The staff officer rode off, and Prince Andrey went on alone.
The further forward and the closer to the enemy he went, the more orderly and cheerful he found the troops. The worst of the disorder and despondency had been seen in the transport column just outside Znaim which Prince Andrey had passed that morning, six or seven miles away from the French. He had also felt some degree of alarm and a vague sense of apprehension at Grunth. But the nearer Prince Andrey got to the actual French lines, the more confident our troops appeared to be. The soldiers stood in orderly ranks wearing their greatcoats while their sergeant-major and the captain were numbering off, poking the last soldier in each section in the chest and telling him to raise his hand. Soldiers were scattered about everywhere, bringing logs and brushwood, knocking up little shacks, chatting together and laughing in high spirits. They sat round the campfires, some dressed and some stripped, drying off their shirts and leg-bands or seeing to their boots and coats. Many of them thronged around the cauldrons and porridge pots. In one company the meal was ready and the soldiers gazed at the steaming pots with ravenous faces, waiting for the quartermaster sergeant to take a bowlful over to an officer sitting on a log outside his shack so that he could sample it.
In another company, luckier than most - they didn't all get vodka - the soldiers crowded around their thick-set, pockmarked sergeant while he tilted a keg of vodka and poured it into the canteen lids offered up in turn. With a heavenly look on their faces the soldiers lifted the lids to their mouths, tossed them back, licked their lips and then, wiping their mouths on their coat sleeves, strolled off looking nice and merry. Every face was calm; it was as if all this were happening not in sight of the enemy and just before a battle in which at least half of them would be left behind on the field, but somewhere back home in Russia, with the prospect of a nice quiet halt for the night. Prince Andrey rode past a chasseur regiment and on to the ranks of the Kiev Grenadiers, splendid men, all engaged in the same peaceful activities. Not far from the colonel's rather superior little hut he came upon a platoon of grenadiers, with a man stripped naked lying on the ground in front of them. Two soldiers held him down while two others were swinging supple birches, lashing them down rhythmically across the man's bare back. The man screamed like nothing on earth. A stout major was walking up and down in front of the platoon, ignoring the screams and saying to the men, 'It's a disgrace for a soldier to steal. A soldier must be honest, honourable and brave. Anyone who steals from a brother must be without honour. He's a swine! Keep it going!'
The measured lashing continued; so did the desperate screaming, though some of it may have been for effect.
'Keep it going!' said the major over and again.
A young officer walked away from the flogging, his face a picture of bewilderment and sorrow, looking quizzically at the adjutant.
Prince Andrey rode out to the front and then along the line. On both flanks the two lines, ours and the enemy's, were quite a long way away from each other, but in the centre, where the emissaries had come over that morning, the lines came so close together that the soldiers of the two armies could see each other's faces and talk to each other. Besides the picket line itself, many onlookers had gathered on both sides, enjoying a good laugh as they scrutinized the enemy, who looked to them like weird and alien beings.
Since early morning, although the line was officially out of bounds, the commanding officers had not been able to keep the curious onlookers away. The soldiers who made up the line were now carrying on like showmen with some novelty to offer. They had stopped looking at the French and were wholly absorbed by the men who had come up to have a look - anything to distract them from boredom as they waited to be relieved. Prince Andrey stopped and took his measure of the French.
'Hey, mate, look at them two,' said one soldier to his pal, pointing to a Russian musketeer who had gone up to the very front with an officer and was repeatedly bellowing something across to a French grenadier. ' 'E can go on a bit, can't 'e? Old froggy can't get a word in. 'Ow about that, Sidorov?'
''Ang on, let's listen. Dead right, 'e knows 'is stuff,' replied Sidorov, who fancied himself as a bit of a French expert.
The soldier they were pointing to and laughing at was Dolokhov. Prince Andrey recognized him and listened to what he was saying. Dolokhov had come over with his captain from the left flank, where his regiment was stationed.
'Go on, ask him again!' the captain urged, straining forward in an attempt to catch every word, even though he didn't understand them. 'Please keep it going. What's he trying to say?'
