War and Peace
“Pass on, pass on!” the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and
looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.
Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.
“What now?” the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing
Pierre.
Pierre told him about the sick man.
“He’ll manage to walk, devil take him!” said the captain. “Pass on, pass
on!” he continued without looking at Pierre.
“But he is dying,” Pierre again began.
“Be so good...” shouted the captain, frowning angrily.
“Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam...” rattled the drums, and Pierre understood
that this mysterious force completely controlled these men and that it
was now useless to say any more.
The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to march
in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among them, and
about three hundred men.
The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all strangers to
Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at him and at his
shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him walked a fat major
with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing a Kazán dressing
gown tied round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of
his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in which he clasped his tobacco
pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing gown and held the stem of his
pipe firmly with the other. Panting and puffing, the major grumbled and
growled at everybody because he thought he was being pushed and that
they were all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry to and were
all surprised at something when there was nothing to be surprised at.
Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing
where they were now being taken and how far they would get that day. An
official in felt boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from
side to side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his
observations as to what had been burned down and what this or that part
of the city was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent
was a Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was
mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.
“What are you disputing about?” said the major angrily. “What does it
matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it’s burned
down, and there’s an end of it.... What are you pushing for? Isn’t the
road wide enough?” said he, turning to a man behind him who was not
pushing him at all.
“Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?” the prisoners on one side and another
were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. “All beyond the
river, and Zúbova, and in the Krémlin.... Just look! There’s not half of
it left. Yes, I told you—the whole quarter beyond the river, and so it
is.”
“Well, you know it’s burned, so what’s the use of talking?” said the
major.
As they passed near a church in the Khamóvniki (one of the few unburned
quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly started to one
side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.
“Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And
smeared with something!”
Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked these
exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the palings
surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw better
than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set upright
against the palings with its face smeared with soot.
“Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!...” the convoy
guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh virulence,
drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at
the dead man.
CHAPTER XIV
Through the cross streets of the Khamóvniki quarter the prisoners
marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons
belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they
came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with
private vehicles.
At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get across.
From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving baggage
trains before and behind them. To the right, where the Kalúga road turns
near Neskúchny, endless rows of troops and carts stretched away into
the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais’ corps which had started
before any of the others. Behind, along the riverside and across the
Stone Bridge, were Ney’s troops and transport.
Davout’s troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing the
Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kalúga road.
But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais’
train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kalúga road when
the vanguard of Ney’s army was already emerging from the Great Ordýnka
Street.
When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few steps
forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles and men
crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few hundred paces
that separated the bridge from the Kalúga road, taking more than an
hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the streets of the
Transmoskvá ward and the Kalúga road converge, and the prisoners jammed
close together had to stand for some hours at that crossway. From all
sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard the rattle of wheels, the
tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger and abuse. Pierre stood
pressed against the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise
which mingled in his imagination with the roll of the drums.
To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the wall of
the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.
“What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They’ve loaded goods even on
the cannon! Look there, those are furs!” they exclaimed. “Just see what
the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one has behind
in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by
heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has loaded
himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they’ve even grabbed those
chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks.... Heavens!
They’re fighting.”
“That’s right, hit him on the snout—on his snout! Like this, we
shan’t get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be
Napoleon’s own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown! It’s
like a portable house.... That fellow’s dropped his sack and doesn’t see
it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking either!
Yes, I dare say, that’s the way they’ll let you pass.... Just look,
there’s no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In
carriages—see how comfortably they’ve settled themselves!”
Again, as at the church in Khamóvniki, a wave of general curiosity
bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to
his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted their
curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts, closely
squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in glaring
colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.
From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious
force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful: neither the corpse
smeared with soot for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned
ruins of Moscow. All that he now witnessed scarcely made an impression
on him—as if his soul, making ready for a hard struggle, refused to
receive impressions that might weaken it.
The women’s vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts, soldiers,
wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers, ammunition carts,
more soldiers, and now and then women.
Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.
All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some invisible
power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came flowing from
the different streets with one and the same desire to get on quickly;
they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white
teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse flew from
side to side, and all the faces bore the same swaggeringly resolute
and coldly cruel expression that had struck Pierre that morning on the
corporal’s face when the drums were beating.
It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the escort
collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way in among
the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged
onto the Kalúga road.
They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun
began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men
began to prepare for their night’s rest. They all appeared angry and
dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could
be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran
into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole. Several
soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat the
carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others fought among
themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly wounded on the head
by a sword.
It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid fields
in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same
feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on
that had seized them at the start. Once at a standstill they all seemed
to understand that they did not yet know where they were going, and that
much that was painful and difficult awaited them on this journey.
During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than they
had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the first time
received horseflesh for their meat ration.
From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what seemed like
personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to
their former friendly relations.
This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of
prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one Russian
soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw
a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from
the road, and heard his friend the captain reprimand and threaten to
court-martial a noncommissioned officer on account of the escape of the
Russian. To the noncommissioned officer’s excuse that the prisoner was
ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order was to shoot
those who lagged behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force which had
crushed him during the executions, but which he had not felt during his
imprisonment, now again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but
he felt that in proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush
him, there grew and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent
of it.
He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with his
comrades.
Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen in
Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of the
order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in reaction
against the worsening of their position they were all particularly
animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences, of amusing
scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and avoided all talk of
their present situation.
The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in the
sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon from the
rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray