men.
And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for none
of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know what
was going on before him. So the way in which these people killed one
another was not decided by Napoleon’s will but occurred independently of
him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands of people who took
part in the common action. It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took
place by his will. And so the question whether he had or had not a
cold has no more historic interest than the cold of the least of the
transport soldiers.
Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was
the cause of his dispositions not being as well-planned as on former
occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as
previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon’s cold on
the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.
The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even
better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories. His
pseudo-orders during the battle were also no worse than formerly, but
much the same as usual. These dispositions and orders only seem worse
than previous ones because the battle of Borodino was the first Napoleon
did not win. The profoundest and most excellent dispositions and orders
seem very bad, and every learned militarist criticizes them with looks
of importance, when they relate to a battle that has been lost, and the
very worst dispositions and orders seem very good, and serious people
fill whole volumes to demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a
battle that has been won.
The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of Austerlitz were
a model of perfection for that kind of composition, but still they were
criticized - criticized for their very perfection, for their excessive
minuteness.
Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as
representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other
battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he
inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did not
contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the field of
battle, but with his great tact and military experience carried out his
role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.
CHAPTER XXIX
On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon remarked:
"The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!"
Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to him
about Paris and about some changes he meant to make in the Empress’
household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details
relating to the court.
He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset’s love of
travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon who
knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron
while a patient is being strapped to the operating table. "The matter is
in my hands and is clear and definite in my head. When the time comes to
set to work I shall do it as no one else could, but now I can jest, and
the more I jest and the calmer I am the more tranquil and confident you
ought to be, and the more amazed at my genius."
Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest before
the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next day. He
was so much interested in that task that he was unable to sleep, and
in spite of his cold which had grown worse from the dampness of the
evening, he went into the large division of the tent at three o’clock in
the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked whether the Russians had
not withdrawn, and was told that the enemy’s fires were still in the
same places. He nodded approval.
The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.
"Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?" Napoleon
asked him.
"Without doubt, sire," replied Rapp.
Napoleon looked at him.
"Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at Smolensk?"
continued Rapp. "The wine is drawn and must be drunk."
Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head on his
hand.
"This poor army!" he suddenly remarked. "It has diminished greatly since
Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always said so
and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the Guards
are intact?" he remarked interrogatively.
"Yes, sire," replied Rapp.
Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his watch.
He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was impossible
to give further orders for the sake of killing time, for the orders had
all been given and were now being executed.
"Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of the
Guards?" asked Napoleon sternly.
"Yes, sire."
"The rice too?"
Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor’s order about the rice, but
Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing that
his order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch. Napoleon
ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently sipped his
own.
"I have neither taste nor smell," he remarked, sniffing at his glass.
"This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine - what is the good of
medicine when it can’t cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these lozenges but
they don’t help at all. What can doctors cure? One can’t cure anything.
Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its
nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it
will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.
Our body is like a perfect watch that should go for a certain time; the
watchmaker cannot open it, he can only adjust it by fumbling, and that
blindfold.... Yes, our body is just a machine for living, that is all."
And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was fond,
Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one.
"Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?" asked he. "It is the art of
being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That’s all."
Rapp made no reply.
"Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!" said Napoleon. "We shall
see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three weeks
and did not once mount a horse to inspect his entrenchments.... We shall
see!"
He looked at his watch. It was still only four o’clock. He did not feel
sleepy. The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do. He
rose, walked to and fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went
out of the tent. The night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible
moisture was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were dimly
burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of the
Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was calm, and the
rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to take
up their positions were clearly audible.
Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires and
listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman in
a shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel before his tent and had drawn
himself up like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon stopped
in front of him.
"What year did you enter the service?" he asked with that affectation
of military bluntness and geniality with which he always addressed the
soldiers.
The man answered the question.
"Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its rice?"
"It has, Your Majesty."
Napoleon nodded and walked away.
At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevardino.
It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single cloud lay in
the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out in the
faint morning light.
On the right a single deep report of a cannon resounded and died away in
the prevailing silence. Some minutes passed. A second and a third report
shook the air, then a fourth and a fifth boomed solemnly near by on the
right.
The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang out
and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another.
Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he
dismounted. The game had begun.
CHAPTER XXX
On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre ordered
his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the morning,
and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a corner Boris
had given up to him.
Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already left
the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows and his groom was
shaking him.
"Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!" he kept repeating
pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without looking at
him, having apparently lost hope of getting him to wake up.
"What? Has it begun? Is it time?" Pierre asked, waking up.
"Hear the firing," said the groom, a discharged soldier. "All the
gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness himself rode past long
ago."
Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was bright,
fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth from behind a
cloud that had concealed it, was shining, with rays still half broken
by the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on the
dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on the
windows, the fence, and on Pierre’s horses standing before the hut. The
roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant accompanied by a
Cossack passed by at a sharp trot.
"It’s time, Count; it’s time!" cried the adjutant.
Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down the
street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of battle the
day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there, members of the
staff could be heard conversing in French, and Kutuzov’s gray head in
a white cap with a red band was visible, his gray nape sunk between his
shoulders. He was looking through a field glass down the highroad before
him.
Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before him,
spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he had admired from that
spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of troops and
covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting rays of the
bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre, cast upon it
through the clear morning air penetrating streaks of rosy, golden-tinted
light and long dark shadows. The forest at the farthest extremity of
the panorama seemed carved in some precious stone of a yellowish-green
color; its undulating outline was silhouetted against the horizon and
was pierced beyond Valuevo by the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops.
Nearer at hand glittered golden cornfields interspersed with copses.
There were troops to be seen everywhere, in front and to the right and
left. All this was vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but what impressed
Pierre most of all was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino
and the hollows on both sides of the Kolocha.
Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially to
the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy banks falls into
the Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve, and to
become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and magically colored
and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns mingled with this mist,
and over the whole expanse and through that mist the rays of the morning
sun were reflected, flashing back like lightning from the water, from
the dew, and from the bayonets of the troops crowded together by the
riverbanks and in Borodino. A white church could be seen through the
mist, and here and there the roofs of huts in Borodino as well as dense
masses of soldiers, or green ammunition chests and ordnance. And all
this moved, or seemed to move, as the smoke and mist spread out over
the whole space. Just as in the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so
along the entire line outside and above it and especially in the woods
and fields to the left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high
ground, clouds of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of
nothing, now singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others
dense, which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over
the whole expanse.
These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of the firing
produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.
"Puff!" - suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging from
violet into gray and milky white, and "boom!" came the report a second
later.
"Puff! puff!" - and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending
together; and "boom, boom!" came the sounds confirming what the eye had
seen.
Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a round
compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke floating
to one side, and - "puff" (with a pause) - "puff, puff!" three and then four
more appeared and then from each, with the same interval - "boom - boom,
boom!" came the fine, firm, precise sounds in reply. It seemed as if
those smoke clouds sometimes ran and sometimes stood still while woods,
fields, and glittering bayonets ran past them. From the left, over
fields and bushes, those large balls of smoke were continually appearing
followed by their solemn reports, while nearer still, in the hollows and
woods, there burst from the muskets small cloudlets that had no time
to become balls, but had their little echoes in just the same way.
"Trakh-ta-ta-takh!" came the frequent crackle of musketry, but it was
irregular and feeble in comparison with the reports of the cannon.
Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets, that
movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and his suite,
to compare his impressions with those of others. They were all looking
at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed to him, with the
same feelings. All their faces were now shining with that latent warmth
of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before and had fully understood
after his talk with Prince Andrew.
"Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!" Kutuzov was
saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from the
battlefield.
Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way down
the knoll.
"To the crossing!" said the general coldly and sternly in reply to one
of the staff who asked where he was going.
"I’ll go there too, I too!" thought Pierre, and followed the general.
The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went to
his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the quietest,
clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out his toes
pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his spectacles
were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and reins, he
galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to smile as they
watched him from the knoll.
CHAPTER XXXI
Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was galloping
turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him, galloped
in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He tried to pass
either in front of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers
everywhere, all with the same preoccupied expression and busy with
some unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same
dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white hat,
who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under his horse’s
hoofs.
"Why ride into the middle of the battalion?" one of them shouted at him.
Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre,
bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying horse,
galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space.
There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood firing.
Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had come to the
bridge across the Kolocha between Gorki and Borodino, which the French
(having occupied Borodino) were attacking in the first phase of the
battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front of him and that
soldiers were doing something on both sides of it and in the meadow,
among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken no notice of amid the
smoke of the campfires the day before; but despite the incessant firing
going on there he had no idea that this was the field of battle. He did
not notice the sound of the bullets whistling from every side, or the
projectiles that flew over him, did not see the enemy on the other side
of the river, and for a long time did not notice the killed and wounded,
though many fell near him. He looked about him with a smile which did
not leave his face.
"Why’s that fellow in front of the line?" shouted somebody at him again.
"To the left!... Keep to the right!" the men shouted to him.
Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of Raevski’s
adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at him, evidently
also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing him he nodded.
"How have you got here?" he said, and galloped on.
Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid of
getting in someone’s way again, galloped after the adjutant.
"What’s happening here? May I come with you?" he asked.
"One moment, one moment!" replied the adjutant, and riding up to a stout
colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message and
then addressed Pierre.
"Why have you come here, Count?" he asked with a smile. "Still
inquisitive?"
"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.
But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.
"Here it’s tolerable," said he, "but with Bagration on the left flank
they’re getting it frightfully hot."
"Really?" said Pierre. "Where is that?"
"Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and in
our battery it is still bearable," said the adjutant. "Will you come?"
"Yes, I’ll come with you," replied Pierre, looking round for his groom.
It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering along or being
carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over the day
before, a soldier was lying athwart the rows of scented hay, with his
head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.
"Why haven’t they carried him away?" Pierre was about to ask, but seeing
the stern expression of the adjutant who was also looking that way, he
checked himself.
Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the
adjutant to Raevski’s Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the adjutant’s
and jolted him at every step.
"You don’t seem to be used to riding, Count?" remarked the adjutant.
"No it’s not that, but her action seems so jerky," said Pierre in a
puzzled tone.
"Why... she’s wounded!" said the adjutant. "In the off foreleg above the
knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your baptism of
fire!"
Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the artillery
which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening them with the
noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was cool and quiet,
with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant dismounted and walked up
the hill on foot.
"Is the general here?" asked the adjutant on reaching the knoll.
"He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way," someone told him,
pointing to the right.
The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do with him now.
"Don’t trouble about me," said Pierre. "I’ll go up onto the knoll if I
may?"
"Yes, do. You’ll see everything from there and it’s less dangerous, and
I’ll come for you."
Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not meet
again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm that
day.
The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards known
to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raevski’s Redoubt, and to the
French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du centre,
around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French regarded as
the key to the whole position.
This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which trenches had
been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that were being fired
through openings in the earthwork.
In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also fired
incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When ascending
that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which small trenches
had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was the most
important point of the battle.
On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought it one
of the least significant parts of the field.
Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end of a trench
surrounding the battery and gazed at what was going on around him with
an unconsciously happy smile. Occasionally he rose and walked about the
battery still with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the soldiers
who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running past
him with bags and charges. The guns of that battery were being fired
continually one after another with a deafening roar, enveloping the
whole neighborhood in powder smoke.
In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in support,
here in the battery where a small number of men busy at their work were
separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced a common and
as it were family feeling of animation.
The intrusion of Pierre’s nonmilitary figure in a white hat made an
unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at him with
surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior artillery
officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over to Pierre as if
to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at him with curiosity.
A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only just
out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two guns
entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.
"Sir," he said, "permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not be
here."
The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre.
But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the white hat
was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench
with a shy smile or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced up
and down the battery under fire as calmly as if he were on a boulevard,
their feeling of hostile distrust gradually began to change into a
kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers feel for their dogs,
cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that live with the
regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their family, adopted him,
gave him a nickname ("our gentleman"), and made kindly fun of him among
themselves.
A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around
with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown up.
"And how’s it you’re not afraid, sir, really now?" a red-faced,
broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a set
of sound, white teeth.
"Are you afraid, then?" said Pierre.
"What else do you expect?" answered the soldier. "She has no mercy, you
know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards. One can’t
help being afraid," he said laughing.
Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.
They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and the
discovery that he did so delighted them.
"It’s the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it’s wonderful!
There’s a gentleman for you!"
"To your places!" cried the young officer to the men gathered round
Pierre.
The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the first or
second time and therefore treated both his superiors and the men with
great precision and formality.
