War and Peace

he wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,
hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing
dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous. The
cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on the
right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Túshin with his guns,
continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range
of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the staff,
among them the staff officer and Zherkóv, who had been twice sent to
Túshin’s battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one
another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to proceed,
reprimanding and reproaching him. Túshin gave no orders, and,
silently—fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to
weep without knowing why—rode behind on his artillery nag. Though
the orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves
after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty
infantry officer who just before the battle had rushed out of
Túshin’s wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on
“Matvévna’s” carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar
cadet, supporting one hand with the other, came up to Túshin and asked
for a seat.

“Captain, for God’s sake! I’ve hurt my arm,” he said timidly.
“For God’s sake... I can’t walk. For God’s sake!”

It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift and
been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.

“Tell them to give me a seat, for God’s sake!”

“Give him a seat,” said Túshin. “Lay a cloak for him to sit on,
lad,” he said, addressing his favorite soldier. “And where is the
wounded officer?”

“He has been set down. He died,” replied someone.

“Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,
Antónov.”

The cadet was Rostóv. With one hand he supported the other; he was
pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on
“Matvévna,” the gun from which they had removed the dead officer.
The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his
breeches and arm.

“What, are you wounded, my lad?” said Túshin, approaching the gun
on which Rostóv sat.

“No, it’s a sprain.”

“Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?” inquired Túshin.

“It was the officer, your honor, stained it,” answered the
artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if
apologizing for the state of his gun.

It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by the
infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they halted. It
had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the uniforms ten paces
off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, near by on the
right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of shot gleamed in
the darkness. This was the last French attack and was met by soldiers
who had sheltered in the village houses. They all rushed out of
the village again, but Túshin’s guns could not move, and the
artillerymen, Túshin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances as they
awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking eagerly,
streamed out of a side street.

“Not hurt, Petróv?” asked one.

“We’ve given it ‘em hot, mate! They won’t make another push
now,” said another.

“You couldn’t see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows!
Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn’t there something to
drink?”

The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and again in
the complete darkness Túshin’s guns moved forward, surrounded by the
humming infantry as by a frame.

In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was flowing
always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and the sound of
hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and voices of the
wounded were more distinctly heard than any other sound in the darkness
of the night. The gloom that enveloped the army was filled with their
groans, which seemed to melt into one with the darkness of the night.
After a while the moving mass became agitated, someone rode past on
a white horse followed by his suite, and said something in passing:
“What did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it? Did he thank us?” came
eager questions from all sides. The whole moving mass began pressing
closer together and a report spread that they were ordered to halt:
evidently those in front had halted. All remained where they were in the
middle of the muddy road.

Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Túshin,
having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a dressing
station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the
soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostóv, too, dragged himself to the
fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering shook his whole
body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but he kept awake by
an excruciating pain in his arm, for which he could find no satisfactory
position. He kept closing his eyes and then again looking at the fire,
which seemed to him dazzlingly red, and at the feeble, round-shouldered
figure of Túshin who was sitting cross-legged like a Turk beside him.
Túshin’s large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy and
commiseration on Rostóv, who saw that Túshin with his whole heart
wished to help him but could not.

From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry, who
were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The sound
of voices, the tramping feet, the horses’ hoofs moving in mud, the
crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous rumble.

It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through the
gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a storm.
Rostóv looked at and listened listlessly to what passed before and
around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on his heels, held
his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.

“You don’t mind your honor?” he asked Túshin. “I’ve lost my
company, your honor. I don’t know where... such bad luck!”

With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came up to
the bonfire, and addressing Túshin asked him to have the guns moved a
trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers rushed to
the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately, each trying
to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding on to.

“You picked it up?... I dare say! You’re very smart!” one of them
shouted hoarsely.

Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg
band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.

“Must one die like a dog?” said he.

Túshin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier
ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.

“A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you, fellow
countrymen. Thanks for the fire—we’ll return it with interest,”
said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.

Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and passed
by the fire. One of them stumbled.

“Who the devil has put the logs on the road?” snarled he.

“He’s dead—why carry him?” said another.

“Shut up!”

And they disappeared into the darkness with their load.

“Still aching?” Túshin asked Rostóv in a whisper.

“Yes.”

“Your honor, you’re wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,”
said a gunner, coming up to Túshin.

“Coming, friend.”

Túshin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,
walked away from the fire.

Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared
for him, Prince Bagratión sat at dinner, talking with some commanding
officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old man with
the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton bone, and the
general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, flushed by a
glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with the signet
ring, and Zherkóv, uneasily glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew,
pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering eyes.

