War and Peace
Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvítski and another adjutant
having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he
had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm.
This was particularly noticeable on Nesvítski’s usually laughing
countenance.
“Where is the commander in chief?” asked Bolkónski.
“Here, in that house,” answered the adjutant.
“Well, is it true that it’s peace and capitulation?” asked
Nesvítski.
“I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I could
do to get here.”
“And we, my dear boy! It’s terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,
we’re getting it still worse,” said Nesvítski. “But sit down and
have something to eat.”
“You won’t be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,
Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is,” said the other
adjutant.
“Where are headquarters?”
“We are to spend the night in Znaim.”
“Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses,” said
Nesvítski. “They’ve made up splendid packs for me—fit to cross
the Bohemian mountains with. It’s a bad lookout, old fellow! But
what’s the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that,” he
added, noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.
“It’s nothing,” replied Prince Andrew.
He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor’s wife and
the convoy officer.
“What is the commander in chief doing here?” he asked.
“I can’t make out at all,” said Nesvítski.
“Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,
abominable, quite abominable!” said Prince Andrew, and he went off to
the house where the commander in chief was.
Passing by Kutúzov’s carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of
his suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince
Andrew entered the passage. Kutúzov himself, he was told, was in the
house with Prince Bagratión and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian
general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little Kozlóvski was
squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk, with cuffs turned
up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom upwards. Kozlóvski’s
face looked worn—he too had evidently not slept all night. He glanced
at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to him.
“Second line... have you written it?” he continued dictating to the
clerk. “The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian...”
“One can’t write so fast, your honor,” said the clerk, glancing
angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlóvski.
Through the door came the sounds of Kutúzov’s voice, excited and
dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the
sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlóvski looked at him, the
disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and
Kozlóvski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to the commander
in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks holding the
horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that something important and
disastrous was about to happen.
He turned to Kozlóvski with urgent questions.
“Immediately, Prince,” said Kozlóvski. “Dispositions for
Bagratión.”
“What about capitulation?”
“Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle.”
Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard.
Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened, and
Kutúzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway.
Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutúzov but the expression of
the commander in chief’s one sound eye showed him to be so preoccupied
with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of his presence. He
looked straight at his adjutant’s face without recognizing him.
“Well, have you finished?” said he to Kozlóvski.
“One moment, your excellency.”
Bagratión, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,
impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in chief.
“I have the honor to present myself,” repeated Prince Andrew rather
loudly, handing Kutúzov an envelope.
“Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!”
Kutúzov went out into the porch with Bagratión.
“Well, good-by, Prince,” said he to Bagratión. “My blessing, and
may Christ be with you in your great endeavor!”
His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his left
hand he drew Bagratión toward him, and with his right, on which he wore
a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently
habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagratión kissed him on the
neck instead.
“Christ be with you!” Kutúzov repeated and went toward his
carriage. “Get in with me,” said he to Bolkónski.
“Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain
with Prince Bagratión’s detachment.”
“Get in,” said Kutúzov, and noticing that Bolkónski still delayed,
he added: “I need good officers myself, need them myself!”
They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.
“There is still much, much before us,” he said, as if with an old
man’s penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkónski’s
mind. “If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,”
he added as if speaking to himself.
Prince Andrew glanced at Kutúzov’s face only a foot distant from him
and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar near
his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty
eye socket. “Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men’s
death,” thought Bolkónski.
“That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,” he said.
Kutúzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been
saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently swaying
on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince Andrew.
There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he
questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his interview with the
Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the Krems
affair, and about some ladies they both knew.
CHAPTER XIV
On November 1 Kutúzov had received, through a spy, news that the army
he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported that
the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in
immense force upon Kutúzov’s line of communication with the troops
that were arriving from Russia. If Kutúzov decided to remain at Krems,
Napoleon’s army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him
off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty thousand, and he
would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutúzov decided
to abandon the road connecting him with the troops arriving from Russia,
he would have to march with no road into unknown parts of the Bohemian
mountains, defending himself against superior forces of the enemy and
abandoning all hope of a junction with Buxhöwden. If Kutúzov decided
to retreat along the road from Krems to Olmütz, to unite with the
troops arriving from Russia, he risked being forestalled on that road
by the French who had crossed the Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his
baggage and transport, having to accept battle on the march against an
enemy three times as strong, who would hem him in from two sides.
Kutúzov chose this latter course.
The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were
advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles
off on the line of Kutúzov’s retreat. If he reached Znaim before the
French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the
French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army to a
disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to forestall
the French with his whole army was impossible. The road for the French
from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the
Russians from Krems to Znaim.
The night he received the news, Kutúzov sent Bagratión’s vanguard,
four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the Krems-Znaim
to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagratión was to make this march without
resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and if he
succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as long as
possible. Kutúzov himself with all his transport took the road to
Znaim.
Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills, with his
hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as stragglers
by the way, Bagratión came out on the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrünn
a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching Hollabrünn from
Vienna. Kutúzov with his transport had still to march for some days
before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagratión with his four thousand
hungry, exhausted men would have to detain for days the whole enemy army
that came upon him at Hollabrünn, which was clearly impossible. But
a freak of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the trick
that had placed the Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without
a fight led Murat to try to deceive Kutúzov in a similar way. Meeting
Bagratión’s weak detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be
Kutúzov’s whole army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited
the arrival of the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna,
and with this object offered a three days’ truce on condition that
both armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared
that negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he
therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count
Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed
Murat’s emissary and retired, leaving Bagratión’s division
exposed. Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace
negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days’ truce.
Bagratión replied that he was not authorized either to accept or refuse
a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutúzov to report the offer he had
received.
A truce was Kutúzov’s sole chance of gaining time, giving
Bagratión’s exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport and
heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French) advance
if but one stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the only, and
a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On receiving the news
he immediately dispatched Adjutant General Wintzingerode, who was in
attendance on him, to the enemy camp. Wintzingerode was not merely
to agree to the truce but also to offer terms of capitulation, and
meanwhile Kutúzov sent his adjutants back to hasten to the utmost the
movements of the baggage trains of the entire army along the Krems-Znaim
road. Bagratión’s exhausted and hungry detachment, which alone
covered this movement of the transport and of the whole army, had to
remain stationary in face of an enemy eight times as strong as itself.
Kutúzov’s expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which were
in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to pass,
and also that Murat’s mistake would very soon be discovered, proved
correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schönbrunn, sixteen miles
from Hollabrünn) received Murat’s dispatch with the proposal of a
truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the following
letter to Murat:
Schönbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,
at eight o’clock in the morning
To PRINCE MURAT,
I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command only
my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice without my
order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign. Break
the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him that the
general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so, and that no
one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.