Free Three Emperors (9780062194138) by William Dietrich

bought spirits to ward off the cold, the jouncing coach always reduced at least one of them to vomiting.
    The narrow spires of Vienna finally poked above the horizon like salvation. Surely Bohemia, Prague, and my wife and son could not be far beyond! Yet the vast Schonbrunn Palace, outside the city—Versailles of the Austrian empire—was curiously quiet when we went by. We clopped past empty grass drilling grounds outside Vienna’s walls, and passengers peering from the windows muttered that the Schotten Gate had no Austrian guards.
    A French tricolor flew instead.
    We were allowed to pass into the city as if swimming into a net. Vienna was as intricate as its pastries, a toy land of Germanic architecture sliced like a pie by grand avenues that led to great squares. It was subdued this gray dawn of Wednesday, November 13, 1805. Shops were shuttered, market stalls empty, and pedestrians few. A banner advertising a new Beethoven opera, Leonore/Fidelio , was being taken down before its premiere performance.
    Invasion had closed the Opera House doors. The French had arrived before me. This was wretched luck.
    I knew nothing of marching armies but could shed light on music. “Napoleon no longer cares for Beethoven,” I told my fellow travelers. “The composer was going to dedicate a symphony to the First Consul and then changed the name to Eroica to protest the shooting of the Duc d’Enghien. Be careful what you hum.”
    We alighted from the coach to learn that all my calculations had been overturned. When I last saw Napoleon, at the end of August, he was on the English Channel, just starting to march east. Armies move ponderously, and I’d assumed there was plenty of time to make a run around his empire by sea and get to my wife. Yet here in early November, the French had already seized the enemy capital, searing across Europe like a comet. While Nelson was winning at Trafalgar, Austrian general Mack was surrendering to Napoleon at Ulm. Emperor Francis’s Russian allies had been outflanked and sent fleeing. In less than three brilliant months, the French army had killed, wounded, or captured a hundred thousand enemy troops.
    French cavalry were clattering aimlessly this way and that, as if not sure how to actually possess what they’d captured. Most Viennese had disappeared indoors. Women were completely invisible, although the streetwalkers would venture out soon enough. I began hiking toward the Danube River, noticing the scrubbed cobbles and polished windows. The Austrian capital is half the size of Paris, twice as clean, and smells three times sweeter than Venice.
    For a quarter-mile I congratulated myself on passing unchallenged. However the curiously scarred Baron Richter had learned my true identity, surely no one else would! But then there was a thunder of hooves, I moved to one side to let the French pass, and a Napoleonic prince riding a black charger suddenly reined up to turn and stare at me with astonished recognition. I gaped back, since his mount was worthy of a circus. The stallion had a tiger-skin saddlecloth, with the tiger’s head bouncing above the steed’s tail. The four paws and tail drooped to the horse’s belly. There was a golden bit, embroidered reins, and silver spurs.
    â€œBy the Blessed Mother of Christ, it’s Ethan Gage!” the rider cried. “Is fortune finally smiling?”
    With dismay, I recognized Marshal Joachim Murat, a hard-charging cavalry general who’d played a key role in Napoleon’s self-crowning. “Hello, Joachim,” I said warily. We’d known each other slightly in Egypt.
    By reputation, Murat’s dimness as a strategist was rivaled only by his courage as a warrior. As vain as he was handsome, he was born to model for dramatic portraits, with a powerful torso, a riot of black curls that fell to his shoulders, muttonchop whiskers that clamped a manly cleft chin, and lips locked in a jaunty