War and Peace
“Zum Henker diese Russen!” * muttered a German.
* “Hang these Russians!”
Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse, screams,
and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing died down.
Rostóv learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing
at one another.
“My God! What does it all mean?” thought he. “And here, where at
any moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a
handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can’t be that, it
can’t be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!”
The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostóv’s head. Though
he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights just where
he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief, he could not,
did not wish to, believe that.
CHAPTER XVIII
Rostóv had been ordered to look for Kutúzov and the Emperor near the
village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
which he had come out was thronged with calèches, carriages of all
sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
stationed on the Pratzen Heights.
“Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutúzov?” Rostóv kept asking
everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.
At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.
“Eh, brother! They’ve all bolted long ago!” said the soldier,
laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.
Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostóv stopped the
horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
that he was dangerously wounded.
“It can’t be!” said Rostóv. “It must have been someone else.”
“I saw him myself,” replied the man with a self-confident smile of
derision. “I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I’ve
seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat in
the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black horses
fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It’s time I knew the Imperial
horses and Ilyá Iványch. I don’t think Ilyá drives anyone except
the Tsar!”
Rostóv let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a wounded
officer passing by addressed him:
“Who is it you want?” he asked. “The commander in chief? He was
killed by a cannon ball—struck in the breast before our regiment.”
“Not killed—wounded!” another officer corrected him.
“Who? Kutúzov?” asked Rostóv.
“Not Kutúzov, but what’s his name—well, never mind... there are
not many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders
are there,” said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,
and he walked on.
Rostóv rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible to
doubt it now. Rostóv rode in the direction pointed out to him, in which
he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now to say
to the Tsar or to Kutúzov, even if they were alive and unwounded?
“Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!” a
soldier shouted to him. “They’d kill you there!”
“Oh, what are you talking about?” said another. “Where is he to
go? That way is nearer.”
Rostóv considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
would be killed.
“It’s all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to
save myself?” he thought. He rode on to the region where the greatest
number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not
yet occupied that region, and the Russians—the uninjured and slightly
wounded—had left it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of
manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded
to each couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos and threes
and one could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes
feigned—or so it seemed to Rostóv. He put his horse to a trot to
avoid seeing all these suffering men, and he felt afraid—afraid not
for his life, but for the courage he needed and which he knew would not
stand the sight of these unfortunates.
The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant
riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several shots. The
sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around
him merged in Rostóv’s mind into a single feeling of terror and pity
for himself. He remembered his mother’s last letter. “What would she
feel,” thought he, “if she saw me here now on this field with the
cannon aimed at me?”
In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from
the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry fire
sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the battle
was lost. No one whom Rostóv asked could tell him where the Emperor
or Kutúzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was wounded was
correct, others that it was not, and explained the false rumor that had
spread by the fact that the Emperor’s carriage had really galloped
from the field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal
Count Tolstóy, who had ridden out to the battlefield with others in
the Emperor’s suite. One officer told Rostóv that he had seen someone
from headquarters behind the village to the left, and thither Rostóv
rode, not hoping to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience. When
he had ridden about two miles and had passed the last of the Russian
troops, he saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men
on horseback facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed
familiar to Rostóv; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which
Rostóv fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his
horse with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only
a little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse’s hind hoofs.
Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially
addressed the horseman with the white plumes, evidently suggesting
that he should do the same. The rider, whose figure seemed familiar
to Rostóv and involuntarily riveted his attention, made a gesture of
refusal with his head and hand and by that gesture Rostóv instantly
recognized his lamented and adored monarch.
“But it can’t be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!”
thought Rostóv. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostóv
saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. The
Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm,
the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostóv was happy
in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded were
false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and even
ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorúkov had ordered
him to deliver.
But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the
thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a
chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is
alone with her, so Rostóv, now that he had attained what he had longed
for more than anything else in the world, did not know how to approach
the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him why it would be
inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.
“What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of
his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant or
painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him
now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight
of him?” Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the Emperor
that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall. Those
speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for the
most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph, generally
when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic
deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.
“Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the right
flank now that it is nearly four o’clock and the battle is lost?
No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
look or bad opinion from him,” Rostóv decided; and sorrowfully and
with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at the
Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.
While Rostóv was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
Rostóv from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke
long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll’s hand.
“And I might have been in his place!” thought Rostóv, and hardly
restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.
His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness was
the cause of his grief.
He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the sovereign. It
was a unique chance to show his devotion to the Emperor and he had not
made use of it.... “What have I done?” thought he. And he turned
round and galloped back to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but
there was no one beyond the ditch now. Only some carts and carriages
were passing by. From one of the drivers he learned that Kutúzov’s
staff were not far off, in the village the vehicles were going to.
Rostóv followed them. In front of him walked Kutúzov’s groom leading
horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old,
bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.
“Tit! I say, Tit!” said the groom.
“What?” answered the old man absent-mindedly.
“Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!”
“Oh, you fool!” said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed
in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.
Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. More
than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.
Przebyszéwski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other columns
after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly confused
masses.
The remains of Langeron’s and Dokhtúrov’s mingled forces were
crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of
Augesd.
After five o’clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot cannonade
(delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from numerous
batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, directed at our
retreating forces.
In the rearguard, Dokhtúrov and others rallying some battalions kept up
a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It
was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the
old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully