War and Peace
yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe
me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than all
the experience of old Cunctators.”
“But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the
outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces are
situated,” said Prince Andrew.
He wished to explain to Dolgorúkov a plan of attack he had himself
formed.
“Oh, that is all the same,” Dolgorúkov said quickly, and getting up
he spread a map on the table. “All eventualities have been foreseen.
If he is standing before Brünn...”
And Prince Dolgorúkov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother’s
plan of a flanking movement.
Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might
have been as good as Weyrother’s, but for the disadvantage that
Weyrother’s had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began
to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan,
Prince Dolgorúkov ceased to listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not
at the map, but at Prince Andrew’s face.
“There will be a council of war at Kutúzov’s tonight, though; you
can say all this there,” remarked Dolgorúkov.
“I will do so,” said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.
“Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?” said Bilíbin, who,
till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and
now was evidently ready with a joke. “Whether tomorrow brings
victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except your
Kutúzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column! The
commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le Prince de
Lichtenstein, le Prince de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish, and so on
like all those Polish names.”
“Be quiet, backbiter!” said Dolgorúkov. “It is not true; there
are now two Russians, Milorádovich, and Dokhtúrov, and there would be
a third, Count Arakchéev, if his nerves were not too weak.”
“However, I think General Kutúzov has come out,” said Prince
Andrew. “I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!” he added and
went out after shaking hands with Dolgorúkov and Bilíbin.
On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking Kutúzov,
who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of tomorrow’s
battle.
Kutúzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, replied:
“I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstóy and
asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? ‘But, my
dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military
matters yourself!’ Yes... That was the answer I got!”
CHAPTER XII
Shortly after nine o’clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his
plans to Kutúzov’s quarters where the council of war was to be
held. All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in
chief’s and with the exception of Prince Bagratión, who declined to
come, were all there at the appointed time.
Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his
eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the dissatisfied
and drowsy Kutúzov, who reluctantly played the part of chairman and
president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt himself to be
at the head of a movement that had already become unrestrainable. He was
like a horse running downhill harnessed to a heavy cart. Whether he was
pulling it or being pushed by it he did not know, but rushed along at
headlong speed with no time to consider what this movement might lead
to. Weyrother had been twice that evening to the enemy’s picket
line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and
Austrian, to report and explain, and to his headquarters where he had
dictated the dispositions in German, and now, much exhausted, he arrived
at Kutúzov’s.
He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the
commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and indistinctly,
without looking at the man he was addressing, and did not reply to
questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had a pitiful,
weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was haughty and
self-confident.
Kutúzov was occupying a nobleman’s castle of modest dimensions near
Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the commander
in chief’s office were gathered Kutúzov himself, Weyrother, and the
members of the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only awaited
Prince Bagratión to begin the council. At last Bagratión’s orderly
came with the news that the prince could not attend. Prince Andrew came
in to inform the commander in chief of this and, availing himself
of permission previously given him by Kutúzov to be present at the
council, he remained in the room.
“Since Prince Bagratión is not coming, we may begin,” said
Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on
which an enormous map of the environs of Brünn was spread out.
Kutúzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over
his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low chair,
with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms. At the sound
of Weyrother’s voice, he opened his one eye with an effort.
“Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late,” said he, and nodding
his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.
If at first the members of the council thought that Kutúzov was
pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading that
followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was absorbed
by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his contempt for
the dispositions or anything else—he was engaged in satisfying the
irresistible human need for sleep. He really was asleep. Weyrother, with
the gesture of a man too busy to lose a moment, glanced at Kutúzov and,
having convinced himself that he was asleep, took up a paper and in
a loud, monotonous voice began to read out the dispositions for the
impending battle, under a heading which he also read out:
“Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz and
Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805.”
The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began as
follows:
“As the enemy’s left wing rests on wooded hills and his right
extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there,
while we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his
right, it is advantageous to attack the enemy’s latter wing especially
if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we
can both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between
Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of
Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy’s front. For this
object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The second
column marches... The third column marches...” and so on, read
Weyrother.
The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult dispositions.
The tall, fair-haired General Buxhöwden stood, leaning his back against
the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and seemed not to listen
or even to wish to be thought to listen. Exactly opposite Weyrother,
with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed upon him and his mustache
twisted upwards, sat the ruddy Milorádovich in a military pose, his
elbows turned outwards, his hands on his knees, and his shoulders
raised. He remained stubbornly silent, gazing at Weyrother’s face,
and only turned away his eyes when the Austrian chief of staff finished
reading. Then Milorádovich looked round significantly at the other
generals. But one could not tell from that significant look whether he
agreed or disagreed and was satisfied or not with the arrangements. Next
to Weyrother sat Count Langeron who, with a subtle smile that never left
his typically southern French face during the whole time of the reading,
gazed at his delicate fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners
a gold snuffbox on which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the
longest sentences, he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised
his head, and with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his
thin lips interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the
Austrian general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his
elbows, as if to say: “You can tell me your views later, but now be so
good as to look at the map and listen.” Langeron lifted his eyes with
an expression of perplexity, turned round to Milorádovich as if seeking
an explanation, but meeting the latter’s impressive but meaningless
gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.
“A geography lesson!” he muttered as if to himself, but loud enough
to be heard.
Przebyszéwski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his
hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in
attention. Dohktúrov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with
an assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar locality. He
asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had not clearly heard
and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother complied and Dohktúrov
noted them down.
When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron again
brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother or at
anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry out
such a plan in which the enemy’s position was assumed to be known,
whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
Langeron’s objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief
aim was to show General Weyrother—who had read his dispositions with
as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children—that
he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him something
in military matters.
When the monotonous sound of Weyrother’s voice ceased, Kutúzov opened
his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel
is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking,
“So you are still at that silly business!” quickly closed his eye
again, and let his head sink still lower.
Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother’s vanity
as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily
attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of this
plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and
contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all objections
be they what they might.
“If he could attack us, he would have done so today,” said he.
“So you think he is powerless?” said Langeron.
“He has forty thousand men at most,” replied Weyrother, with the
smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of
a case.
“In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,” said
Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round for support
to Milorádovich who was near him.
But Milorádovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything
rather than of what the generals were disputing about.
“Ma foi!” said he, “tomorrow we shall see all that on the
battlefield.”
Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it was
strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals and to
have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced himself of, but
had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.
“The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard from
his camp,” said he. “What does that mean? Either he is retreating,
which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing his position.”
(He smiled ironically.) “But even if he also took up a position in