A Prussian galloper came up to Colonel Damkov with orders for the Volkhovskys to move up in support, and they began to advance down the slope towards Paunsdorf, halting when the rocketeers were within convenient range of their target.

They began setting up the iron frame again, but the French opened fire from the shelter of the village with canister and howitzer shells, and Vladimir saw with a pang of regret that the friendly English captain was cut down in the first salvo. The command passed to a nervous-looking young lieutenant, who gave his orders calmly and clearly enough, but in a shrill, boyish voice, which cracked every time he said ‘Fire!’ The rockets were sent off in rapid salvoes for a time, but not with the devastating effect of the first flight, and at least one of them detonated prematurely as it was struck by a piece of the enemy’s metal, and sprayed the Englishmen with glowing fragments.

Paunsdorf had already changed hands twice during the last two days, and Vladimir judged that the Volkhovskys would almost certainly be sent in to take it again before long. He said as much to Boris, who glanced back over his shoulder at the men who had moved up behind them on the higher ground.

‘I’d like to know what those people back there are going to do,’ he said. ‘They’ve been moving about behind us ever since we arrived. What do you think they’re up to?’

‘Well, they’re Swedes,’ Vladimir replied, and then, seeing from Boris’ expression that this was an inadequate explanation, enlarged it by adding, ‘Don’t forget that their Prince Royal is ex-Marshal Bernadotte. Perhaps he’s not happy about fighting his old master.’

‘At least, he’s not likely to change sides,’ Boris commented. ‘Bonaparte wouldn’t have him, for one thing.’

‘And he’s hoping to be asked to rule France when Bonaparte’s put down, for another,’ Vladimir added. He spotted another galloper coming over from Blücher’s headquarters to the north, waited to make sure he was headed towards them, then shouted in Russian to the men to straighten their column and fix bayonets. Colonel Damkov turned, scowling, with his mouth open to query, or even countermand the order, saw the messenger approaching, and changed his mind.

While the galloper was delivering his orders and expanding them with a great deal of arm waving and guttural German-French, Vladimir stared woodenly at the Colonel’s broad back, which strained his green uniform coat in transverse ridges, and recalled the veiled insults, contradicted opinions, unreasonable demands, querulous complaints and muddled orders he had suffered in the past six months. He dare not let his mind run on to the unnecessary floggings of seasoned veterans, the petty insults to junior officers, or the rank injustice of leaving young Boris a mere ensign after more than a year of good service. He carefully selected the exact spot on the fat back where he would like to place a bullet and allowed himself the luxury of detesting the man for a few seconds. His face remained totally devoid of expression, and Boris, who thought he knew him pretty well by now, assumed that he was suffering a mild and well controlled spasm of pre-attack nerves.

There was no time for much thought after that. The attack was launched an hour before sunset, led by Vladimir and Boris with the Colour, the Colonel unobtrusively falling back — as he cheered the men on. The village was taken after a brisk and fairly short fight in the single street, and the enemy set running for the shelter of the entrenchments thrown out in a screen before the suburbs of the city.

When there was time to pause for breath in the gathering darkness, Vladimir realised that the thunder of the guns from farther south, where the Army of Bohemia had been fighting for the last three days, had died down to a mere grumble. He wished for a moment that the Regiment was there, with most of the Russian army and the Emperor, but on reflection realised that the Austrians were there too, and the Marshal was old Prince Schwartzenburg, and on the whole, Vladimir preferred to be commanded by Bennigsen, who was Russian by adoption, than by any Austrian Wet Hen.

He was standing on the Leipzig side of the village, waiting for the stragglers (including the Colonel) to rejoin the column. Captain Platen, recently transferred from the Third Battalion, came limping out of a side entry with a bloodstained strip of someone’s shirt around his head. He answered Vladimir’s enquiry with a shaky grin and said he would be all right in a minute. He pointed out that the Swedes were moving into the village, and Vladimir left him with a consoling pat on the shoulder and the exasperated thought that the regimental surgeon, who had died of fever three months ago, had not yet been replaced. He went to establish his own men’s right to take up quarters in the ruined cottages for the night, and the Swedish officer conceded this — not that it was much of an advantage, for, as the Duke of Wellington remarked on a similar occasion, the village had been much fought over, and was not in the best of repair. However, it afforded a certain amount of protection from the chill autumn night, and was the best Vladimir could do for the men, as they well appreciated.

