War and Peace

ostóv had been ordered to look for Kutúzov and the Emperor near the
village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
which he had come out was thronged with calèches, carriages of all
sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
stationed on the Pratzen Heights.

“Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutúzov?” Rostóv kept asking
everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.

At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.

“Eh, brother! They’ve all bolted long ago!” said the soldier,
laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.

Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostóv stopped the
horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
that he was dangerously wounded.

“It can’t be!” said Rostóv. “It must have been someone else.”

“I saw him myself,” replied the man with a self-confident smile of
derision. “I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I’ve
seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat in
the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black horses
fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It’s time I knew the Imperial
horses and Ilyá Iványch. I don’t think Ilyá drives anyone except
the Tsar!”

Rostóv let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a wounded
officer passing by addressed him:

“Who is it you want?” he asked. “The commander in chief? He was
killed by a cannon ball—struck in the breast before our regiment.”

“Not killed—wounded!” another officer corrected him.

“Who? Kutúzov?” asked Rostóv.

“Not Kutúzov, but what’s his name—well, never mind... there are
not many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders
are there,” said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,
and he walked on.

Rostóv rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible to
doubt it now. Rostóv rode in the direction pointed out to him, in which
he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now to say
to the Tsar or to Kutúzov, even if they were alive and unwounded?

“Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!” a
soldier shouted to him. “They’d kill you there!”

“Oh, what are you talking about?” said another. “Where is he to
go? That way is nearer.”

Rostóv considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
would be killed.

“It’s all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to
save myself?” he thought. He rode on to the region where the greatest
number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not
yet occupied that region, and the Russians—the uninjured and slightly
wounded—had left it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of
manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded
to each couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos and threes
and one could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes
feigned—or so it seemed to Rostóv. He put his horse to a trot to
avoid seeing all these suffering men, and he felt afraid—afraid not
for his life, but for the courage he needed and which he knew would not
stand the sight of these unfortunates.

The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant
riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several shots. The
sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around
him merged in Rostóv’s mind into a single feeling of terror and pity
for himself. He remembered his mother’s last letter. “What would she
feel,” thought he, “if she saw me here now on this field with the
cannon aimed at me?”

In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from
the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry fire
sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the battle
was lost. No one whom Rostóv asked could tell him where the Emperor
or Kutúzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was wounded was
correct, others that it was not, and explained the false rumor that had
spread by the fact that the Emperor’s carriage had really galloped
from the field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal
Count Tolstóy, who had ridden out to the battlefield with others in
the Emperor’s suite. One officer told Rostóv that he had seen someone
from headquarters behind the village to the left, and thither Rostóv
rode, not hoping to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience. When
he had ridden about two miles and had passed the last of the Russian
troops, he saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men
on horseback facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed
familiar to Rostóv; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which
Rostóv fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his
horse with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only
a little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse’s hind hoofs.
Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially
addressed the horseman with the white plumes, evidently suggesting
that he should do the same. The rider, whose figure seemed familiar
to Rostóv and involuntarily riveted his attention, made a gesture of
refusal with his head and hand and by that gesture Rostóv instantly
recognized his lamented and adored monarch.

“But it can’t be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!”
thought Rostóv. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostóv
saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. The
Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm,
the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostóv was happy
in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded were
false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and even
ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorúkov had ordered
him to deliver.

But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the
thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a
chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is
alone with her, so Rostóv, now that he had attained what he had longed
for more than anything else in the world, did not know how to approach
the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him why it would be
inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.

“What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of
his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant or
painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him
now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight
of him?” Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the Emperor
that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall. Those
speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for the
most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph, generally
when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic
deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.

“Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the right
flank now that it is nearly four o’clock and the battle is lost?
No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
look or bad opinion from him,” Rostóv decided; and sorrowfully and
with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at the
Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.

While Rostóv was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
Rostóv from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke
long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll’s hand.

“And I might have been in his place!” thought Rostóv, and hardly
restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.

His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness was
the cause of his grief.

He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the sovereign. It
was a unique chance to show his devotion to the Emperor and he had not
made use of it.... “What have I done?” thought he. And he turned
round and galloped back to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but
there was no one beyond the ditch now. Only some carts and carriages
were passing by. From one of the drivers he learned that Kutúzov’s
staff were not far off, in the village the vehicles were going to.
Rostóv followed them. In front of him walked Kutúzov’s groom leading
horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old,
bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.

“Tit! I say, Tit!” said the groom.

“What?” answered the old man absent-mindedly.

“Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!”

“Oh, you fool!” said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed
in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.

Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. More
than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.

Przebyszéwski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other columns
after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly confused
masses.

The remains of Langeron’s and Dokhtúrov’s mingled forces were
crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of
Augesd.

After five o’clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot cannonade
(delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from numerous
batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, directed at our
retreating forces.

In the rearguard, Dokhtúrov and others rallying some battalions kept up
a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It
was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the
old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully
angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled up, handled the
floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on that dam over which for
so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully
driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty
with flour whitening their carts—on that narrow dam amid the wagons
and the cannon, under the horses’ hoofs and between the wagon wheels,
men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing one
another, dying, stepping over the dying and killing one another, only to
move on a few steps and be killed themselves in the same way.

Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around, or
a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and
splashing with blood those near them.

Dólokhov—now an officer—wounded in the arm, and on foot, with
the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by the
crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and, jammed in
on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had fallen under a
cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone
behind them, another fell in front and splashed Dólokhov with blood.
The crowd, pushing forward desperately, squeezed together, moved a few
steps, and again stopped.

“Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here
another two minutes and it is certain death,” thought each one.

Dólokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the edge
of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto the
slippery ice that covered the millpool.

“Turn this way!” he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked
under him; “turn this way!” he shouted to those with the gun. “It
bears!...”

The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it
would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon even
under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to the
bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at the
entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to address
Dólokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd that
everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general fell
from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or thought of
raising him.

“Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don’t you hear? Go
on!” innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck
the general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were
shouting.

One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto the
ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen pond.
The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped
into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to his waist.
The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped his horse, but
from behind still came the shouts: “Onto the ice, why do you stop? Go
on! Go on!” And cries of horror were heard in the crowd. The soldiers
near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to make them turn and
move on. The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that had held under
those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some forty men who were on
it dashed, some forward and some back, drowning one another.

Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop onto the
ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd that covered
the dam, the pond, and the bank.