War and Peace
saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber of
a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story of
Suvórov giving his saber to Bagratión in Italy, and the recollection
was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had reached the battery
at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined the battlefield.
“Whose company?” asked Prince Bagratión of an artilleryman standing
by the ammunition wagon.
He asked, “Whose company?” but he really meant, “Are you
frightened here?” and the artilleryman understood him.
“Captain Túshin’s, your excellency!” shouted the red-haired,
freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.
“Yes, yes,” muttered Bagratión as if considering something, and he
rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.
As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and his
suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they could see
the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its
former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding
a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while Number Two with
a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon’s mouth. The short,
round-shouldered Captain Túshin, stumbling over the tail of the gun
carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the general, looked out
shading his eyes with his small hand.
“Lift it two lines more and it will be just right,” cried he in a
feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill-suited to
his weak figure. “Number Two!” he squeaked. “Fire, Medvédev!”
Bagratión called to him, and Túshin, raising three fingers to his cap
with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military salute
but like a priest’s benediction, approached the general. Though
Túshin’s guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was
firing incendiary balls at the village of Schön Grabern visible just
opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing.
No one had given Túshin orders where and at what to fire, but after
consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchénko, for whom he had great
respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the
village. “Very good!” said Bagratión in reply to the officer’s
report, and began deliberately to examine the whole battlefield extended
before him. The French had advanced nearest on our right. Below the
height on which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the hollow where the
rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and crackling of musketry was
heard, and much farther to the right beyond the dragoons, the officer of
the suite pointed out to Bagratión a French column that was outflanking
us. To the left the horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince
Bagratión ordered two battalions from the center to be sent to
reinforce the right flank. The officer of the suite ventured to remark
to the prince that if these battalions went away, the guns would remain
without support. Prince Bagratión turned to the officer and with his
dull eyes looked at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the
officer’s remark was just and that really no answer could be made to
it. But at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the
commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses
of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was in
disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagratión
bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off at a walk to
the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with orders to attack the
French. But this adjutant returned half an hour later with the news that
the commander of the dragoons had already retreated beyond the dip in
the ground, as a heavy fire had been opened on him and he was losing
men uselessly, and so had hastened to throw some sharpshooters into the
wood.
“Very good!” said Bagratión.
As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also, and
as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go there
himself, Prince Bagratión sent Zherkóv to tell the general in command
(the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutúzov at Braunau) that
he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow in the rear,
as the right flank would probably not be able to withstand the enemy’s
attack very long. About Túshin and the battalion that had been in
support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened
attentively to Bagratión’s colloquies with the commanding officers
and the orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no orders
were really given, but that Prince Bagratión tried to make it appear
that everything done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of
subordinate commanders was done, if not by his direct command, at least
in accord with his intentions. Prince Andrew noticed, however, that
though what happened was due to chance and was independent of the
commander’s will, owing to the tact Bagratión showed, his presence
was very valuable. Officers who approached him with disturbed
countenances became calm; soldiers and officers greeted him gaily, grew
more cheerful in his presence, and were evidently anxious to display
their courage before him.
CHAPTER XVIII
Prince Bagratión, having reached the highest point of our right flank,
began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard but where
on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to
the hollow the less they could see but the more they felt the nearness
of the actual battlefield. They began to meet wounded men. One with a
bleeding head and no cap was being dragged along by two soldiers who
supported him under the arms. There was a gurgle in his throat and he
was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently hit him in the throat or
mouth. Another was walking sturdily by himself but without his musket,
groaning aloud and swinging his arm which had just been hurt, while
blood from it was streaming over his greatcoat as from a bottle. He had
that moment been wounded and his face showed fear rather than suffering.
Crossing a road they descended a steep incline and saw several men
lying on the ground; they also met a crowd of soldiers some of whom were
unwounded. The soldiers were ascending the hill breathing heavily, and
despite the general’s presence were talking loudly and gesticulating.
In front of them rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the
smoke, and an officer catching sight of Bagratión rushed shouting after
the crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagratión rode up
to the ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning
the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked with
smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with it. Some
were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the touchpans or
taking charges from their pouches, while others were firing, though who
they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke which there was no
wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and whistling of bullets were
often heard. “What is this?” thought Prince Andrew approaching the
crowd of soldiers. “It can’t be an attack, for they are not moving;
it can’t be a square—for they are not drawn up for that.”
The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
pleasant smile—his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,
giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagratión and welcomed him as
a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had
been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been
repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack
had been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had
occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know what
had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to him, and
could not say with certainty whether the attack had been repulsed or his
regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at the commencement
of the action balls and shells began flying all over his regiment and
hitting men and that afterwards someone had shouted “Cavalry!” and
our men had begun firing. They were still firing, not at the cavalry
which had disappeared, but at French infantry who had come into the
hollow and were firing at our men. Prince Bagratión bowed his head as a
sign that this was exactly what he had desired and expected. Turning
to his adjutant he ordered him to bring down the two battalions of the
Sixth Chasseurs whom they had just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by
the changed expression on Prince Bagratión’s face at this moment. It
expressed the concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of
a man who on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water.
The dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation
of profound thought. The round, steady, hawk’s eyes looked before him
eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although his
movements were still slow and measured.
The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagratión, entreating
him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were.
“Please, your excellency, for God’s sake!” he kept saying,
glancing for support at an officer of the suite who turned away
from him. “There, you see!” and he drew attention to the bullets
whistling, singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in the
tone of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who
has picked up an ax: “We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister
your hands.” He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and his
half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his words. The staff
officer joined in the colonel’s appeals, but Bagratión did not reply;
he only gave an order to cease firing and re-form, so as to give room
for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking, the curtain
of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising wind, began
to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible hand, and the
hill opposite, with the French moving about on it, opened out before
them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French column advancing
against them and winding down over the uneven ground. One could already
see the soldiers’ shaggy caps, distinguish the officers from the men,
and see the standard flapping against its staff.
“They march splendidly,” remarked someone in Bagratión’s suite.
The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The clash
would take place on this side of it...
The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly formed up
and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the laggards, came
two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order. Before they had
reached Bagratión, the weighty tread of the mass of men marching in
step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to Bagratión, marched
a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a stupid and happy
expression—the same man who had rushed out of the wattle shed. At that
moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how dashing a fellow he
would appear as he passed the commander.
With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly with
his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to his full
height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with the heavy
tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He carried close
to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and not like a real
weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and now back at the men
without losing step, his whole powerful body turning flexibly. It was as
if all the powers of his soul were concentrated on passing the commander