Joseph Roth - The Hundred Days

All over people were speaking of war. They feared it. The Emperor brought war! He seemed too great for peace. He went forth not like a man but blew through the land like a mighty wind. People were now beginning to hate him. Bared swords seemed to precede him on every path he trod, while the Imperial eagle circled over his head. Whenever he celebrated a holiday his cannon boomed in the towns and villages. Angelina loved his swords, his eagle, and the booming cannons of his celebrations. And as she loved him, she also loved war. His enemies were also her enemies. She wanted his greatness to increase and her smallness to become still more insignificant. She alone longed for war, which all others feared. She had relinquished her son long ago. When she said farewell to him in the great, mercilessly shadeless barracks yard, surrounded by strange women and soldiers, her heart was enveloped in stone and iron. Her eyes were hard and dry and she saw her poor little son as though through a sheer transparent veil of frozen tears. She wept only on the evening that she watched the Emperor leave after the lackey had stamped out the torch. A sudden terror mounted in her, clamped her heart, and lodged in her throat. She fell to her knees and began praying.

A few days later, as the bells announced the Emperor’s first victory, she entered a church for the first time in years. It was the little Church of Saint Julien, in which her son had been baptized. She was alone. Nobody was praying for the Emperor and his soldiers, except for the bells, high above in the belfry, but even they chimed only because they had been ordered to. It was late in the evening. Under the golden shimmer of the pleasant wax candles, kneeling before the eternal light of the cheery ruby-red lamp, with the deep boom of the golden-voiced bells causing the black pews and the bright little altar to shiver, surrounded by the breathing, holy solitude of the empty yet living space, Angelina began to recite the long-unspoken words of the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary.” She prayed, sinfully, a prisoner of her great love, for the death of all the Emperor’s enemies. She imagined with a sinful blood lust thousands of mutilated bodies — the bodies of Englishmen, Prussians, and Russians; colorful uniforms riddled with bullet holes from which blood trickled; split skulls; oozing brains and glassy eyes. Over all these horrors galloped the Emperor on his snow-white horse, sword raised, and the completely unharmed Frenchmen thundered after him over endless fields strewn with enemy corpses in all directions. These images made Angelina happy and she prayed still more ardently. In a special prayer she wished the most horrible of all deaths upon the Empress Marie Louise, and she could clearly see the Empress dying, surrounded by all the terrifying monsters prematurely borne out of hell, tortured by the spectral visions that were a product of her evil conscience and cursed by Napoleon’s son who stood angry and vengeful at her deathbed.

Angelina crossed herself, thanked the Lord with a full heart for all the troubles he inflicted upon the Emperor’s enemies, and then left. The bells were still tolling to announce the victory. In the streets she encountered only bright and happy faces. Light and fluffy cloudlets were floating under the darkening sky like cheery and triumphant little banners. Silver shimmered the first stars, the stars of the Emperor: all the stars in the heavens were now his stars. The damp broadsides freshly pasted to the walls announced victory, the victory of the Emperor over the entire world.

Angelina ran to the palace. It was a long way from the Church of Saint Julien to the Elysée, but she made it back quickly and happily; the road itself seemed to be rising up to meet her. The frenzied cheering of the crowds that had gathered in front of the news bulletins on the walls and were greeting the Emperor’s victory gave wings to her steps. She was propelled by their cheers and happy in the belief that her prayers had assisted the Emperor.

Alas! She knew not the great Emperor was at that moment wandering, defeated, dejected, and helpless yet still magnificent, among the dead remnants of his last great army. It was the very hour at which Paris was celebrating his victory. On the battlefield of Waterloo, however, the dying moaned, the wounded screamed, and the beaten were fleeing.

In this hour the Emperor knew that he had lost the battle of Waterloo. The sun was briefly hiding behind an angry purple wall of clouds, before setting. On this evening it disappeared more quickly than usual. Nobody, however, was paying any mind to the sun. All the men on the battlefield, both friend and enemy, had their attention fixed on the Emperor’s Guards. Steadily and deliberately, the Emperor’s Guards marched ahead with a sublime rhythm, over ground that had been soaked by the rain and clung tenaciously to their boots at every squishing step they took. From the hill against which they were advancing, the enemy fired incessantly. The bullets felled the Emperor’s grenadiers, those terrors of the enemy, the chosen of the French people, the brothers of the Emperor and his sons.

They resembled one another like brothers.

Those who saw them marching forth believed they were watching 20,000 brothers, 20,000 brothers begotten of the same father. They were as alike as 20,000 swords forged in the same workshop. They had all grown up on the same battlefield, in the golden, bloody, and deadly shadow of the Emperor. The mightiest of their brothers, however, who had breathed upon, touched, or kissed a hundred times each one of these 20,000 foot soldiers and 4,000 horsemen, was not Napoleon but a far mightier Emperor than he, namely the Emperor Death. They were not afraid of his hollow eyes. They marched toward the crushing embrace of his ever-receptive bony arms with steady confidence, as brother goes toward brother. They loved Death just as he loved them. Their love for Death made them all alike. And because they all resembled each other so closely, the appearance was given that as soon as one fell he rose right up again, whereas in reality it was only one of his brothers who stepped into his place. The appearance was thus created that the advancing line consisted always of the same men. The enemy soldiers fired just to relieve the holy terror that awakened within them again and again as soon as the smoke had cleared and they saw the unwavering steps of the very same men. Soon, however, one could notice that their square was growing ever smaller. And briefly the enemy was struck with an even greater dread, for the Emperor’s grenadiers thus accomplished a greater miracle than the typical one of legends and fairytales, in which one is immortal. The grenadiers of the Emperor were not immune to death, rather they were consecrated to death. And since they had realized now that they were hopelessly outnumbered by the enemy, they were no longer marching toward the enemy but toward their familiar brother, Death. But to show their other great brother, their earthly brother, that they loved him even in their last hour, they shouted with roaring voices, from mighty throats, which were stronger than the jaws of the cannon because it was loyalty itself that issued from their throats: “Long live the Emperor!” And so powerful was this cry that it drowned out the foolish and senseless rumble of the cannon. The loudest cries came from those who had just been struck. They shouted not only out of loyalty but also Death: “Long live the Emperor!”

Thus it was Death himself who spoke louder than the cannon.

When the Emperor heard the cries and saw that all of his 20,000 brothers on foot and his 4,000 brothers on horseback — even the horses themselves were his siblings at that moment — were lost, he too was gripped by an irresistible longing for death. He mingled with them, was now at their head, now on one of their flanks, then at their rear, then again at their head, and finally back in their midst. His back ached, his face was jaundiced and he was panting. When he heard his Guards shouting, “Long live the Emperor!” he drew his sword, lifted it toward the sky like a steely, imploring sixth finger, and cried through the tumult in a hoarse voice: “Death to the Emperor! Death to the Emperor!” But Death heeded neither his imploring sword nor his cry. For the first time in his proud life the Emperor began to pray, breathlessly, with a wide-open mouth and throat from which no sound would issue, as he galloped back and forth. He prayed and not to God, whom he knew not, but to Death, his brother; for of all otherworldly powers, this was the only one he had seen and often felt. “Oh Death! Sweet kindly Death!” he prayed breathlessly and soundlessly. “I await thee, come! My days are fulfilled, as are the days of my brothers. Come soon, while the Sun is still in the heavens! I too was once a sun. It must not sink before me! Forgive me this foolish vanity! I have displayed much vanity, but I have had wisdom and virtues too. I have known it all: power and superiority, virtue, goodness, sin, arrogance, and error! I have lived, Brother Death! I have lived and had enough! Come and get me before our sister, the Sun, sets!”