Dolokhov didn't answer the captain, having been drawn into a fierce argument with the French grenadier. They were talking, inevitably, about the campaign. The Frenchman had got the Austrians and the Russians mixed up, and he was claiming that the Russians had surrendered and had been on the run all the way from Ulm. Dolokhov was telling him that the Russians had never surrendered - no, they had beaten the French.
'Our orders are to drive you out of here, and that's what we're going to do,' said Dolokhov.
'Make sure you don't get captured, you and your Cossacks,' said the French grenadier to a roar of laughter from everyone watching and listening on the French side.
'Remember Suvorov? He made you dance and we'll have you dancing again!' said Dolokhov.
'What's he on about?' asked a Frenchman.
'Ancient history,' said another, guessing that it had something to do with previous wars. 'Our Emperor will give you a dose of Suvara, same as he did with all the others . . .'
'Bonaparte . . .' Dolokhov began, only to be interrupted by the Frenchman.
'Don't you say Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! His name is sacred!' came the angry shout.
'Damn and sod your Emperor!' And Dolokhov cursed like a soldier in his vilest Russian, before shouldering his gun and walking away.
'Come on, Ivan Lukich,' he said to his captain, 'let's go.'
'Bit of good froggy French there,' said the soldiers down the line. 'Come on, Sidorov, your turn!' Sidorov winked at them, turned to face the French and began to gabble strange words as fast as he could. 'Kari mala tafa safi muter kaska!' he rattled out, trying to embellish his message with the most expressive intonation he could manage.
The Russian soldiers burst into a great roar of happy, hearty laughter, and the French line took it up so spontaneously that you would have thought the only thing to do now was to unload the guns, blow up the ammunition and get back home as soon as possible. But the muskets remained loaded, the marksmen's slits in buildings and earthworks stared out as ominously as ever, and the big guns still stood ready, ranged against each other.
CHAPTER 16
After doubling around the whole front line from right flank to left, Prince Andrey rode uphill to the battery which the staff officer had described as offering a good view of the whole field. Here he dismounted and stood by the farthest cannon in a line of four, prepared for firing. An artilleryman on sentry duty in front of the big guns looked ready to come to attention at the approach of an officer, but at a signal he resumed the steady, tedious pace of his patrol. Behind the cannon stood the front sections of their carriages, and behind them were the tethered horses and campfires of the artillerymen. To the left, not far from the farthest cannon, the sounds of officers' voices in lively conversation emerged from a little, new wattle hut.
And indeed, the battery gave a splendid view of almost the whole spread of the Russian forces, and most of the enemy's too. Straight across from the battery, on the crest of the opposite hill he could see the village of Schongrabern, to the left and right of which there were three places where masses of French troops could be seen through the campfire smoke, though it was clear that most of them had been kept back in the village itself and over the hill. To the left of the village something resembling a battery lurked in the smoke, indistinct to the naked eye. Our right flank was deployed on a rather steep hillside dominating the French position. Our infantry had been placed there too, and the
dragoons were visible behind them on the very top of the ridge. In the centre stood Tushin's battery, from which Prince Andrey was now surveying the landscape; here the ground below fell away very steeply before rising towards the stream that separated us from Schongrabern. On the left our troops stuck close to the woods, and smoke rose up from campfires where our infantry had been detailed to cut wood. The French line was wider than ours, and it would obviously be an easy task for the French to outflank us on both sides. To our rear there was a precipitous ravine, down which retreat with artillery and cavalry would be difficult.
