War and Peace
even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the review. It
shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that it suggested
the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was the face
of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the squadron, the
Emperor’s eyes met Rostóv’s and rested on them for not more than
two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was going on in
Rostóv’s soul (it seemed to Rostóv that he understood everything),
at any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two seconds into
Rostóv’s face. A gentle, mild light poured from them. Then all at
once he raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse with his left
foot, and galloped on.
The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the
battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at twelve
o’clock left the third column with which he had been and galloped
toward the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars, several
adjutants met him with news of the successful result of the action.
This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron, was
represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the
Emperor and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over
the battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were
retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had
passed, the Pávlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau
itself, a petty German town, Rostóv saw the Emperor again. In the
market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
Emperor’s arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom there
had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his suite
of officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a
different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and bending
to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes and looked
at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered head. The
wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his proximity
to the Emperor shocked Rostóv. Rostóv saw how the Emperor’s rather
round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run down them, how his
left foot began convulsively tapping the horse’s side with the spur,
and how the well-trained horse looked round unconcerned and did not
stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms to
place him on a stretcher that had been brought. The soldier groaned.
“Gently, gently! Can’t you do it more gently?” said the Emperor
apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
Rostóv saw tears filling the Emperor’s eyes and heard him, as he was
riding away, say to Czartorýski: “What a terrible thing war is: what
a terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!”
The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within sight
of the enemy’s lines, which all day long had yielded ground to us
at the least firing. The Emperor’s gratitude was announced to the
vanguard, rewards were promised, and the men received a double ration of
vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers’ songs resounded
even more merrily than on the previous night. Denísov celebrated his
promotion to the rank of major, and Rostóv, who had already drunk
enough, at the end of the feast proposed the Emperor’s health. “Not
‘our Sovereign, the Emperor,’ as they say at official dinners,”
said he, “but the health of our Sovereign, that good, enchanting, and
great man! Let us drink to his health and to the certain defeat of the
French!”
“If we fought before,” he said, “not letting the French pass, as
at Schön Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We
will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not
saying it right, I have drunk a good deal—but that is how I feel, and
so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!”
“Hurrah!” rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.
And the old cavalry captain, Kírsten, shouted enthusiastically and no
less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostóv.
When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kírsten filled
others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand to the
soldiers’ bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white chest
showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the light
of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.
“Lads! here’s to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over
our enemies! Hurrah!” he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar’s
baritone.
The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.
Late that night, when all had separated, Denísov with his short hand
patted his favorite, Rostóv, on the shoulder.
“As there’s no one to fall in love with on campaign, he’s fallen
in love with the Tsar,” he said.
“Denísov, don’t make fun of it!” cried Rostóv. “It is such a
lofty, beautiful feeling, such a...”
“I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove...”
“No, you don’t understand!”
And Rostóv got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of
what happiness it would be to die—not in saving the Emperor’s life
(he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his
eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian
arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to
experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the battle
of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in
love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the
Russian arms.
CHAPTER XI
The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his physician,
was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and among the troops
near by the news spread that the Emperor was unwell. He ate nothing and
had slept badly that night, those around him reported. The cause of this
indisposition was the strong impression made on his sensitive mind by
the sight of the killed and wounded.
At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with
a flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The
Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At midday
he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off with
Prince Dolgorúkov to the advanced post of the French army.
It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander
a meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a
personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince
Dolgorúkov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate
with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were
actuated by a real desire for peace.
Toward evening Dolgorúkov came back, went straight to the Tsar, and
remained alone with him for a long time.
On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced two
days’ march and the enemy’s outposts after a brief interchange
of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the
nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till
the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz
was fought.
Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity—the eager talk, running to
and fro, and dispatching of adjutants—was confined to the Emperor’s
headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this activity reached
Kutúzov’s headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns.
By evening, the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the
army, and in the night from the nineteenth to the twentieth, the whole
eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of
voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles
long.
The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s
headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that
followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower
clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third,
and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to
work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with
regular motion as a result of all that activity.
Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military
machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as
indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted
to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet
reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and
the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a
neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared
to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever
catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins
in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable
wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the
hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human
activities of 160,000 Russians and French—all their passions, desires,
remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and
enthusiasm—was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the
so-called battle of the three Emperors—that is to say, a slow movement
of the hand on the dial of human history.
Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
commander in chief.
At six in the evening, Kutúzov went to the Emperor’s headquarters
and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
marshal of the court, Count Tolstóy.
Bolkónski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the
coming action from Dolgorúkov. He felt that Kutúzov was upset
and dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were
dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor’s headquarters
everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something others do
not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorúkov.
“Well, how d’you do, my dear fellow?” said Dolgorúkov, who was
sitting at tea with Bilíbin. “The fete is for tomorrow. How is your
old fellow? Out of sorts?”
“I won’t say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be
heard.”
“But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when he
talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte
fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible.”
“Yes, you have seen him?” said Prince Andrew. “Well, what is
Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?”
“Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as
a general engagement,” repeated Dolgorúkov, evidently prizing this
general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with
Napoleon. “If he weren’t afraid of a battle why did he ask for that
interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat is
so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is afraid,
afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!”
“But tell me, what is he like, eh?” said Prince Andrew again.
“He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call
him ‘Your Majesty,’ but who, to his chagrin, got no title from
me! That’s the sort of man he is, and nothing more,” replied
Dolgorúkov, looking round at Bilíbin with a smile.
“Despite my great respect for old Kutúzov,” he continued, “we
should be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him
a chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in
our hands! No, we mustn’t forget Suvórov and his rule—not to put