War and Peace
“Qu’ est-ce qu’il chante?” * asked a Frenchman.
* “What’s he singing about?”
“It’s ancient history,” said another, guessing that it referred to
a former war. “The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the
others...”
“Bonaparte...” began Dólokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
“Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacré nom...!” cried he angrily.
“The devil skin your Emperor.”
And Dólokhov swore at him in coarse soldier’s Russian and shouldering
his musket walked away.
“Let us go, Iván Lukích,” he said to the captain.
“Ah, that’s the way to talk French,” said the picket soldiers.
“Now, Sídorov, you have a try!”
Sídorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless
sounds very fast: “Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaská,” he said,
trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.
“Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!” came peals of such healthy
and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the French
involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed to be
to unload the muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return home as
quickly as possible.
But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
confronted one another as before.
CHAPTER XVI
Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left, Prince
Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff officer had
told him the whole field could be seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped
beside the farthest of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns an
artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he stood at attention when the
officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his measured, monotonous pacing.
Behind the guns were their limbers and still farther back picket ropes
and artillerymen’s bonfires. To the left, not far from the farthest
cannon, was a small, newly constructed wattle shed from which came the
sound of officers’ voices in eager conversation.
It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and the
greater part of the enemy’s opened out from this battery. Just facing
it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schön Grabern
could be seen, and in three places to left and right the French troops
amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of whom were
evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left from
that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a battery, but it
was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye. Our right flank was
posted on a rather steep incline which dominated the French position.
Our infantry were stationed there, and at the farthest point the
dragoons. In the center, where Túshin’s battery stood and from which
Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the easiest and most
direct descent and ascent to the brook separating us from Schön
Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse, in which smoked
the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood. The French line was
wider than ours, and it was plain that they could easily outflank us
on both sides. Behind our position was a steep and deep dip, making it
difficult for artillery and cavalry to retire. Prince Andrew took
out his notebook and, leaning on the cannon, sketched a plan of the
position. He made some notes on two points, intending to mention them to
Bagratión. His idea was, first, to concentrate all the artillery in the
center, and secondly, to withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the
dip. Prince Andrew, being always near the commander in chief, closely
following the mass movements and general orders, and constantly studying
historical accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the
course of events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He
imagined only important possibilities: “If the enemy attacks the right
flank,” he said to himself, “the Kiev grenadiers and the Podólsk
chasseurs must hold their position till reserves from the center
come up. In that case the dragoons could successfully make a flank
counterattack. If they attack our center we, having the center battery
on this high ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and
retreat to the dip by echelons.” So he reasoned.... All the time
he had been beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers
distinctly, but as often happens had not understood a word of what they
were saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the
shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen.
“No, friend,” said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, a
familiar voice, “what I say is that if it were possible to know
what is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That’s so,
friend.”
Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: “Afraid or not, you can’t
escape it anyhow.”
“All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people,” said a third
manly voice interrupting them both. “Of course you artillery men are
very wise, because you can take everything along with you—vodka and
snacks.”
And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,
laughed.
“Yes, one is afraid,” continued the first speaker, he of the
familiar voice. “One is afraid of the unknown, that’s what it is.
Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is
no sky but only an atmosphere.”
The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.
“Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Túshin,” it said.
“Why,” thought Prince Andrew, “that’s the captain who stood up
in the sutler’s hut without his boots.” He recognized the agreeable,
philosophizing voice with pleasure.
“Some herb vodka? Certainly!” said Túshin. “But still, to
conceive a future life...”
He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air; nearer and
nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon ball, as if it
had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded into the ground near
the shed with super human force, throwing up a mass of earth. The ground
seemed to groan at the terrible impact.
And immediately Túshin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth
and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed
followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer who
hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.
CHAPTER XVII
Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,
looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes
ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto
motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was
a battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A
small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,
probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had
not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a report.
The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and galloped back
to Grunth to find Prince Bagratión. He heard the cannonade behind him
growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our guns had begun to reply.
From the bottom of the slope, where the parleys had taken place, came
the report of musketry.
Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte’s stern letter,
and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at once
moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the Russian
wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the Emperor to
crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.
“It has begun. Here it is!” thought Prince Andrew, feeling the
blood rush to his heart. “But where and how will my Toulon present
itself?”
Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and drinking
vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same rapid
movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets ready,
and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that filled his
heart. “It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but enjoyable!” was what
the face of each soldier and each officer seemed to say.
Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up, he saw,
in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming toward him.
The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and riding a
white horse, was Prince Bagratión. Prince Andrew stopped, waiting for
him to come up; Prince Bagratión reined in his horse and recognizing
Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while Prince Andrew
told him what he had seen.
The feeling, “It has begun! Here it is!” was seen even on Prince
Bagratión’s hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.
Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face
and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking
and feeling at that moment. “Is there anything at all behind that
impassive face?” Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince
Bagratión bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew
told him, and said, “Very good!” in a tone that seemed to imply that
everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he
had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride, spoke
quickly. Prince Bagratión, uttering his words with an Oriental accent,
spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that there was no
need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the direction
of Túshin’s battery. Prince Andrew followed with the suite. Behind
Prince Bagratión rode an officer of the suite, the prince’s personal
adjutant, Zherkóv, an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty,
riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian—an accountant who had
asked permission to be present at the battle out of curiosity. The
accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around him with a naïve
smile of satisfaction and presented a strange appearance among the
hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he jolted on
his horse with a convoy officer’s saddle.
“He wants to see a battle,” said Zherkóv to Bolkónski, pointing
to the accountant, “but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach
already.”
“Oh, leave off!” said the accountant with a beaming but rather
cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of Zherkóv’s
joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really was.
“It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince,” said the staff officer.
(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing a
prince, but could not get it quite right.)
By this time they were all approaching Túshin’s battery, and a ball
struck the ground in front of them.
“What’s that that has fallen?” asked the accountant with a naïve
smile.
“A French pancake,” answered Zherkóv.
“So that’s what they hit with?” asked the accountant. “How
awful!”
He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished speaking
when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which suddenly
ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack, riding
a little to their right and behind the accountant, crashed to earth with
his horse. Zherkóv and the staff officer bent over their saddles and
turned their horses away. The accountant stopped, facing the Cossack,
and examined him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the
horse still struggled.
Prince Bagratión screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing the
cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to say,
“Is it worth while noticing trifles?” He reined in his horse with
the care of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged his