War and Peace

n our right flank commanded by Bagratión, at nine o’clock the battle
had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorúkov’s demand to
commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility from himself,
Prince Bagratión proposed to Dolgorúkov to send to inquire of the
commander in chief. Bagratión knew that as the distance between the two
flanks was more than six miles, even if the messenger were not killed
(which he very likely would be), and found the commander in chief
(which would be very difficult), he would not be able to get back before
evening.

Bagratión cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his suite,
and the boyish face of Rostóv, breathless with excitement and hope, was
the first to catch his eye. He sent him.

“And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in
chief, your excellency?” said Rostóv, with his hand to his cap.

“You can give the message to His Majesty,” said Dolgorúkov,
hurriedly interrupting Bagratión.

On being relieved from picket duty Rostóv had managed to get a few
hours’ sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute,
with elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and generally in
that state of mind which makes everything seem possible, pleasant, and
easy.

All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be a
general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he was
orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going with a
message to Kutúzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself. The morning
was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart was full of
joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his horse the rein
and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the line of
Bagratión’s troops, which had not yet advanced into action but were
standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by Uvárov’s
cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation for battle;
having passed Uvárov’s cavalry he clearly heard the sound of cannon
and musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder and louder.

In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket shots
at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two cannon shots,
but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the hill before
Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon that sometimes
several of them were not separated from one another but merged into a
general roar.

He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one another
down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling, spreading,
and mingling with one another. He could also, by the gleam of bayonets
visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of infantry and narrow
lines of artillery with green caissons.

Rostóv stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was
going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand
or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men of
some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of troops;
but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make out.
These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating effect on him;
on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and determination.

“Go on! Go on! Give it them!” he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,
and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther and
farther into the region where the army was already in action.

“How it will be there I don’t know, but all will be well!” thought
Rostóv.

After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part of the
line (the Guards) was already in action.

“So much the better! I shall see it close,” he thought.

He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came
galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered
ranks were returning from the attack. Rostóv got out of their way,
involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.

“That is no business of mine,” he thought. He had not ridden many
hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole
width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white
uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and
across his path. Rostóv put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at the
same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of the
horses were already galloping. Rostóv heard the thud of their hoofs
and the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their figures, and
even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our Horse Guards,
advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming to meet them.

The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their horses.
Rostóv could already see their faces and heard the command:
“Charge!” shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to
full speed. Rostóv, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack on
the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go, but
still was not in time to avoid them.

The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned angrily
on seeing Rostóv before him, with whom he would inevitably collide.
This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostóv and his Bedouin over
(Rostóv felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to these gigantic men
and horses) had it not occurred to Rostóv to flourish his whip before
the eyes of the Guardsman’s horse. The heavy black horse, sixteen
hands high, shied, throwing back its ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman
drove his huge spurs in violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail
and extending its neck, galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse
Guards passed Rostóv before he heard them shout, “Hurrah!” and
looking back saw that their foremost ranks were mixed up with some
foreign cavalry with red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing
more, for immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and
smoke enveloped everything.

At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him, disappeared in
the smoke, Rostóv hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go where
he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of the Horse Guards that
amazed the French themselves. Rostóv was horrified to hear later that
of all that mass of huge and handsome men, of all those brilliant,
rich youths, officers and cadets, who had galloped past him on their
thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were left after the charge.

“Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall see
the Emperor immediately!” thought Rostóv and galloped on.

When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them and
around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so
much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on
the soldiers’ faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the
officers.

Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he heard a
voice calling him by name.

“Rostóv!”

“What?” he answered, not recognizing Borís.

“I say, we’ve been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!” said
Borís with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have been
under fire for the first time.

Rostóv stopped.

“Have you?” he said. “Well, how did it go?”

“We drove them back!” said Borís with animation, growing talkative.
“Can you imagine it?” and he began describing how the Guards, having
taken up their position and seeing troops before them, thought they were
Austrians, and all at once discovered from the cannon balls discharged
by those troops that they were themselves in the front line and had
unexpectedly to go into action. Rostóv without hearing Borís to the
end spurred his horse.

“Where are you off to?” asked Borís.

“With a message to His Majesty.”

“There he is!” said Borís, thinking Rostóv had said “His
Highness,” and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high shoulders
and frowning brows stood a hundred paces away from them in his helmet
and Horse Guards’ jacket, shouting something to a pale, white
uniformed Austrian officer.

“But that’s the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the
Emperor,” said Rostóv, and was about to spur his horse.

“Count! Count!” shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager
as Borís. “Count! I am wounded in my right hand” (and he showed his
bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) “and I remained at
the front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family—the
von Bergs—have been knights!”

He said something more, but Rostóv did not wait to hear it and rode
away.

Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostóv, to avoid
again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the Horse
Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round the place
where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard. Suddenly he
heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind our troops,
where he could never have expected the enemy to be.

“What can it be?” he thought. “The enemy in the rear of our army?
Impossible!” And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself
and for the issue of the whole battle. “But be that what it may,”
he reflected, “there is no riding round it now. I must look for the
commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish with
the rest.”

The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostóv was more and
more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the village of
Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.

“What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is
firing?” Rostóv kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian
soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.

“The devil knows! They’ve killed everybody! It’s all up now!”
he was told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who
understood what was happening as little as he did.

“Kill the Germans!” shouted one.

“May the devil take them—the traitors!”

“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.