Count Orlov nodded off, but they woke him before dawn. A deserter from the French camp was brought to see him. It was a Polish NCO from Poniatowski’s corps. He explained in Polish that he had deserted because he had felt humiliated in their service; he should have been commissioned long ago, he was braver than anybody else, so he had come over to them and he wanted to get his own back. He said Murat was camping for the night less than a mile away, and if they would give him a hundred men he would go and take him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov consulted his fellow officers. The offer was too tempting to refuse. They were all eager to go; they all said yes, we must have a shot at it. After much argument and further consultation it was decided that Major-General Grekov would take two regiments of Cossacks and go with the Polish deserter.
‘Don’t you forget,’ said Count Orlov-Denisov to the Polish deserter, as he sent him on his way. ‘If you’ve been lying, I’ll have you hanged like a dog, but if it’s true there’s a hundred gold pieces in it for you.’
The deserter said nothing as he got on his horse with grim determination and rode off with a hurriedly mustered group of Grekov’s men. They disappeared into the forest. Count Orlov watched them go, shivering from the chill of the early dawn and greatly excited by the scheme he had launched on his own initiative. He came back out of the wood and peered across at the enemy camp, which was just visible in the tricky first light of dawn amid the dying camp-fires. There was a stretch of open rising ground to Count Orlov-Denisov’s right, and that’s where our columns ought to have been. He looked in that direction, but even though you could have seen them miles away, there was no sign of these columns. Meanwhile Count Orlov-Denisov thought he could see things beginning to stir over in the French camp, and this was confirmed by his sharp-eyed adjutant.
‘It’s too late, isn’t it?’ said Count Orlov, staring across at the camp. And suddenly – as so often happens when a man we trust is gone from our sight – the picture became perfectly clear: that deserter had been stringing them along, lying through his teeth, he would ruin the whole attack by taking out two regiments, and God alone knew where he was leading them! How could you hope to capture the commander-in-chief in amongst masses of his own troops?
‘Swine. He was lying,’ said the count.
‘We could call them back,’ said one member of his suite, full of the same misgivings as he stared across at the camp.
‘What? . . . Well, what do you think? Let them go on? Or bring them back?’
‘Is that your order – bring them back?’
‘Yes, yes, bring them back!’ Count Orlov said, suddenly decisive, glancing at his watch. ‘We’ll be too late. It’s light now.’
An aide galloped off into the wood after Grekov. When Grekov came back, Count Orlov-Denisov, roused to a state of high excitement by his decision to abandon the initiative, and from waiting and waiting for infantry columns that never turned up, and also by the enemy’s close proximity (which was affecting every man in his detachment), decided to attack.
The command came out in a whisper.
‘To horse!’
The men fell in, crossing themselves . . .
‘Go! And God go with you!’
A great ‘Hurrah!’ rang through the woods, and platoon after platoon of Cossacks, trailing their lances, soared merrily across the stream as if they were being poured out of a sack, and set off for the enemy camp.
One desperate, terrified yell from the first French soldier to spot the coming Cossacks, and every man jack of them, half-dressed and half-asleep, took to his heels, abandoning cannons, muskets and horses.
If only the Cossacks had ignored the things behind them and around them, and gone after the French, they would have captured Murat and everything that went with him. That’s what their commanding officers wanted them to do. But there was no shifting the Cossacks once they had got their hands on some loot and some prisoners. The word of command went unheard. There on the spot they had taken fifteen hundred prisoners, thirty-eight cannons, some regimental colours and, what mattered most to the Cossacks, horses, saddles, blankets and all kinds of things like that. All of this needed sorting out. They had to secure the prisoners and the cannons, share out the loot, yell at each other and even fight over the spoils, and the Cossacks got down to it.
When the French realized they were not being pursued they rallied, fell back in and opened fire. Orlov-Denisov was still waiting for the other columns to turn up, and he made no further attacks.