He found on making his rounds that the Sergeants’ mess had been established in the church, and although he made no comment, his slightly raised eyebrows were enough to draw from Rybakov, the giant Colour Sergeant, the defence that in this benighted part of the world, they were all Catholics or Lutherans, so it didn’t matter. It also appeared that the sergeants had acquired a pig, and they kindly offered to send a few chops to the Major and his friends when it was cooked.

In the happier days of Prince Nikolai’s colonelcy, Vladimir had usually shared quarters with him and with young Boris Kalinsky, as the two older men felt they should keep an eye on the lad, but Colonel Damkov preferred as far as possible to live apart from his officers. For a few weeks, Vladimir and Boris had continued to mess together, but on one memorable occasion the Colonel had made an unpleasant innuendo about their friendship. Vladimir had been so astonished that he had simply stared the Colonel straight in the eye without a flicker of expression and in total silence for a full minute, which reduced Damkov to a muttered, ‘I was joking, of course,’ by way of a withdrawal, but when Captain Platen joined the First Battalion and asked rather hesitantly if he might quarter with them, Vladimir had accepted the offer. Platen was a good fellow anyway.

When he had made certain that the men were reasonably comfortable and provided with the means of cooking a meal, Vladimir sought out Boris and Platen, and found them in one of the few comparatively undamaged buildings, a one roomed cottage. With them was Colonel Damkov.

‘Where the devil have you been?’ he demanded as Vladimir entered the room, ducking through the doorway, which was too low for a man over six feet tall.

‘I’ve been making my rounds, Excellency.’ Vladimir replied politely, ‘I was not aware that you were waiting for me.’ And where the devil have you been yourself? he thought.

Boris and Platen drew as far away as the small room allowed, and stood watching. The two men made an interesting contrast, Vladimir being tall, dark-haired and well-built, with a face which would have been handsome if he had allowed himself any expression, and the Colonel greying, short, inclined to fat, red-faced, with a petulant droop to his mouth and protruding bloodshot blue eyes.

‘I was delayed by one of the Swedish staff officers,’ Damkov sounded as if he was justifying himself. ‘However, the men seem to have done quite well, under the circumstances. A general advance is ordered for tomorrow morning. It appears that the enemy is falling back into the city.’

‘At what time, Excellency?’ Vladimir enquired.

‘As soon as we’re ready, I suppose.’ The Colonel had apparently not thought to obtain this important piece of information. He nodded curtly to Boris and Platen and moved towards the door.

‘Would you care to dine with us?’ Boris felt obliged to ask, but the Colonel was well aware that these three normally lived on the same rations as the men, and he preferred the more luxurious fare provided by his servants from the stores in his private baggage waggons, so he replied, ‘No thank you, Ensign,’ and departed to his own quarters.

Vladimir removed his kiver and threw it down hard on his canvas bed, which was sufficient comment on his encounter with Damkov, and shouted to Yuri, his servant, to bring him some water. By the time he had washed off the grime of powder smoke, the roast pork arrived with a quantity of vegetables, and the three friends sat down to the best meal they had eaten for several weeks.

‘If Bonaparte is falling back into the city, it looks as if we’re in for a siege.’ Platen sounded worried.

‘Not necessarily,’ Vladimir replied. ‘It’s a reasonably easy place to defend, but he can’t afford to be cut off in a besieged city so far away from France. We might have to fight hard for the place, but if he can’t beat us tomorrow, he’ll have to withdraw, or be surrounded. Blücher’s Army of Silesia is to the north, and the Army of Bohemia to the south. The rivers and the marshes limit his possible movements. If he can’t make most of us retreat, he’ll have to withdraw westwards.’

‘That’s the only opening left, with us to his east,’ Boris put in.

‘Yes, us and the Swedes. He’s missed his chance, you know. Yesterday, he had only two armies to fight. Today there are four.’ Vladimir made a rough map with plates and cutlery. ‘Most of Blücher’s force is up here, to the north, where they can move down either side of the river. If they come down on the west side, they menace his communications, because there’s only the Leipzig bridges over the rivers and marshes. With the Army of Bohemia down here, in the south, and ourselves, the Army of Poland to the east, he’ll have to move westwards, back towards France.’

‘How far?’ Platen asked.

