Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements Read Online Free

They didn’t work. You, and the rest of the new Commissioners, represent a step down. A good revolutionary general doesn’t need orders, he only needs supplies. Nobody ever had a monopoly of the Revolution, though some of them thought they did. Let me put it simply and say that I am in charge here. No looting. And, if I were you, I’d dress more like a revolutionary. All those feathers, God help us.”
    “We’ll see who’s in charge. We’ll see.”
    C itizens Carné, Thiriet, Blondy, Tireux and the rest, not forgetting the flame-headed giant Dupas, the wine and meat of Mondovi working in their bodies, listened to him as he performed his big scene from his white horse, riding up and down the ranks, the great tail swishing (more flies here, more dung, fertile plain, thank Christ we’re finished with those fucking mountains). “…And we outflanked them, we’re over the Po, and we’re only a few miles south of Milan … And they’re across that river there, the Adda, and it breaks my heart that you can’t do it … Because you can’t, you’ve got cunts between those jelly-shivering legs of yours, there’s not one of you here willing to follow your commanders over that bit of a bridge there … Frightened of victory, that’s what it is, scared of the responsibility of showing these cringing Italian bastards that you’re better than they are because you’d got the guts to throw off your chains … Well, a time for courage comes once, and it’s been and gone for you … There’s a gate there, you see, and all I have to do is give the order to open it and send brave citizen soldiers shouting and screaming to get at the Austrians as they go over, but you’re not the ones to do it, oh no …”
    A good act, Dupas thought, it works up the growls in them. Come on, growl, you bastards, I’m tired of just standing here.
    They roared, not growled. The drums rattled and the flutes screamed O come ye children of the motherland the sun of glory fills the sky and they started to clatter over, some of them going splash over the sides in the press, there being no parapets, and the Austrian guns flaming at them, bloody murder. A few yards from the end some jumped into the Adda and tried to wade ashore, and then the cavalry came at them, sabers and great whinnying horsemouths, and there was not one Frenchman on the further bank, but they still poured across, Massena yelling and Berthier forgetting his stammer and no sight of our cavalry, why the hell couldn’t he wait till he knew our cavalry was across?
    And then, by Christ, there they were, Kilmaine and his bony nags and the screaming men on them, right onto the Austrian flank, stopping the guns, until you could hear the thumping and trundling of the feet of the Savoy infantry coming over the bridge over the Adda.
    God almighty it was a near thing, Bonaparte was thinking, God almighty it wasn’t planning this time, it was taking a chance, it was impossible gambling that came off, and it tastes like brandy, it feels like that delirious flying moment when you spend into her thighs, now that I know I am a living spirit and a very special one as well as a military library and a craftsman and a machine as modern as a semaphore telegraph or a hydrogen balloon. And suppose the cavalry had not been able to ford that river? They almost did not, almost, almost . It is in the region of Almost that the blood sings. We won, my love. Sixteen guns and nearly two thousand prisoners. Prisoners, my love, are such a nuisance. War feeds on war; what do prisoners feed on?
    And he took his love’s miniature from his inner pocket to kiss, against a background of bivouac fires, the fried-bacon reek of cannon-smoke fading. Raising it to his lips he nearly staggered. Marmont was concerned.
    “Look, Marmont—the glass is broken.”
    “Well, then,” smiling, “our first task in Milan must be to—”
    “No no no. It means she is very sick or very unfaithful. Oh God God God.”
    “Don’t