War and Peace

uring the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been
issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners
among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party was
no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it had left
Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled the first
stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other half had gone
on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had marched in
front of the prisoners was left; they had all disappeared. The artillery
the prisoners had seen in front of them during the first days was
now replaced by Marshal Junot’s enormous baggage train, convoyed by
Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a cavalry baggage train.

From Vyázma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in three
columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder that Pierre
had noticed at their first halting place after leaving Moscow had now
reached the utmost limit.

The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead
horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments
continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again
lagging behind it.

Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the
soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run
headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and
abused each other for their causeless panic.

These three groups traveling together—the cavalry stores, the convoy of
prisoners, and Junot’s baggage train—still constituted a separate and
united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly melting away.

Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred and
twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been
captured or left behind. Some of Junot’s wagons also had been captured
or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers
from Davout’s corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned that
a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to the
prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had been
shot by the marshal’s own order because a silver spoon belonging to the
marshal had been found in his possession.

The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three hundred
and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a hundred now
remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort than even the
cavalry saddles or Junot’s baggage. They understood that the saddles and
Junot’s spoon might be of some use, but that cold and hungry soldiers
should have to stand and guard equally cold and hungry Russians who
froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case the order was to
shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but revolting. And the
escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were in,
of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering
their own plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness
and severity.

At Dorogobúzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the
prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores, several
of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away, but were
recaptured by the French and shot.

The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer prisoners
should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been abandoned.
All who could walk went together, and after the third stage Pierre had
rejoined Karatáev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had chosen
Karatáev for its master.

On the third day after leaving Moscow Karatáev again fell ill with the
fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he grew
gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know why, but
since Karatáev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an effort to
go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning with which
Karatáev generally lay down at the halting places, and when he smelled
the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than before, Pierre
moved farther away and did not think about him.

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect
but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for
happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple
human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from
superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had
learned still another new, consolatory truth—that nothing in this world
is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man
can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he
need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom
have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the
person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as
he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled
while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing
shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet
that were covered with sores—his footgear having long since fallen to
pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife—of his own free
will as it had seemed to him—he had been no more free than now when they
locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself subsequently
termed his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely felt, the worst
was the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh
was appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder
they used instead of salt was even pleasant; there was no great cold,
it was always warm walking in the daytime, and at night there were the
campfires; the lice that devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing
that was at first hard to bear was his feet.

After the second day’s march Pierre, having examined his feet by the
campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when
everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,
walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more
terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,
but thought of other things.

Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the
saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing
to another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows
superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain limit.

He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged
behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did not
think of Karatáev who grew weaker every day and evidently would soon
have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The
harder his position became and the more terrible the future, the more
independent of that position in which he found himself were the joyful
and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that came to him.