The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing more
intense over the whole field, especially to the left where Bagration’s
fleches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing made it
almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole
attention was engrossed by watching the family circle - separated from all
else - formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious feeling of
joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the battlefield
was now replaced by another, especially since he had seen that soldier
lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the slope of the trench, he
observed the faces of those around him.
By ten o’clock some twenty men had already been carried away from the
battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more
frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled around.
But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and merry voices
and jokes were heard on all sides.
"A live one!" shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.
"Not this way! To the infantry!" added another with loud laughter,
seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports.
"Are you bowing to a friend, eh?" remarked another, chaffing a peasant
who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.
Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out to see
what was happening in front.
"They’ve withdrawn the front line, it has retired," said they, pointing
over the earthwork.
"Mind your own business," an old sergeant shouted at them. "If they’ve
retired it’s because there’s work for them to do farther back."
And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a
shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter.
"To the fifth gun, wheel it up!" came shouts from one side.
"Now then, all together, like bargees!" rose the merry voices of those
who were moving the gun.
"Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman’s hat off!" cried the red-faced
humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre. "Awkward baggage!" he added
reproachfully to a cannon ball that struck a cannon wheel and a man’s
leg.
"Now then, you foxes!" said another, laughing at some militiamen who,
stooping low, entered the battery to carry away the wounded man.
"So this gruel isn’t to your taste? Oh, you crows! You’re scared!" they
shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man whose leg
had been torn off.
"There, lads... oh, oh!" they mimicked the peasants, "they don’t like it
at all!"
Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt, and after
every loss, the liveliness increased more and more.
As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly and
rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in opposition to
what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire growing more and
more intense glowed in the faces of these men.
Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned to know
what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching this fire
which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was flaming up in the
same way in his own soul.
At ten o’clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in front of
the battery and along the Kamenka streamlet retreated. From the battery
they could be seen running back past it carrying their wounded on
their muskets. A general with his suite came to the battery, and after
speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look and went away again
having ordered the infantry supports behind the battery to lie down,
so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from amid the ranks of
infantry to the right of the battery came the sound of a drum and shouts
of command, and from the battery one saw how those ranks of infantry
moved forward.
Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly struck
by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was walking
backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.
The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their
long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few
minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back from
that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently in the
battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed. Around
the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No one any
longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted at for being
in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid strides from one
gun to another with a frowning face. The young officer, with his face
still more flushed, commanded the men more scrupulously than ever. The
soldiers handed up the charges, turned, loaded, and did their business
with strained smartness. They gave little jumps as they walked, as
though they were on springs.
The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire which
Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly. Pierre standing beside the
commanding officer. The young officer, his hand to his shako, ran up to
his superior.
"I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left. Are
we to continue firing?" he asked.
"Grapeshot!" the senior shouted, without answering the question, looking
over the wall of the trench.
Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a gasp and bending
double sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing. Everything
became strange, confused, and misty in Pierre’s eyes.
One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck the earthwork, a
soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these sounds before,
now heard nothing else. On the right of the battery soldiers shouting
"Hurrah!" were running not forwards but backwards, it seemed to Pierre.
A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by which he was
standing, crumbling down the earth; a black ball flashed before his eyes
and at the same instant plumped into something. Some militiamen who were
entering the battery ran back.
"All with grapeshot!" shouted the officer.
The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened whisper informed
him (as a butler at dinner informs his master that there is no more of
some wine asked for) that there were no more charges.
"The scoundrels! What are they doing?" shouted the officer, turning to
Pierre.
The officer’s face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered under
his frowning brow.
"Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!" he yelled,
angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and speaking to his men.
"I’ll go," said Pierre.
The officer, without answering him, strode across to the opposite side.
"Don’t fire.... Wait!" he shouted.
The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition stumbled against
Pierre.
"Eh, sir, this is no place for you," said he, and ran down the slope.
Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young officer was
sitting.
One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him, falling in front,
beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down the slope. "Where am I going?"
he suddenly asked himself when he was already near the green ammunition
wagons. He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to return or go on.
Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to the ground. At the
same instant he was dazzled by a great flash of flame, and immediately a
deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made his ears tingle.
When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground leaning on his
hands; the ammunition wagons he had been approaching no longer existed,
only charred green boards and rags littered the scorched grass, and a
horse, dangling fragments of its shaft behind it, galloped past, while
another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, uttering prolonged and
piercing cries.
CHAPTER XXXII
Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the battery,
as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him.
On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing something
there but that no shots were being fired from the battery. He had no
time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior officer lying on
the earth wall with his back turned as if he were examining something
down below and that one of the soldiers he had noticed before was
struggling forward shouting "Brothers!" and trying to free himself from
some men who were holding him by the arm. He also saw something else
that was strange.
But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been killed, that
the soldier shouting "Brothers!" was a prisoner, and that another man
had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had he run
into the redoubt before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in a blue
uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting something. Instinctively
guarding against the shock - for they had been running together at full
speed before they saw one another - Pierre put out his hands and seized
the man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one hand and by the
throat with the other. The officer, dropping his sword, seized Pierre by
his collar.
For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another’s
unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and
what they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him
prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently more
inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre’s strong
hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever tighter and
tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when just above their
heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled, and it seemed to Pierre
that the French officer’s head had been torn off, so swiftly had he
ducked it.
Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without further thought
as to who had taken whom prisoner, the Frenchman ran back to the battery
and Pierre ran down the slope stumbling over the dead and wounded who,
it seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he reached the foot
of the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian soldiers who,
stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and wildly toward
the battery. (This was the attack for which Ermolov claimed the credit,
declaring that only his courage and good luck made such a feat possible:
it was the attack in which he was said to have thrown some St. George’s
Crosses he had in his pocket into the battery for the first soldiers to
take who got there.)
The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops shouting
"Hurrah!" pursued them so far beyond the battery that it was difficult
to call them back.
The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them was
a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds of
wounded - some known to Pierre and some unknown - Russians and French,
with faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were carried on
stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went up onto the knoll where
he had spent over an hour, and of that family circle which had received
him as a member he did not find a single one. There were many dead whom
he did not know, but some he recognized. The young officer still sat in
the same way, bent double, in a pool of blood at the edge of the earth
wall. The red-faced man was still twitching, but they did not carry him
away.
Pierre ran down the slope once more.
"Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have
done!" he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers
moving from the battlefield.
But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front and
especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be seething
in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not diminish, but
even increased to desperation like a man who, straining himself, shrieks
with all his remaining strength.
CHAPTER XXXIII
The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought within the seven
thousand feet between Borodino and Bagration’s fleches. Beyond that
space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the Russians
with Uvarov’s cavalry at midday, and on the other side, beyond Utitsa,
Poniatowski’s collision with Tuchkov; but these two were detached and
feeble actions in comparison with what took place in the center of the
battlefield. On the field between Borodino and the fleches, beside the
wood, the chief action of the day took place on an open space visible
from both sides and was fought in the simplest and most artless way.
The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred
guns.
Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions,
Campan’s and Dessaix’s, advanced from the French right, while Murat’s
troops advanced on Borodino from their left.
From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the fleches were
two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as the crow flies
to Borodino, so that Napoleon could not see what was happening there,
especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid the whole locality.
The soldiers of Dessaix’s division advancing against the fleches could
only be seen till they had entered the hollow that lay between them and
the fleches. As soon as they had descended into that hollow, the smoke
of the guns and musketry on the fleches grew so dense that it covered
the whole approach on that side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could
be caught of something black - probably men - and at times the glint of
bayonets. But whether they were moving or stationary, whether they were
French or Russian, could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.
The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight into
Napoleon’s face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked at the
fleches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it looked as if
the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved. Sometimes shouts
were heard through the firing, but it was impossible to tell what was
being done there.
Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and in
its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and sometimes
Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he could not tell
where what he had seen was.
He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it.
Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed intently at
the battlefield.
But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from where
he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which some of his
generals had taken their stand, but even from the fleches themselves - in
which by this time there were now Russian and now French soldiers,
alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive, frightened, or
maddened - even at those fleches themselves it was impossible to make out
what was taking place. There for several hours amid incessant cannon and
musketry fire, now Russians were seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now
infantry, and now cavalry: they appeared, fired, fell, collided, not
knowing what to do with one another, screamed, and ran back again.
From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from his
marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the progress
of the action, but all these reports were false, both because it was
impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at any given
moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the actual place
of conflict but reported what they had heard from others; and also
because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to Napoleon
circumstances changed and the news he brought was already becoming
false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings that
Borodino had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in the
hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished the
troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should form up
on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given - almost
as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino - the bridge had been
retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at which Pierre
had been present at the beginning of the battle.
