War and Peace
Bennigsen’s note and the Cossack’s information that the left flank
of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it was
necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of October.
On the morning of the fourth of October Kutúzov signed the dispositions.
Toll read them to Ermólov, asking him to attend to the further
arrangements.
“All right—all right. I haven’t time just now,” replied Ermólov, and
left the hut.
The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the Austerlitz
dispositions, it was written—though not in German this time:
“The First Column will march here and here,” “the Second Column will
march there and there,” and so on; and on paper, all these columns
arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy.
Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,
and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at the
appointed time.
When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been
prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to Ermólov
to deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutúzov’s orderly,
pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him, went to
Ermólov’s quarters.
“Gone away,” said Ermólov’s orderly.
The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom Ermólov was
often to be found.
“No, and the general’s out too.”
The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.
“No, he’s gone out.”
“If only they don’t make me responsible for this delay! What a nuisance
it is!” thought the officer, and he rode round the whole camp. One man
said he had seen Ermólov ride past with some other generals, others said
he must have returned home. The officer searched till six o’clock in the
evening without even stopping to eat. Ermólov was nowhere to be found
and no one knew where he was. The officer snatched a little food at
a comrade’s, and rode again to the vanguard to find Milorádovich.
Milorádovich too was away, but here he was told that he had gone to a
ball at General Kíkin’s and that Ermólov was probably there too.
“But where is it?”
“Why, there, over at Échkino,” said a Cossack officer, pointing to a
country house in the far distance.
“What, outside our line?”
“They’ve put two regiments as outposts, and they’re having such a spree
there, it’s awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!”
The officer rode out beyond our lines to Échkino. While still at a
distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier’s dance song
proceeding from the house.
“In the meadows... in the meadows!” he heard, accompanied by whistling
and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by shouts. These
sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he was afraid that
he would be blamed for not having executed sooner the important order
entrusted to him. It was already past eight o’clock. He dismounted
and went up into the porch of a large country house which had remained
intact between the Russian and French forces. In the refreshment room
and the hall, footmen were bustling about with wine and viands. Groups
of singers stood outside the windows. The officer was admitted and
immediately saw all the chief generals of the army together, and among
them Ermólov’s big imposing figure. They all had their coats unbuttoned
and were standing in a semicircle with flushed and animated faces,
laughing loudly. In the middle of the room a short handsome general with
a red face was dancing the trepák with much spirit and agility.
“Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Iványch! Ha, ha, ha!”
The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a moment
he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait; but one of
the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come about, informed
Ermólov.
Ermólov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what the
officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word.
“You think he went off just by chance?” said a comrade, who was on the
staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards, referring to
Ermólov. “It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get Konovnítsyn into
trouble. You’ll see what a mess there’ll be tomorrow.”
CHAPTER V
Next day the decrepit Kutúzov, having given orders to be called early,
said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant consciousness of
having to direct a battle he did not approve of, got into his calèche
and drove from Letashóvka (a village three and a half miles from
Tarútino) to the place where the attacking columns were to meet. He sat
in the calèche, dozing and waking up by turns, and listening for any
sound of firing on the right as an indication that the action had begun.
But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn morning was just dawning. On
approaching Tarútino Kutúzov noticed cavalrymen leading their horses to
water across the road along which he was driving. Kutúzov looked at
them searchingly, stopped his carriage, and inquired what regiment they
belonged to. They belonged to a column that should have been far in
front and in ambush long before then. “It may be a mistake,” thought
the old commander in chief. But a little further on he saw infantry
regiments with their arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed,
eating their rye porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The
officer reported that no order to advance had been received.
“How! Not rec...” Kutúzov began, but checked himself immediately and
sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his calèche, he waited with
drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down. When
Eýkhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned, appeared,
Kutúzov went purple in the face, not because that officer was to blame
for the mistake, but because he was an object of sufficient importance
for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and panting the old man fell
into that state of fury in which he sometimes used to roll on the
ground, and he fell upon Eýkhen, threatening him with his hands,
shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another man, Captain Brózin,
who happened to turn up and who was not at all to blame, suffered the
same fate.
“What sort of another blackguard are you? I’ll have you shot!
Scoundrels!” yelled Kutúzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and
reeling.
He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene
Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever had
in Russia, to be placed in this position—made the laughingstock of the
whole army! “I needn’t have been in such a hurry to pray about today,
or have kept awake thinking everything over all night,” thought he to
himself. “When I was a chit of an officer no one would have dared to
mock me so... and now!” He was in a state of physical suffering as if
from corporal punishment, and could not avoid expressing it by cries of
anger and distress. But his strength soon began to fail him, and looking
about him, conscious of having said much that was amiss, he again got
into his calèche and drove back in silence.
His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he
listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermólov did not come to see
him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen, Konovnítsyn,
and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should be executed next
day. And once more Kutúzov had to consent.
CHAPTER VI
Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the evening
and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with dark purple
clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops
advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery
could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk out loud, to
smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried to prevent their
horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm
and they marched gaily. Some columns, supposing they had reached their
destination, halted, piled arms, and settled down on the cold ground,
but the majority marched all night and arrived at places where they
evidently should not have been.
Only Count Orlóv-Denísov with his Cossacks (the least important
detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time. This
detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path leading from
the village of Stromílova to Dmítrovsk.
Toward dawn, Count Orlóv-Denísov, who had dozed off, was awakened by a
deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a Polish
sergeant of Poniatowski’s corps, who explained in Polish that he had
come over because he had been slighted in the service: that he ought
long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver than any of
them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them out. He said that
Murat was spending the night less than a mile from where they were,
and that if they would let him have a convoy of a hundred men he would
capture him alive. Count Orlóv-Denísov consulted his fellow officers.
The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go and
everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and arguing,
Major-General Grékov with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the
Polish sergeant.
“Now, remember,” said Count Orlóv-Denísov to the sergeant at parting,
“if you have been lying I’ll have you hanged like a dog; but if it’s
true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!”
Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and rode
away with Grékov whose men had quickly assembled. They disappeared into
the forest, and Count Orlóv-Denísov, having seen Grékov off, returned,
shivering from the freshness of the early dawn and excited by what he
had undertaken on his own responsibility, and began looking at the enemy
camp, now just visible in the deceptive light of dawn and the dying
campfires. Our columns ought to have begun to appear on an open
declivity to his right. He looked in that direction, but though the
columns would have been visible quite far off, they were not to be seen.
It seemed to the count that things were beginning to stir in the French
camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.
“Oh, it is really too late,” said Count Orlóv, looking at the camp.
As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before
our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the
sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian
attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which
he would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!
“I am sure that rascal was lying,” said the count.
“They can still be called back,” said one of his suite, who like Count
Orlóv felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the enemy’s
camp.
“Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?”
“Will you have them fetched back?”
“Fetch them back, fetch them back!” said Count Orlóv with sudden
determination, looking at his watch. “It will be too late. It is quite
light.”
And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grékov. When Grékov
returned, Count Orlóv-Denísov, excited both by the abandoned attempt and
by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not appear, as
well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. All his men
felt the same excitement.
“Mount!” he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
crossed themselves.... “Forward, with God’s aid!”
“Hurrah-ah-ah!” reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies,
trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if poured out
of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.