War and Peace

ext day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the evening
and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with dark purple
clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops
advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery
could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk out loud, to
smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried to prevent their
horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm
and they marched gaily. Some columns, supposing they had reached their
destination, halted, piled arms, and settled down on the cold ground,
but the majority marched all night and arrived at places where they
evidently should not have been.

Only Count Orlóv-Denísov with his Cossacks (the least important
detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time. This
detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path leading from
the village of Stromílova to Dmítrovsk.

Toward dawn, Count Orlóv-Denísov, who had dozed off, was awakened by a
deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a Polish
sergeant of Poniatowski’s corps, who explained in Polish that he had
come over because he had been slighted in the service: that he ought
long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver than any of
them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them out. He said that
Murat was spending the night less than a mile from where they were,
and that if they would let him have a convoy of a hundred men he would
capture him alive. Count Orlóv-Denísov consulted his fellow officers.

The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go and
everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and arguing,
Major-General Grékov with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the
Polish sergeant.

“Now, remember,” said Count Orlóv-Denísov to the sergeant at parting,
“if you have been lying I’ll have you hanged like a dog; but if it’s
true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!”

Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and rode
away with Grékov whose men had quickly assembled. They disappeared into
the forest, and Count Orlóv-Denísov, having seen Grékov off, returned,
shivering from the freshness of the early dawn and excited by what he
had undertaken on his own responsibility, and began looking at the enemy
camp, now just visible in the deceptive light of dawn and the dying
campfires. Our columns ought to have begun to appear on an open
declivity to his right. He looked in that direction, but though the
columns would have been visible quite far off, they were not to be seen.
It seemed to the count that things were beginning to stir in the French
camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.

“Oh, it is really too late,” said Count Orlóv, looking at the camp.

As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before
our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the
sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian
attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which
he would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!

“I am sure that rascal was lying,” said the count.

“They can still be called back,” said one of his suite, who like Count
Orlóv felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the enemy’s
camp.

“Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?”

“Will you have them fetched back?”

“Fetch them back, fetch them back!” said Count Orlóv with sudden
determination, looking at his watch. “It will be too late. It is quite
light.”

And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grékov. When Grékov
returned, Count Orlóv-Denísov, excited both by the abandoned attempt and
by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not appear, as
well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. All his men
felt the same excitement.

“Mount!” he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
crossed themselves.... “Forward, with God’s aid!”

“Hurrah-ah-ah!” reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies,
trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if poured out
of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.

One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw the
Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just waking
up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.

Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind and
around them, they would have captured Murat and everything there.
That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to make the
Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners. None of them
listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and thirty-eight guns were
taken on the spot, besides standards and (what seemed most important to
the Cossacks) horses, saddles, horsecloths, and the like. All this had
to be dealt with, the prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided—not
without some shouting and even a little fighting among themselves—and it
was on this that the Cossacks all busied themselves.

The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover themselves: they
formed into detachments and began firing. Orlóv-Denísov, still waiting
for the other columns to arrive, advanced no further.

Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that “the First
Column will march” and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,
commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due order
and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their appointed
places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully, began to halt;
murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and finally a
backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about, shouted, grew
angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and were late, gave
vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and went forward,
simply to get somewhere. “We shall get somewhere or other!” And they did
indeed get somewhere, though not to their right places; a few eventually
even got to their right place, but too late to be of any use and only
in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this battle played the part of
Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped assiduously from place to place,
finding everything upside down everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovút’s
corps in a wood when it was already broad daylight, though the corps
should long before have joined Orlóv-Denísov. Excited and vexed by the
failure and supposing that someone must be responsible for it, Toll
galloped up to the commander of the corps and began upbraiding him
severely, saying that he ought to be shot. General Bagovút, a fighting
old soldier of placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay,
confusion, and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody’s surprise
and quite contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things
to Toll.

“I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men as
well as anybody,” he said, and advanced with a single division.

Coming out onto a field under the enemy’s fire, this brave general went
straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering in his
agitation whether going into action now, with a single division, would
be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets were just what he
needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets killed him, and other
bullets killed many of his men. And his division remained under fire for
some time quite uselessly.