In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French, and
the accountant with the naïve face was feeling its texture, shaking his
head in perplexity—perhaps because the banner really interested him,
perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look on at
a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next hut there was a
French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our dragoons. Our officers
were flocking in to look at him. Prince Bagratión was thanking the
individual commanders and inquiring into details of the action and our
losses. The general whose regiment had been inspected at Braunau was
informing the prince that as soon as the action began he had withdrawn
from the wood, mustered the men who were woodcutting, and, allowing the
French to pass him, had made a bayonet charge with two battalions and
had broken up the French troops.

“When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: ‘I’ll let them
come on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion’—and
that’s what I did.”

The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not managed
to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened. Perhaps
it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid all that
confusion what did or did not happen?

“By the way, your excellency, I should inform you,” he
continued—remembering Dólokhov’s conversation with Kutúzov and his
last interview with the gentleman-ranker—“that Private Dólokhov,
who was reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my
presence and particularly distinguished himself.”

“I saw the Pávlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,” chimed
in Zherkóv, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the hussars all
that day, but had heard about them from an infantry officer. “They
broke up two squares, your excellency.”

Several of those present smiled at Zherkóv’s words, expecting one of
his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to
the glory of our arms and of the day’s work, they assumed a serious
expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie
devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagratión turned to the old colonel:

“Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were
abandoned in the center?” he inquired, searching with his eyes for
someone. (Prince Bagratión did not ask about the guns on the left
flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the very
beginning of the action.) “I think I sent you?” he added, turning to
the staff officer on duty.

“One was damaged,” answered the staff officer, “and the other I
can’t understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had only
just left.... It is true that it was hot there,” he added, modestly.

Someone mentioned that Captain Túshin was bivouacking close to the
village and had already been sent for.

“Oh, but you were there?” said Prince Bagratión, addressing Prince
Andrew.

“Of course, we only just missed one another,” said the staff
officer, with a smile to Bolkónski.

“I had not the pleasure of seeing you,” said Prince Andrew, coldly
and abruptly.

All were silent. Túshin appeared at the threshold and made his way
timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past the
generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always was by the
sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of the banner and
stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.

“How was it a gun was abandoned?” asked Bagratión, frowning, not so
much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom Zherkóv
laughed loudest.

Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his guilt
and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive present
themselves to Túshin in all their horror. He had been so excited that
he had not thought about it until that moment. The officers’ laughter
confused him still more. He stood before Bagratión with his lower
jaw trembling and was hardly able to mutter: “I don’t know... your
excellency... I had no men... your excellency.”

“You might have taken some from the covering troops.”

Túshin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that
was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagratión as a schoolboy who
has blundered looks at an examiner.

The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagratión, apparently not wishing
to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture to
intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Túshin from under his brows and his
fingers twitched nervously.

“Your excellency!” Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
voice, “you were pleased to send me to Captain Túshin’s battery. I
went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two
guns smashed, and no supports at all.”

Prince Bagratión and Túshin looked with equal intentness at
Bolkónski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.

“And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion,” he
continued, “we owe today’s success chiefly to the action of that
battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Túshin and his company,”
and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.

Prince Bagratión looked at Túshin, evidently reluctant to show
distrust in Bolkónski’s emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully
to credit it, bent his head, and told Túshin that he could go. Prince
Andrew went out with him.

“Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!” said Túshin.

Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He felt
sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had hoped.

“Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will
all this end?” thought Rostóv, looking at the changing shadows before
him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense. Irresistible
drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his eyes, and the
impression of those voices and faces and a sense of loneliness merged
with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers—wounded and
unwounded—it was they who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting
the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and shoulder. To
rid himself of them he closed his eyes.

For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,
Sónya’s thin little shoulders, Natásha’s eyes and laughter,
Denísov with his voice and mustache, and Telyánin and all that affair
with Telyánin and Bogdánich. That affair was the same thing as this
soldier with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier
that were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and
always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them, but
they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair’s breadth.
It would not ache—it would be well—if only they did not pull it, but
it was impossible to get rid of them.

He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung less
than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling snow were
fluttering in that light. Túshin had not returned, the doctor had not
come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was sitting naked at
the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow body.

“Nobody wants me!” thought Rostóv. “There is no one to help me or
pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved.” He sighed
and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.

“Eh, is anything hurting you?” asked the soldier, shaking his shirt
out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt and
added: “What a lot of men have been crippled today—frightful!”

Rostóv did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. “And why
did I come here?” he wondered.

Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant of
Bagratión’s detachment was reunited to Kutúzov’s army.

BOOK THREE: 1805