War and Peace

he French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and seventh
of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts loaded, and troops
and baggage trains started.

At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing shakos
and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in front
of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses sounded all
along the lines.

In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only awaited
the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolóv, pale and thin with dark
shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot and not dressed.
His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his face, gazed inquiringly
at his comrades who were paying no attention to him, and he moaned
regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so much his sufferings that
caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as his fear and grief at being
left alone.

Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes Karatáev had
made for him from some leather a French soldier had torn off a tea chest
and brought to have his boots mended with, went up to the sick man and
squatted down beside him.

“You know, Sokolóv, they are not all going away! They have a hospital
here. You may be better off than we others,” said Pierre.

“O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!” moaned the man in a
louder voice.

“I’ll go and ask them again directly,” said Pierre, rising and going to
the door of the shed.

Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him a
pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal and
soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had metal
straps, and these changed their familiar faces.

The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The prisoners
had to be counted before being let out.

“Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?...” Pierre began.

But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal
he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that
moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of drums
was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre’s
words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door. The shed
became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two sides drowned
the sick man’s groans.

“There it is!... It again!...” said Pierre to himself, and an
involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal’s changed face,
in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise of the
drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which compelled
people against their will to kill their fellow men—that force the effect
of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or to try to
escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those who
served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now. One had to wait
and endure. He did not again go to the sick man, nor turn to look at
him, but stood frowning by the door of the hut.

When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one
another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed
his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal had
assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also in
marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which Pierre
had recognized in the corporal’s words and in the roll of the drums.

“Pass on, pass on!” the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and
looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.

Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.

“What now?” the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing
Pierre.

Pierre told him about the sick man.

“He’ll manage to walk, devil take him!” said the captain. “Pass on, pass
on!” he continued without looking at Pierre.

“But he is dying,” Pierre again began.

“Be so good...” shouted the captain, frowning angrily.

“Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam...” rattled the drums, and Pierre understood
that this mysterious force completely controlled these men and that it
was now useless to say any more.

The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to march
in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among them, and
about three hundred men.

The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all strangers to
Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at him and at his
shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him walked a fat major
with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing a Kazán dressing
gown tied round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of
his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in which he clasped his tobacco
pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing gown and held the stem of his
pipe firmly with the other. Panting and puffing, the major grumbled and
growled at everybody because he thought he was being pushed and that
they were all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry to and were
all surprised at something when there was nothing to be surprised at.
Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing
where they were now being taken and how far they would get that day. An
official in felt boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from
side to side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his
observations as to what had been burned down and what this or that part
of the city was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent
was a Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was
mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.

“What are you disputing about?” said the major angrily. “What does it
matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it’s burned
down, and there’s an end of it.... What are you pushing for? Isn’t the
road wide enough?” said he, turning to a man behind him who was not
pushing him at all.

“Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?” the prisoners on one side and another
were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. “All beyond the
river, and Zúbova, and in the Krémlin.... Just look! There’s not half of
it left. Yes, I told you—the whole quarter beyond the river, and so it
is.”

“Well, you know it’s burned, so what’s the use of talking?” said the
major.

As they passed near a church in the Khamóvniki (one of the few unburned
quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly started to one
side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.

“Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And
smeared with something!”

Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked these
exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the palings
surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw better
than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set upright
against the palings with its face smeared with soot.

“Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!...” the convoy
guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh virulence,
drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at
the dead man.