An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale and frightened face
and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been repulsed, Campan
wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time the adjutant had been
told that the French had been repulsed, the fleches had in fact been
recaptured by other French troops, and Davout was alive and only
slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily untrustworthy
reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either been executed before
he gave them or could not be and were not executed.
The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle
but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and only
occasionally went within musket range, made their own arrangements
without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in what direction to
fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry should run. But even
their orders, like Napoleon’s, were seldom carried out, and then but
partially. For the most part things happened contrary to their orders.
Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on meeting grapeshot; soldiers
ordered to remain where they were, suddenly, seeing Russians
unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed back and sometimes forward,
and the cavalry dashed without orders in pursuit of the flying Russians.
In this way two cavalry regiments galloped through the Semenovsk hollow
and as soon as they reached the top of the incline turned round and
galloped full speed back again. The infantry moved in the same way,
sometimes running to quite other places than those they were ordered to
go to. All orders as to where and when to move the guns, when to send
infantry to shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry - all
such orders were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the
units concerned, without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less
Napoleon. They did not fear getting into trouble for not fulfilling
orders or for acting on their own initiative, for in battle what is at
stake is what is dearest to man - his own life - and it sometimes seems that
safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and these men
who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to the mood
of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward and
backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops. All
their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the harm of
disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that flew over
the fields on which these men were floundering about. As soon as they
left the place where the balls and bullets were flying about, their
superiors, located in the background, re-formed them and brought them
under discipline and under the influence of that discipline led them
back to the zone of fire, where under the influence of fear of death
they lost their discipline and rushed about according to the chance
promptings of the throng.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Napoleon’s generals - Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near that region of
fire and sometimes even entered it - repeatedly led into it huge masses of
well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had always happened in their
former battles, instead of the news they expected of the enemy’s flight,
these orderly masses returned thence as disorganized and terrified mobs.
The generals re-formed them, but their numbers constantly decreased.
In the middle of the day Murat sent his adjutant to Napoleon to demand
reinforcements.
Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, when Murat’s
adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians would be routed
if His Majesty would let him have another division.
"Reinforcements?" said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, looking at
the adjutant - a handsome lad with long black curls arranged like Murat’s
own - as though he did not understand his words.
"Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon to himself. "How can they need
reinforcements when they already have half the army directed against a
weak, unentrenched Russian wing?"
"Tell the King of Naples," said he sternly, "that it is not noon yet,
and I don’t yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!..."
The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply without
removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men were being
slaughtered.
Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier began
talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.
In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to interest
Napoleon, Berthier’s eyes turned to look at a general with a suite, who
was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering horse. It was Belliard.
Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor with rapid strides and in
a loud voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity of sending
reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russians were lost if the
Emperor would give another division.
Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and down
without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to the
generals of the suite around him.
"You are very fiery, Belliard," said Napoleon, when he again came up to
the general. "In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake. Go
and have another look and then come back to me."
Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part of the
battlefield galloped up.
"Now then, what do you want?" asked Napoleon in the tone of a man
irritated at being continually disturbed.
"Sire, the prince..." began the adjutant.
"Asks for reinforcements?" said Napoleon with an angry gesture.
The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, but the
Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped, came back, and
called Berthier.
"We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms slightly apart.
"Who do you think should be sent there?" he asked of Berthier (whom he
subsequently termed "that gosling I have made an eagle").
"Send Claparede’s division, sire," replied Berthier, who knew all the
division’s regiments, and battalions by heart.
Napoleon nodded assent.
The adjutant galloped to Claparede’s division and a few minutes later
the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward. Napoleon
gazed silently in that direction.
"No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can’t send Claparede. Send
Friant’s division."
Though there was no advantage in sending Friant’s division instead of
Claparede’s, and even an obvious inconvenience and delay in stopping
Claparede and sending Friant now, the order was carried out exactly.
Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was playing
the part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines - a role he so justly
understood and condemned.
Friant’s division disappeared as the others had done into the smoke
of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arrive at a
gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They all asked
for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holding their
positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which the French army was
melting away.
Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.
M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since morning,
came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest lunch to His
Majesty.
"I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he.
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