Prince Andrey leant one elbow on the cannon, took out a note-book and sketched a plan of the disposition of the troops. In two places he jotted down some pencilled notes, meaning to bring them up with Bagration. His first proposal would be to concentrate all the artillery in the centre, and the second would involve pulling the cavalry back and sending them to the other side of the ravine. Prince Andrey was used to standing near the commander-in-chief, watching the movements of masses of men and large-scale manoeuvres, and he had long been a student of military history, so now it was inevitable that he would take a generalized view of the impending operations. He always imagined things on a grand scale. 'If the enemy attacks us on the right flank,' he told himself, for example, 'the Kiev Grenadiers and Podolsky Chasseurs will have to hold their positions until reserves from the centre reach them. In this event the dragoons could counter-attack and drive them back. In case of an attack on the centre, though, we should deploy the central battery on this height, and use its cover to withdraw the left flank and effect a staged retreat as far as the ravine.' This was his way of thinking . . .
As he stood there in the battery next to the cannon, he was aware of officers' voices emanating from the hut, but, as often happens, he wasn't taking in a word of what they were saying. Then suddenly he heard someone speak with such feeling that he couldn't help listening.
'No, my dear fellow,' said a pleasant voice that struck him as vaguely familiar, 'I'm telling you - if we could know what's going to happen after we're dead not one of us would be scared of dying. There you have it, old man.'
A younger voice interrupted him to say, 'Anyway, scared or not, it comes to us all.'
'But you're still scared! You lot with your education,' said a different, mature voice, cutting across the first two. 'You gunners think you know it all, because you can take everything with you. Never short of a drop to drink or a bite to eat.'
This brought a laugh from the owner of the mature voice, apparently an infantry officer.
'But we're still scared,' insisted the first voice, the one that Prince Andrey half-recognized. 'We're scared of the unknown, that's what it's all about. It's all right saying the soul goes up to heaven . . . we know for certain there isn't any heaven - there's only the atmosphere up there.'
Once again the mature voice interrupted. 'Come on, Tushin, give us a drop of your home-made vodka.'
'Oh, it's that captain in the canteen with no boots on,' thought Prince Andrey, delighted to recognize that pleasant voice now so full of philosophy.
'Yes, have a swig,' said Tushin, 'but listen, the idea of a life to come . . .'
He never finished his sentence. At that moment a great whoosh came through the air. Nearer, nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, and a cannonball - also not quite saying everything it wanted to say - thudded into the ground not far away, blasting the earth with superhuman force. The earth seemed to groan at receiving such a terrible blow. Immediately the diminutive Tushin dashed out of the hut before anyone else, with his short pipe stuck in the corner in his mouth and his kind, bright face looking rather pale. Then came the owner of the mature voice, a dashing infantry officer, who rushed off to get back to his company, buttoning up his jacket as he ran.
CHAPTER 17
Prince Andrey mounted his horse but stayed at the battery for a while, staring at the smoke rising from the cannon that had fired the ball. His eyes swept the wide open spaces. What registered with him was that the previously solid masses of the French were beginning to move, and there really was a battery on the left-hand side, the smoke above it having not yet cleared. Two French horsemen, probably adjutants, were galloping across the hill. A small column of enemy troops was clearly visible, moving downhill, probably to strengthen the line. Before the smoke of the first shot had cleared there came another puff of smoke and another report. The battle was beginning. Prince Andrey turned his horse and galloped back to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. Behind him he could hear the bombardment getting louder and more frequent - a sign that our guns were beginning to respond. Musket-fire rang out down below at the spot where the lines were closest.
Lemarrois had only just delivered Napoleon's ominous letter, and the humiliated Murat, desperate to make up for his mistake, rapidly moved his forces for an attack from the centre and a double flanking manoeuvre, hoping to destroy the puny detachment facing him before evening and before the arrival of the Emperor.
'It's started! This is it!' thought Prince Andrey, feeling the blood surging around his heart. 'But where do I look? How do I find my Toulon?' he wondered.
Riding through companies that only a quarter of an hour earlier had been eating porridge and drinking vodka, he could see the same rapid movement everywhere as soldiers fell in and got their muskets ready, and on every face he could see the same excitement that he felt in his heart. 'It's here! This is it! God, I'm scared, but it's marvellous!' said every face of officer and man. Before he got back to the unfinished earthworks, through the late afternoon gloom of a dull autumn day he saw several men riding towards him. The first of them, wearing a cloak and an astrakhan cap, and riding a white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrey stopped and waited for him to come on. Prince Bagration reined in his horse, recognized Prince Andrey and nodded to him. He continued to gaze ahead while Prince Andrey told him what he had seen.
