《War And Peace》 Book2 CHAPTER XVII
by Leo Tolstoy
PRINCE ANDREY mounted his horse but lingered at the battery, looking at the
smoke of the cannon from which the ball had flown. His eyes moved rapidly over
the wide plain. He only saw that the previously immobile masses of the French
were heaving to and fro, and that it really was a battery on the left. The smoke
still clung about it. Two Frenchmen on horseback, doubtless adjutants, were
galloping on the hill. A small column of the enemy, distinctly visible, were
moving downhill, probably to strengthen the line. The smoke of the first shot
had not cleared away, when there was a fresh puff of smoke and another shot. The
battle was beginning. Prince Andrey turned his horse and galloped back to Grunte
to look for Prince Bagration. Behind him he heard the cannonade becoming louder
and more frequent. Our men were evidently beginning to reply. Musket shots could
be heard below at the spot where the lines were closest. Lemarrois had only just
galloped to Murat with Napoleon's menacing letter, and Murat, abashed and
anxious to efface his error, at once moved his forces to the centre and towards
both flanks, hoping before evening and the arrival of the Emperor to destroy the
insignificant detachment before him.
“It has begun! Here it comes!” thought Prince Andrey, feeling the blood rush
to his heart. “But where? What form is my Toulon to take?” he wondered.
Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and drinking
vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere nothing but the same rapid
movements of soldiers forming in ranks and getting their guns, and on every face
he saw the same eagerness that he felt in his heart. “It has begun! Here it
comes! Terrible and delightful!” said the face of every private and officer.
Before he reached the earthworks that were being thrown up, he saw in the
evening light of the dull autumn day men on horseback crossing towards him. The
foremost, wearing a cloak and an Astrachan cap, was riding on a white horse. It
was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrey stopped and waited for him to come up.
Prince Bagration stopped his horse, and recognising Prince Andrey nodded to him.
He still gazed on ahead while Prince Andrey told him what he had been
seeing.
The expression: “It has begun! it is coming!” was discernible even on Prince
Bagration's strong, brown face, with his half-closed, lustreless, sleepy-looking
eyes. Prince Andrey glanced with uneasy curiosity at that impassive face, and he
longed to know: Was that man thinking and feeling, and what was he thinking and
feeling at that moment? “Is there anything at all there behind that impassive
face?” Prince Andrey wondered, looking at him. Prince Bagration nodded in token
of his assent to Prince Andrey's words, and said: “Very good,” with an
expression that seemed to signify that all that happened, and all that was told
him, was exactly what he had foreseen. Prince Andrey, panting from his rapid
ride, spoke quickly. Prince Bagration uttered his words in his Oriental accent
with peculiar deliberation, as though impressing upon him that there was no need
of hurry. He did, however, spur his horse into a gallop in the direction of
Tushin's battery. Prince Andrey rode after him with his suite. The party
consisted of an officer of the suite, Bagration's private adjutant, Zherkov, an
orderly officer, the staff-officer on duty, riding a beautiful horse of English
breed, and a civilian official, the auditor, who had asked to be present from
curiosity to see the battle. The auditor, a plump man with a plump face, looked
about him with a naïve smile of amusement, swaying about on his horse, and
cutting a queer figure in his cloak on his saddle among the hussars, Cossacks,
and adjutants.
“This gentleman wants to see a battle,” said Zherkov to Bolkonsky, indicating
the auditor, “but has begun to feel queer already.”
“Come, leave off,” said the auditor, with a beaming smile at once naïve and
cunning, as though he were flattered at being the object of Zherkov's jests, and
was purposely trying to seem stupider than he was in reality.
“It's very curious, mon Monsieur Prince,” said the staff-officer on
duty. (He vaguely remembered that the title prince was translated in some
peculiar way in French, but could not get it quite right.) By this time they
were all riding up to Tushin's battery, and a ball struck the ground before
them.
“What was that falling?” asked the auditor, smiling naïvely.
name=Marker10>“A French pancake,” said Zherkov.
“That's what they hit you with, then?” asked the auditor. “How awful!” And he
seemed to expand all over with enjoyment. He had hardly uttered the words when
again there was a sudden terrible whiz, which ended abruptly in a thud into
something soft, and flop—a Cossack, riding a little behind and to the right of
the auditor, dropped from his horse to the ground. Zherkov and the staff-officer
bent forward over their saddles and turned their horses away. The auditor
stopped facing the Cossack, and looking with curiosity at him. The Cossack was
dead, the horse was still struggling.