‘There’s not a decent place for a stand before Frankfurt, or even the Rhine.’

‘If he doesn’t win tomorrow . . .’ Boris sounded as if the very idea was preposterous. ‘But he always does win.’

‘There’s always a first time, and what about Aspern-Essling?’ Vladimir replied, and looked at Platen, whose head had drooped forward. ‘Are you all right, Igor Igorovitch?’

Platen looked up. ‘Yes. Just so damned tired.’ He gave an apologetic grin.

‘So am I,’ said Boris. ‘There ought to be an Imperial Decree against battles lasting more than one day. Some of the poor devils have been fighting this one for three, now.’

‘And wars shouldn’t last more than one year,’ Vladimir added grimly. ‘This one started in June, 1812, and now it’s October, 1813. It’s too long, and it’s still a hell of a long way to Paris.’

‘There was an armistice . . .’ Platen yawned.

‘What about the English?’ Boris said. ‘They’ve been fighting non-stop since 1792.’

‘No, there was the Peace of Amiens . . .’ Vladimir felt that there was little point in continuing, as both the others were falling asleep as they sat there. ‘Oh, go to bed!’ he said, sounding a little irritable. ‘I'll just check the vedettes.’

In Prince Nikolai’s time, he thought as he went out, this was always the Colonel’s responsibility, but with Damkov . . . was it really only coincidence that the fellow’s name sounded so much like the German dummkopf? He stood outside the door of the cottage for a few minutes, to let his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, and listened intently to the sounds of the night. Close at hand, in the village, his own men were settling down for the night, most of them too weary to talk very much, but he tried to ignore the familiar noises and concentrate on the sounds from farther away, particularly those from the west, where the enemy might be preparing a surprise attack.

He could hear nothing unusual, and after a while, he walked quietly along the single street, stepping carefully over the wreckage of houses and vehicles, and the occasional corpse of man or horse. He paused by the last cottage, and looked across towards the enemy. The autumn night was chilly, and mist was rising from the swampy land on the outskirts of Leipzig and drifting in long scarf-like swathes across the battlefield. Ragged clouds covered most of the sky, and the moon shone in fleeting glimpses, occasionally revealing the scene for a second in a harsh light like a badly printed engraving, then plunging behind the clouds again to leave everything dark. There was a constant background noise, which rose and fell like the sound of the sea, as wounded men out in the open groaned or cried aloud for the help which would come too late for most of them.

The watchfires of the enemy burned redly in the mist, and figures moved about, distorted in their strange light, but there was nothing to indicate that Bonaparte’s men were doing anything other than eat and sleep while they could. After watching and listening for a time, Vladimir turned to go back into the village. He started slightly as he was promptly challenged in Russian from the darkness of the first cottage, and replied in German to see what the sentry would do.

‘I recognize your Excellency,’ the man said reprovingly. ‘I’ve been watching you for the last quarter of an hour, sir.’

‘Why didn’t you challenge, then?’ Vladimir reverted to Russian.

‘You came from our own camp, sir. Now you’re coming from the direction of the enemy, so I challenge you.’ The explanation seemed logical, and Vladimir gave a noncommittal grunt before moving away quietly to circle the village, exchanging challenge and reply with each vedette in turn until he reached the point where his own men’s territory touched that of the Swedish regiment, whose nervous sentry called out the officer of the watch, keeping Vladimir standing a few inches from the end of his long musket, which wavered about alarmingly, until the officer arrived and testily demanded an explanation.

Vladimir identified himself, explained his presence in French, and stood talking to the Swedish officer for a few minutes about the day’s fighting, and then enquired if he had any idea what time the attack was to start in the morning.

‘Daybreak, I believe,’ the Swede replied. ‘It’s difficult to be sure of anything, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t understand French or German well enough to be certain I’ve understood what I’m told, so I just follow everyone else and hope for the best.’

Vladimir agreed that this was sound policy, and bade his ally good night. He walked back into the village and entered the church for a word with Rybakov and the other sergeants, who welcomed him with a pleasantly cheerful respect, listening with interest to what he had been able to glean of the day’s events in other parts of the battlefield, and of the attack planned for the morning.

As he was talking, he noticed with envy how comfortable these veterans had made themselves, with a good fire, plenty of altar candles, and a deep litter of clean straw to sleep on, and also how tidily they had