War and Peace
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 Raévski’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 Bagratión 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 Raévski’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 Raévski’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 Bagratión’s
flèches 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 Kámenka 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