Prince Bagration dropped his eyelids, looked round, and seeing the cause of
the delay, turned away indifferently, seeming to ask, “Why notice these trivial
details?” With the ease of a first-rate horseman he stopped his horse, bent over
a little and disengaged his sabre, which had caught under his cloak. The sabre
was an old-fashioned one, unlike what are worn now. Prince Andrey remembered the
story that Suvorov had given his sabre to Bagration in Italy, and the
recollection was particularly pleasant to him at that moment. They had ridden up
to the very battery from which Prince Andrey had surveyed the field of
battle.
“Whose company?” Prince Bagration asked of the artilleryman standing at the
ammunition boxes.
He asked in words: “Whose company?” but what he was really asking was,
“You're not in a panic here?” And the artilleryman understood that.
“Captain Tushin's, your excellency,” the red-haired, freckled artilleryman
sang out in a cheerful voice, as he ducked forward.
“To be sure, to be sure,” said Bagration, pondering something, and he rode by
the platforms up to the end cannon. Just as he reached it, a shot boomed from
the cannon, deafening him and his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly
enveloped the cannon the artillerymen could be seen hauling at the cannon,
dragging and rolling it back to its former position. A broad-shouldered,
gigantic soldier, gunner number one, with a mop, darted up to the wheel and
planted himself, his legs wide apart; while number two, with a shaking hand, put
the charge into the cannon's mouth; a small man with stooping shoulders, the
officer Tushin, stumbling against the cannon, dashed forward, not noticing the
general, and looked out, shading his eyes with his little hand.
“Another two points higher, and it will be just right,” he shouted in a
shrill voice, to which he tried to give a swaggering note utterly out of keeping
with his figure. “Two!” he piped. “Smash away, Medvyedev!”
Bagration called to the officer, and Tushin went up to the general, putting
three fingers to the peak of his cap with a timid and awkward gesture, more like
a priest blessing some one than a soldier saluting. Though Tushin's guns had
been intended to cannonade the valley, he was throwing shells over the village
of Schöngraben, in part of which immense masses of French soldiers were moving
out.
No one had given Tushin instructions at what or with what to fire, and after
consulting his sergeant, Zaharchenko, for whom he had a GREat respect, he had
decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the village. “Very good!”
Bagration said, on the officer's submitting that he had done so, and he began
scrutinising the whole field of battle that lay unfolded before him. He seemed
to be considering something. The French had advanced nearest on the right side.
In the hollow where the stream flowed, below the eminence on which the Kiev
regiment was stationed, could be heard a continual roll and crash of guns, the
din of which was overwhelming. And much further to the right, behind the
dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to Bagration a column of French
outflanking our flank. On the left the horizon was bounded by the copse close
by. Prince Bagration gave orders for two battalions from the centre to go to the
right to reinforce the flank. The officer of the suite ventured to observe to
the prince that the removal of these battalions would leave the cannon
unprotected. Prince Bagration turned to the officer of the suite and stared at
him with his lustreless eyes in silence. Prince Andrey thought that the
officer's observation was a very just one, and that really there was nothing to
be said in reply. But at that instant an adjutant galloped up with a message
from the colonel of the regiment in the hollow that immense masses of the French
were coming down upon them, that his men were in disorder and retreating upon
the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagration nodded to signify his assent and approval.
He rode at a walking pace to the right, and sent an adjutant to the dragoons
with orders to attack the French. But the adjutant returned half an hour later
with the news that the colonel of the dragoons had already retired beyond the
ravine, as a destructive fire had been opened upon him, and he was losing his
men for nothing, and so he had concentrated his men in the wood.
“Very good!” said Bagration.
Just as he was leaving the battery, shots had been heard in the wood on the
left too; and as it was too far to the left flank for him to go himself, Prince
Bagration despatched Zherkov to tell the senior general—the general whose
regiment had been inspected by Kutuzov at Braunau—to retreat as rapidly as
possible beyond the ravine, as the right flank would probably not long be able
to detain the enemy. Tushin, and the battalion that was to have defended his
battery, was forgotten. Prince Andrey listened carefully to Prince Bagration's
colloquies with the commanding officers, and to the orders he gave them, and
noticed, to his astonishment, that no orders were really given by him at all,
but that Prince Bagration confined himself to trying to appear as though
everything that was being done of necessity, by chance, or at the will of
individual officers, was all done, if not by his order, at least in accordance
with his intentions. Prince Andrey observed, however, that, thanks to the tact
shown by Prince Bagration, notwithstanding that what was done was due to chance,
and not dependent on the commander's will, his presence was of the GREatest
value. Commanding officers, who rode up to Bagration looking distraught,
regained their composure; soldiers and officers greeted him cheerfully,
recovered their spirits in his presence, and were unmistakably anxious to
display their pluck before him.
