War and Peace
that could save the army, and how he alone would be entrusted with the
executing of the plan.
“Stop this jesting,” he said.
“I am not jesting,” Bilíbin went on. “Nothing is truer or sadder.
These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white handkerchiefs;
they assure the officer on duty that they, the marshals, are on
their way to negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets them enter the
tête-de-pont. * They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that
the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting with
Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg, and so on. The
officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace the officers, crack
jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French battalion gets to
the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary material into
the water, and approaches the tête-de-pont. At length appears the
lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von Mautern himself.
‘Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of the Turkish wars!
Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another’s hand.... The
Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince Auersperg’s
acquaintance.’ In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed, so
bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his rapidly
established intimacy with the French marshals, and so dazzled by the
sight of Murat’s mantle and ostrich plumes, qu’il n’y voit que du
feu, et oublie celui qu’il devait faire faire sur l’ennemi!” *(2)
In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilíbin did not forget to
pause after this mot to give time for its due appreciation. “The
French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes the guns, and the
bridge is taken! But what is best of all,” he went on, his excitement
subsiding under the delightful interest of his own story, “is that the
sergeant in charge of the cannon which was to give the signal to fire
the mines and blow up the bridge, this sergeant, seeing that the French
troops were running onto the bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes
stayed his hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than his general,
goes up to Auersperg and says: ‘Prince, you are being deceived, here
are the French!’ Murat, seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is
allowed to speak, turns to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a
true Gascon) and says: ‘I don’t recognize the world-famous Austrian
discipline, if you allow a subordinate to address you like that!’ It
was a stroke of genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and
orders the sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair
of the Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
rascality....”
* Bridgehead.
* (2) That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that
he ought to be firing at the enemy.
“It may be treachery,” said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the
gray overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of firing,
and the glory that awaited him.
“Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light,” replied
Bilíbin. “It’s not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is
just as at Ulm... it is...”—he seemed to be trying to find the right
expression. “C’est... c’est du Mack. Nous sommes mackés (It is...
it is a bit of Mack. We are Macked),” he concluded, feeling that he
had produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a
slight smile he began to examine his nails.
“Where are you off to?” he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had
risen and was going toward his room.
“I am going away.”
“Where to?”
“To the army.”
“But you meant to stay another two days?”
“But now I am off at once.”
And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went to
his room.
“Do you know, mon cher,” said Bilíbin following him, “I have been
thinking about you. Why are you going?”
And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles
vanished from his face.
Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.
“Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back to
the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher, it is
heroism!”
“Not at all,” said Prince Andrew.
“But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the other
side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the contrary,
is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no longer fit for
anything else.... You have not been ordered to return and have not been
dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and go with us wherever our
ill luck takes us. They say we are going to Olmütz, and Olmütz is a
very decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in my calèche.”
“Do stop joking, Bilíbin,” cried Bolkónski.
“I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are
you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two
things,” and the skin over his left temple puckered, “either you
will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will
share defeat and disgrace with Kutúzov’s whole army.”
And Bilíbin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was
insoluble.
“I cannot argue about it,” replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he
thought: “I am going to save the army.”
“My dear fellow, you are a hero!” said Bilíbin.
CHAPTER XIII
That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, Bolkónski
set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would find it and
fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.
In Brünn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the heavy
baggage was already being dispatched to Olmütz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince
Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was moving with
great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so obstructed
with carts that it was impossible to get by in a carriage. Prince Andrew
took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack commander, and hungry and
weary, making his way past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the
commander in chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister reports of the
position of the army reached him as he went along, and the appearance of
the troops in their disorderly flight confirmed these rumors.
“Cette armée russe que l’or de l’Angleterre a transportée des
extrémités de l’univers, nous allons lui faire éprouver le même
sort—(le sort de l’armée d’Ulm).” * He remembered these words
in Bonaparte’s address to his army at the beginning of the campaign,
and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a feeling
of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. “And should there be nothing
left but to die?” he thought. “Well, if need be, I shall do it no
worse than others.”
* “That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of
the earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same
fate—(the fate of the army at Ulm).”
He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of detachments,
carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and vehicles of all
kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy road, three and
sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and before, as far as ear
could reach, there were the rattle of wheels, the creaking of carts
and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the crack of whips, shouts, the
urging of horses, and the swearing of soldiers, orderlies, and officers.
All along the sides of the road fallen horses were to be seen, some
flayed, some not, and broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers
sat waiting for something, and again soldiers straggling from their
companies, crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or
returned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At
each ascent or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the
din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud
pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,
traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers
directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their
voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their faces
that they despaired of the possibility of checking this disorder.
“Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army,” thought Bolkónski,
recalling Bilíbin’s words.
Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up to
a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse vehicle,
evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available materials and
looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet, and a calèche.
A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in shawls sat behind the
apron under the leather hood of the vehicle. Prince Andrew rode up
and was just putting his question to a soldier when his attention
was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the woman in the vehicle. An
officer in charge of transport was beating the soldier who was driving
the woman’s vehicle for trying to get ahead of others, and the strokes
of his whip fell on the apron of the equipage. The woman screamed
piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew she leaned out from behind the apron
and, waving her thin arms from under the woolen shawl, cried:
“Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven’s sake... Protect
me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh
Chasseurs.... They won’t let us pass, we are left behind and have lost
our people...”
“I’ll flatten you into a pancake!” shouted the angry officer to
the soldier. “Turn back with your slut!”
“Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?” screamed the
doctor’s wife.
“Kindly let this cart pass. Don’t you see it’s a woman?” said
Prince Andrew riding up to the officer.
The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the
soldier. “I’ll teach you to push on!... Back!”
“Let them pass, I tell you!” repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his
lips.
“And who are you?” cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy
rage, “who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander here,
not you! Go back or I’ll flatten you into a pancake,” repeated he.
This expression evidently pleased him.
“That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp,” came a voice
from behind.
Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,
tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his
championship of the doctor’s wife in her queer trap might expose him
to what he dreaded more than anything in the world—to ridicule; but
his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence
Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised
his riding whip.
“Kind...ly let—them—pass!”
The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.
“It’s all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there’s
this disorder,” he muttered. “Do as you like.”
Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the
doctor’s wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with
a sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he
galloped on to the village where he was told who the commander in chief
was.
On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,
intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to sort
out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his mind. “This
is a mob of scoundrels and not an army,” he was thinking as he went
up to the window of the first house, when a familiar voice called him by
name.
He turned round. Nesvítski’s handsome face looked out of the little
window. Nesvítski, moving his moist lips as he chewed something, and
flourishing his arm, called him to enter.
“Bolkónski! Bolkónski!... Don’t you hear? Eh? Come quick...” he
shouted.