《War And Peace》 Book10 CHAPTER XXXIV
by Leo Tolstoy
NAPOLEON'S GENERALS, Davoust, Ney, and Murat, who were close to that region
of fire, and sometimes even rode into it, several times led immense masses of
orderly troops into that region. But instead of what had invariably happened in
all their previous battles, instead of hearing that the enemy were in flight,
the disciplined masses of troops came back in undisciplined, panic-stricken
crowds. They formed them in good order again, but their number was steadily
dwindling. In the middle of the day Murat sent his adjutant to Napoleon with a
request for reinforcements.
Napoleon was sitting under the redoubt, drinking punch, when Murat's adjutant
galloped to him with the message that the Russians would be routed if his
majesty would let them have another division.
“Reinforcements?” said Napoleon, with stern astonishment, staring, as though
failing to comprehend his words, at the handsome, boyish adjutant, who wore his
black hair in floating curls, like Murat's own. “Reinforcements!” thought
Napoleon. “How can they want reinforcements when they have half the army
already, concentrated against one weak, unsupported flank of the
Russians?”
“Tell the King of Naples,” said Napoleon sternly, “that it is not midday, and
I don't yet see clearly over my chess-board. You can go.”
The handsome, boyish adjutant with the long curls heaved a deep sigh, and
still holding his hand to his hat, galloped back to the slaughter.
Napoleon got up, and summoning Caulaincourt and Berthier, began conversing
with them of matters not connected with the battle.
In the middle of the conversation, which began to interest Napoleon,
Berthier's eye was caught by a general, who was galloping on a steaming horse to
the redoubt, followed by his suite. It was Beliard. Dismounting from his horse,
he walked rapidly up to the Emperor, and, in a loud voice, began boldly
explaining the absolute necessity of reinforcements. He swore on his honour that
the Russians would be annihilated if the Emperor would let them have another
division.
Napoleon shrugged his shoulders, and continued walking up and down, without
answering. Beliard began loudly and eagerly talking with the generals of the
suite standing round him.
“You are very hasty, Beliard,” said Napoleon, going back again to him. “It is
easy to make a mistake in the heat of the fray. Go and look again and then come
to me.” Before Beliard was out of sight another messenger came galloping up from
another part of the battlefield.
“Well, what is it now?” said Napoleon, in the tone of a man irritated by
repeated interruptions.
“Sire, the prince …” began the adjutant.
“Asks for reinforcements?” said Napoleon, with a wrathful gesture. The
adjutant bent his head affirmatively and was proceeding to give his message, but
the Emperor turned and walked a couple of steps away, stopped, turned back, and
beckoned to Berthier. “We must send the reserves,” he said with a slight
gesticulation. “Whom shall we send there? what do you think?” he asked Berthier,
that “gosling I have made an eagle,” as he afterwards called him.
“Claparède's division, sire,” said Berthier, who knew all the divisions,
regiments, and battalions by heart.
Napoleon nodded his head in assent.
The adjutant galloped off to Claparède's division. And a few moments later
the Young Guards, stationed behind the redoubt, were moving out. Napoleon gazed
in that direction in silence.
“No,” he said suddenly to Berthier, “I can't send Claparède. Send Friant's
division.”
Though there was no advantage of any kind in sending Friant's division rather
than Claparède's, and there was obvious inconvenience and delay now in turning
back Claparède and despatching Friant, the order was carried out. Napoleon did
not see that in relation to his troops he played the part of the doctor, whose
action in hindering the course of nature with his nostrums he so truly gauged
and condemned.
Friant's division vanished like the rest into the smoke of the battlefield.
Adjutants still kept galloping up from every side, and all, as though in
collusion, said the same thing. All asked for reinforcements; all told of the
Russians standing firm and keeping up a hellish fire, under which the French
troops were melting away.
Napoleon sat on a camp-stool, plunged in thought. M. de Beausset, the reputed
lover of travel, had been fasting since early morning, and approaching the
Emperor, he ventured respectfully to suggest breakfast to his majesty.
“I hope that I can already congratulate your majesty on a victory,” he
said.
Napoleon shook his head. Supposing the negative to refer to the victory only
and not to the breakfast, M. de Beausset permitted himself with respectful
playfulness to observe that there was no reason in the world that could be
allowed to interfere with breakfast when breakfast was possible.
“Go to the…” Napoleon jerked out gloomily, and he turned his back on him. A
saintly smile of sympathy, reGREt, and ecstasy beamed on M. de Beausset's face
as he moved with his swinging step back to the other generals.