A touch of It's here! This is it! was noticeable even on Prince Bagration's strong brown face, with his half-closed, dull-looking eyes that betrayed a lack of sleep. With excited curiosity Prince Andrey kept glancing at that impassive face, wondering whether this man was thinking and feeling anything at this moment, and then what he was thinking and feeling. 'Is there anything there behind that straight face?' Prince Andrey asked himself as he watched him. Prince Bagration nodded to acknowledge Andrey's words, and said, 'Carry on,' in a tone which implied that all these events, everything reported to him, were going to plan. Prince Andrey was out of breath from his hard riding, and he spoke rapidly. Prince Bagration had an oriental accent and now pronounced his words with great deliberation, as if to impress upon him that there was no need to hurry. He did, however, spur his horse to a trot before riding towards Tushin's battery. Prince Andrey went after him as part of the entourage. The party consisted of an officer of the suite, Bagration's personal aide, Zherkov, an orderly officer, the duty staff officer on a handsome bobtailed horse and a civil servant, an auditor, who had asked permission to watch the action. The auditor, a podgy man with a podgy face, looked around with a naive smile of amusement, flopping about on his horse, a preposterous figure among the hussars, Cossacks and adjutants with his camel-hair coat and borrowed saddle.
'He wants to see some action,' said Zherkov to Bolkonsky, with a nod towards the auditor, 'but his tummy's playing up already.'
'That's enough of that,' beamed the auditor, with a simple but knowing smile, as if he felt quite flattered to be ridiculed by Zherkov, and wanted to make himself seem stupider than he really was.
'Most amusing, my Mr Prince,' said the duty staff officer, who knew there was a special way of using the Russian title knyaz (prince) in French, but kept getting it wrong. By this time they had all ridden up close to Tushin's battery, and a cannonball hit the ground not far ahead of them.
'What was that?' asked the auditor with his naive smile.
'A French pancake,' said Zherkov.
'So that's what they fight with,' observed the audit
or. 'That's awful!' But he seemed nevertheless to swell up with pleasure. Hardly were these words out of his mouth when suddenly there came another terrible whoosh ending in a thudding splash into something soft, and with a great squelch a Cossack riding just behind him to the right toppled to the ground from his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent over their saddles and turned their horses away. The auditor stopped a short distance from the Cossack and gave him close scrutiny. He was dead, but his horse still struggled.
Prince Bagration looked round squinting, noted what the delay was and casually turned back as if to say, 'I can't be bothered with silly details.' He reined in with the skill of an expert horseman, leant slightly to one side and freed his sword which had snagged in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned sword, no longer worn by anyone. Prince Andrey recalled the story that Suvorov had given his sword to Bagration in Italy, and the memory of it gave him a particular thrill at that moment. By now they had reached the battery from which Prince Andrey had surveyed the battlefield.
'Who's in charge here?' Prince Bagration asked an NCO gunner standing beside the ammunition boxes.
When he asked, 'Who's in charge here?', he seemed to be saying, 'Not gone soft, have you?' and the gunner understood.
'Captain Tushin, sir,' came the breezy response from the red-haired, freckle-faced young man as he came to attention.
'Good, good,' said a deeply preoccupied Bagration and he rode past the gun-carriages towards the end cannon. Just before he got there a shot boomed out from it, deafening him and his suite, and through the smoke that suddenly enveloped the big gun they watched the gunners grab the cannon, strain against it and trundle it back into position. A huge burly soldier, the number one gunner holding the cleaning rod, sprang up to the wheel, his legs widely braced, while number two rammed the charge down the cannon's mouth with a shaking hand. Captain Tushin, short and stooping, tripped over the gun-carriage as he dashed forward, without noticing the general, to stare into the distance, shading his eyes with a tiny hand.