Lucas had grown up with the victories of Napoleon. France was the one center of enlightenment in a cold world of monarchical rule. France had murdered it upper class when they refused to give up their aristocratic tittles and opened up career positions to talent. For this was the notion of equality: Every man has the right to compete for a position, and meritocracy would rule the day. Some will win, others will lose, and the results would be different, but an opportunity to compete and the reward given to the best man had to be given. Thus was the notion of Equality in Napoleonic France.
And all this had been provided through the iron fist of one man: Napoleon Bonaparte. This man had done his best to eliminate the Jacobin threat that aimed at taking away the equality and liberty of Lucas and most of the French citizens, They aimed at destroying that beautiful creation called the Nation State. Napoleon saved the revolution, and gave France glorious military victories, one after another. It have France a scientific and artistic revival that would pale that of Renaissance Italy. And at the heights of it all, Lucas was now 22, a grown man, and enlisted in the army to go march against Russia, and perhaps once that beast was defeated, take away India from the British by a march south. Napoleon was off to his most ambitious campaign, and Lucas chest was swelling with pride for being part of it.
But several months passed, and the romanticism of war had waged off. The Russians had burned their capital Moscow, along with all provisions in it. The horses were dying from being fed contaminated hay that were taken off the rooftops. after a few months of this came the inglorious retreat back to France. Cold and hungry, with Russians picking the stragglers to be captured and skinned alive. Soldiers would give the sick man a push to the mud when they saw him fainting, claim he was dead, and strip him of his clothes and bread to leave the man to actually die naked next to the road, as his companions marched by him, seeing him dying of cold as he begged for mercy and a blanket.
Men lost noses, lips, eats, fingers, and sexual organs to the cold. When a horse fell over the men jumped into it and began cutting it open for its meat before it had died, and they fought like wolves for the raw horse flesh.
Lucas tried to grip to the little humanity that was left in him, but hunger and cold made morality seem like a moronic story only children and fools believe in, which he should no longer pay any regard. He participated in the rest, for he wished to come back home alive. He rationalized it as such, but something primitive had taken a hold of him, something brought out from the cold and hunger… His hands and consciousness had been stained from the blood he had spilled, and it was his eternal shame for having harmed his comrade, and not the glory of war from a defeated enemy. Hell must be a frozen wasteland Lucas believed, were starving men are forced to kill and eat their loved ones to make the pain of hunger and cold go away.
After several weeks of this the army crossed by a bridge, in it there was a mother sobbing, asking the French to please take her child. This was near the German territories of Prussia, while Lucas didn’t speak German he could tell as much from watching and hearing the lamentations of the woman. As Lucas passed by he gazed at her with curious eyes. She had a young face, very young, but you could see the cheekbones sticking out from the lack of nourishment. She reminded him of a girl he had dated back home. A beauty he had met in church. He had promised her to marry her once he had come back, but he had made the same promise to many other girls. He wished he was married now, wrapped in the arms of his wife in some warm place in the Mediterranean. He wanted to move to southern Italy, or Greece, and never see snow again in his life. And just lay in the warm sun with the soft warm body of a beautiful woman, who he loved, and loved him back.
The woman must have noticed Lucas staring at her, since she walked up differently to him. She have him her child, and made a gesture that told him she wished for him to feed it. Was the babe even old enough to eat solids Lucas wondered. Lucas had an aunt who hadn’t been able to have a child, her husband had been wealthy, but had passed away. Lucas planned to keep this child safe and give it to the aunt to be raised by her. He might even been seen as an older brother to the child in the future…
The other French soldiers seeing this begin to laugh. “Looks like Lucas is now a parent” one said. Other asked if he was going to use the snow as his bed to lay with his new bride. Lucas ignores them. and lifts up the babe to see its face. He almost dropped it from the fright it have him. “The… the child is dead…” Lucas said in French, unknown to the mother who was still sobbing and talking to Lucas in German. One French soldier seeing this said “The mother will be dead in a few hours anyways, better to put her out of her misery now” and shot the girl in the head, blowing her brains out all over the snow. Several soldiers cheered as they were thankful that her annoying screams had ended.
Lucas places the dead child next to her mother, who now had a gaping hole in her head and tells her he’s sorry. He gets up and continues his march back to France, hoping he’ll be able to blow a similar hole in his brain if he’s not fast enough to stay ahead from the murdering Russians torturing the captured retreating French.