Napoleon was experiencing the bitter feeling of a lucky gambler, who, after
recklessly staking his money and always winning, suddenly finds, precisely when
he has carefully reckoned up all contingencies, that the more he considers his
course, the more certain he is of losing.
The soldiers were the same, the generals the same, there had been the same
preparations, the same disposition, the same proclamation, “court et
énergique.” He was himself the same,—he knew that; he knew that he was more
experienced and skilful indeed now than he had been of old. The enemy even was
the same as at Austerlitz and Friedland. But the irresistible wave of his hand
seemed robbed of its might by magic.
All the old manœuvres that had invariably been crowned with success: the
concentration of the battery on one point, and the advance of the reserves to
break the line, and the cavalry attack of “men of iron,” all these resources had
been employed; and far from victory being secure, from all sides the same
tidings kept pouring in of killed or wounded generals, of reinforcements needed,
of the troops being in disorder, and the Russians impossible to move.
Hitherto, after two or three orders being given, two or three phrases
delivered, marshals and adjutants had galloped up with radiant faces and
congratulations, announcing the capture as trophies of whole corps of prisoners,
of bundles of flags and eagles, of cannons and stores, and Murat had asked leave
to let the cavalry go to capture the baggage. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo,
Arcole, Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on, and so on. But now something
strange was coming over his men.
In spite of the news of the capture of the flèches, Napoleon saw that things
were not the same, not at all the same as at previous battles. He saw that what
he was feeling, all the men round him, experienced in military matters, were
feeling too. All their faces were gloomy; all avoided each others' eyes. It was
only a Beausset who could fail to grasp the import of what was happening.
Napoleon after his long experience of war knew very well all that was meant by
an unsuccessful attack after eight hours' straining every possible effort. He
knew that this was almost equivalent to a defeat, and that the merest chance
might now, in the critical point the battle was in, be the overthrow of himself
and his troops.
When he went over in his own mind all this strange Russian campaign, in which
not a single victory had been gained, in which not a flag, nor a cannon, nor a
corps had been taken in two months, when he looked at the concealed gloom in the
faces round him, and heard reports that the Russians still held their ground—a
terrible feeling, such as is experienced in a nightmare, came over him, and all
the unlucky contingencies occurred to him that might be his ruin. The Russians
might fall upon his left wing, might break through his centre; a stray ball
might even kill himself. All that was possible. In his former battles he had
only considered the possibilities of success, now an immense number of unlucky
chances presented themselves, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like a
nightmare, when a man dreams that an assailant is attacking him, and in his
dream he lifts up his arm and deals a blow with a force at his assailant that he
knows must crush him, and feels that his arm falls limp and powerless as a rag,
and the horror of inevitable death comes upon him in his helplessness.
The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of the French army
aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat in silence on a camp-stool under the
redoubt, his elbows on his knees, and his head sunk in his hands. Berthier came
up to him and suggested that they should inspect the lines to ascertain the
position of affairs.
“What? What do you say?” said Napoleon. “Yes, tell them to bring my horse.”
He mounted a horse and rode to Semyonovskoye.
In the slowly parting smoke, over the whole plain through which Napoleon
rode, men and horses, singly and in heaps, were lying in pools of blood. Such a
fearful spectacle, so GREat a mass of killed in so small a space, had never been
seen by Napoleon nor any of his generals. The roar of the cannon that had not
ceased for ten hours, exhausted the ear and gave a peculiar character to the
spectacle (like music accompanying living pictures). Napoleon rode up to the
height of Semyonovskoye, and through the smoke he saw ranks of soldiers in
uniforms of unfamiliar hues. They were the Russians.
The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semyonovskoye and the redoubt, and
their guns kept up an incessant roar and smoke all along their lines. It was not
a battle. It was a prolonged massacre, which could be of no avail either to
French or Russians. Napoleon pulled up his horse, and sank again into the
brooding reverie from which Berthier had roused him. He could not stay that
thing that was being done before him and about him, and that was regarded as
being led by him and as depending on him, that thing for the first time, after
ill success, struck him as superfluous and horrible. One of the generals, riding
up to Napoleon, ventured to suggest to him that the Old Guards should advance
into action. Ney and Berthier, standing close by, exchanged glances and smiled
contemptuously at the wild suggestion of this general.
Napoleon sat mute with downcast head.
“Eight hundred leagues from France, I am not going to let my Guard be
destroyed,” he said, and turning his horse, he rode back to Shevardino.
