War and Peace
in the best possible manner, and feeling that he was doing it well he
was happy. “Left... left... left...” he seemed to repeat to himself
at each alternate step; and in time to this, with stern but varied
faces, the wall of soldiers burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched
in step, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be
repeating to himself at each alternate step, “Left... left...
left...” A fat major skirted a bush, puffing and falling out of
step; a soldier who had fallen behind, his face showing alarm at his
defection, ran at a trot, panting to catch up with his company. A cannon
ball, cleaving the air, flew over the heads of Bagratión and his suite,
and fell into the column to the measure of “Left... left!” “Close
up!” came the company commander’s voice in jaunty tones. The
soldiers passed in a semicircle round something where the ball had
fallen, and an old trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who
had stopped beside the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling
into step with a hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous
silence and the regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one
seemed to hear left... left... left.
“Well done, lads!” said Prince Bagratión.
“Glad to do our best, your ex’len-lency!” came a confused shout
from the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on
Bagratión as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: “We
know that ourselves!” Another, without looking round, as though
fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.
The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.
Bagratión rode round the ranks that had marched past him and
dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over his
felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The head of the
French column, with its officers leading, appeared from below the hill.
“Forward, with God!” said Bagratión, in a resolute, sonorous voice,
turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging his arms,
he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the awkward gait of
a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible power was leading him
forward, and experienced great happiness.
The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside Bagratión,
could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets, and even their
faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who, with gaitered
legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with difficulty.) Prince
Bagratión gave no further orders and silently continued to walk on in
front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after another rang out from the
French, smoke appeared all along their uneven ranks, and musket shots
sounded. Several of our men fell, among them the round-faced officer
who had marched so gaily and complacently. But at the moment the first
report was heard, Bagratión looked round and shouted, “Hurrah!”
“Hurrah—ah!—ah!” rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and
passing Bagratión and racing one another they rushed in an irregular
but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.
CHAPTER XIX
The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right
flank. In the center Túshin’s forgotten battery, which had managed to
set fire to the Schön Grabern village, delayed the French advance. The
French were putting out the fire which the wind was spreading, and thus
gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the center to the other side
of the dip in the ground at the rear was hurried and noisy, but the
different companies did not get mixed. But our left—which consisted
of the Azóv and Podólsk infantry and the Pávlograd hussars—was
simultaneously attacked and outflanked by superior French forces under
Lannes and was thrown into confusion. Bagratión had sent Zherkóv
to the general commanding that left flank with orders to retreat
immediately.
Zherkóv, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse about
and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagratión than his courage
failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it was
dangerous.
Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where the
firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where they
could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.
The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander of
the regiment Kutúzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which Dólokhov was
serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left flank had been
assigned to the commander of the Pávlograd regiment in which Rostóv
was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two commanders were much
exasperated with one another and, long after the action had begun on
the right flank and the French were already advancing, were engaged
in discussion with the sole object of offending one another. But the
regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were by no means ready for the
impending action. From privates to general they were not expecting a
battle and were engaged in peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the
horses and the infantry collecting wood.
“He higher iss dan I in rank,” said the German colonel of the
hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, “so
let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars... Bugler,
sount ze retreat!”
But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling
together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the capotes
of Lannes’ sharpshooters were already seen crossing the milldam and
forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The general in
command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky steps, and
having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and rode to the
Pávlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows but with
secret malevolence in their hearts.
“Once again, Colonel,” said the general, “I can’t leave half
my men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you,” he repeated, “to
occupy the position and prepare for an attack.”
“I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!”
suddenly replied the irate colonel. “If you vere in the cavalry...”
“I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if
you are not aware of the fact...”
“Quite avare, your excellency,” suddenly shouted the colonel,
touching his horse and turning purple in the face. “Vill you be so
goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don’t
vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!”
“You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own pleasure
and I won’t allow it to be said!”
Taking the colonel’s outburst as a challenge to his courage, the
general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the
front line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the
bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and
they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the
line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that it
was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken ground,
as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The general
and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another like two
fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs
of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As
there was nothing to be said, and neither wished to give occasion for
it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire,
they would have remained there for a long time testing each other’s
courage had it not been that just then they heard the rattle of musketry
and a muffled shout almost behind them in the wood. The French had
attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It was no longer possible
for the hussars to retreat with the infantry. They were cut off from
the line of retreat on the left by the French. However inconvenient the
position, it was now necessary to attack in order to cut a way through
for themselves.
The squadron in which Rostóv was serving had scarcely time to mount
before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns bridge,
there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and again that
terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear—resembling the line
separating the living from the dead—lay between them. All were
conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether they would cross
it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated them all.
The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to questions put
to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately insisting on having
his own way, gave an order. No one said anything definite, but the rumor
of an attack spread through the squadron. The command to form up rang
out and the sabers whizzed as they were drawn from their scabbards.
Still no one moved. The troops of the left flank, infantry and hussars
alike, felt that the commander did not himself know what to do, and this
irresolution communicated itself to the men.
“If only they would be quick!” thought Rostóv, feeling that at last
the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which he had so
often heard from his fellow hussars.
“Fo’ward, with God, lads!” rang out Denísov’s voice. “At a
twot fo’ward!”
The horses’ croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at the
reins and started of his own accord.
Before him, on the right, Rostóv saw the front lines of his hussars and
still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see distinctly but
took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some way off.
“Faster!” came the word of command, and Rostóv felt Rook’s flanks
drooping as he broke into a gallop.
Rostóv anticipated his horse’s movements and became more and more
elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had been
in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible—and now he
had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. “Oh, how I
will slash at him!” thought Rostóv, gripping the hilt of his saber.
“Hur-a-a-a-ah!” came a roar of voices. “Let anyone come my way
now,” thought Rostóv driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go
at a full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was
already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep
over the squadron. Rostóv raised his saber, ready to strike, but at
that instant the trooper Nikítenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away
from him, and Rostóv felt as in a dream that he continued to be carried
forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same spot. From
behind him Bondarchúk, an hussar he knew, jolted against him and looked
angrily at him. Bondarchúk’s horse swerved and galloped past.
“How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!” Rostóv
asked and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle of a
field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars’ backs, he saw nothing
before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around him. There
was warm blood under his arm. “No, I am wounded and the horse is
killed.” Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back, pinning his
rider’s leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled but could
not rise. Rostóv also tried to rise but fell back, his sabretache
having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men were, and where the
French, he did not know. There was no one near.
Having disentangled his leg, he rose. “Where, on which side, was now
the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?” he asked himself
and could not answer. “Can something bad have happened to me?”
he wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something