War and Peace
haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night had not yet
come. Pierre got up and left his new companions, crossing between the
campfires to the other side of the road where he had been told the
common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On
the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered him back.
Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him and
dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the
cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly he
burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured laughter, so loud that
men from various sides turned with surprise to see what this strange and
evidently solitary laughter could mean.
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: “The soldier
did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive.
What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!...” and he laughed
till tears started to his eyes.
A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing at
all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther away from
the inquisitive man, and looked around him.
The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the
crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the
red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light
sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen
before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond
those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance
lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling
stars in its faraway depths. “And all that is me, all that is within me,
and it is all I!” thought Pierre. “And they caught all that and put it
into a shed boarded up with planks!” He smiled, and went and lay down to
sleep beside his companions.
CHAPTER XV
In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutúzov with a letter
from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow, though
Napoleon was already not far from Kutúzov on the old Kalúga road.
Kutúzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one formerly
brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no question of peace.
Soon after that a report was received from Dórokhov’s guerrilla
detachment operating to the left of Tarútino that troops of Broussier’s
division had been seen at Formínsk and that being separated from the
rest of the French army they might easily be destroyed. The soldiers and
officers again demanded action. Generals on the staff, excited by the
memory of the easy victory at Tarútino, urged Kutúzov to carry out
Dórokhov’s suggestion. Kutúzov did not consider any offensive necessary.
The result was a compromise which was inevitable: a small detachment was
sent to Formínsk to attack Broussier.
By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhtúrov—that same modest
little Dokhtúrov whom no one had described to us as drawing up plans
of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering crosses on
batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was spoken of as
undecided and undiscerning—but whom we find commanding wherever the
position was most difficult all through the Russo-French wars from
Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he remained last at the
Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what was possible when all
were flying and perishing and not a single general was left in the rear
guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolénsk with twenty thousand men
to defend the town against Napoleon’s whole army. In Smolénsk, at the
Malákhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he
was awakened by the bombardment of the town—and Smolénsk held out all
day long. At the battle of Borodinó, when Bagratión was killed and nine
tenths of the men of our left flank had fallen and the full force of the
French artillery fire was directed against it, the man sent there was
this same irresolute and undiscerning Dokhtúrov—Kutúzov hastening to
rectify a mistake he had made by sending someone else there first.
And the quiet little Dokhtúrov rode thither, and Borodinó became the
greatest glory of the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to
us in verse and prose, but of Dokhtúrov scarcely a word has been said.
It was Dokhtúrov again whom they sent to Formínsk and from there to
Málo-Yaroslávets, the place where the last battle with the French was
fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army began;
and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of the
campaign, but of Dokhtúrov nothing or very little is said and that
dubiously. And this silence about Dokhtúrov is the clearest testimony to
his merit.
It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a
machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance
and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most
important part. The man who does not understand the construction of
the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which
revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine, and
not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.
On the tenth of October when Dokhtúrov had gone halfway to Formínsk and
stopped at the village of Aristóvo, preparing faithfully to execute the
orders he had received, the whole French army having, in its convulsive
movement, reached Murat’s position apparently in order to give
battle—suddenly without any reason turned off to the left onto the new
Kalúga road and began to enter Formínsk, where only Broussier had
been till then. At that time Dokhtúrov had under his command, besides
Dórokhov’s detachment, the two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and
Seslávin.
On the evening of October 11 Seslávin came to the Aristóvo headquarters
with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner said that the
troops that had entered Formínsk that day were the vanguard of the whole
army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army had left Moscow four
days previously. That same evening a house serf who had come from
Bórovsk said he had seen an immense army entering the town. Some
Cossacks of Dokhtúrov’s detachment reported having sighted the French
Guards marching along the road to Bórovsk. From all these reports it was
evident that where they had expected to meet a single division there
was now the whole French army marching from Moscow in an unexpected
direction—along the Kalúga road. Dokhtúrov was unwilling to undertake
any action, as it was not clear to him now what he ought to do. He had
been ordered to attack Formínsk. But only Broussier had been there at
that time and now the whole French army was there. Ermólov wished to act
on his own judgment, but Dokhtúrov insisted that he must have Kutúzov’s
instructions. So it was decided to send a dispatch to the staff.
For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovítinov, was chosen, who
was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering
a written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovítinov, having received the
dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff
accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.
CHAPTER XVI
It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four days.
Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour and a
half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovítinov reached Litashëvka after
one o’clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle fence
hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he entered
a dark passage.
“The general on duty, quick! It’s very important!” said he to someone
who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.
“He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third night
he has not slept,” said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper. “You should
wake the captain first.”
“But this is very important, from General Dokhtúrov,” said
Bolkhovítinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in
the dark.
The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.
“Your honor, your honor! A courier.”
“What? What’s that? From whom?” came a sleepy voice.
“From Dokhtúrov and from Alexéy Petróvich. Napoleon is at Formínsk,”
said Bolkhovítinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but
guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnítsyn.
The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.
“I don’t like waking him,” he said, fumbling for something. “He is very
ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor.”
“Here is the dispatch,” said Bolkhovítinov. “My orders are to give it at
once to the general on duty.”
“Wait a moment, I’ll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you
always hide it?” said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,
to the orderly. (This was Shcherbínin, Konovnítsyn’s adjutant.) “I’ve
found it, I’ve found it!” he added.
The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbínin was fumbling for
something on the candlestick.
“Oh, the nasty beasts!” said he with disgust.
By the light of the sparks Bolkhovítinov saw Shcherbínin’s youthful face
as he held the candle, and the face of another man who was still asleep.
This was Konovnítsyn.
When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned
up, first blue and then red, Shcherbínin lit the tallow candle, from
the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were
running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovítinov was bespattered
all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it with his sleeve.
“Who gave the report?” inquired Shcherbínin, taking the envelope.
“The news is reliable,” said Bolkhovítinov. “Prisoners, Cossacks, and
the scouts all say the same thing.”
“There’s nothing to be done, we’ll have to wake him,” said Shcherbínin,
rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay covered by a
greatcoat. “Peter Petróvich!” said he. (Konovnítsyn did not stir.) “To
the General Staff!” he said with a smile, knowing that those words would
be sure to arouse him.
And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On
Konovnítsyn’s handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,
there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote
from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face assumed
its habitual calm and firm appearance.
“Well, what is it? From whom?” he asked immediately but without hurry,
blinking at the light.
While listening to the officer’s report Konovnítsyn broke the seal and
read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his legs in
their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began putting on his
boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair over his temples,
and donned his cap.
“Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness.”
Konovnítsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of great
importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or ask
himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest him. He
regarded the whole business of the war not with his intelligence or his
reason but by something else. There was within him a deep unexpressed
conviction that all would be well, but that one must not trust to this
and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one’s own work.
And he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task.
Peter Petróvich Konovnítsyn, like Dokhtúrov, seems to have been included
merely for propriety’s sake in the list of the so-called heroes of
1812—the Barclays, Raévskis, Ermólovs, Plátovs, and Milorádoviches. Like