Pierre understood that this mysterious force completely
controlled these men and that it was now useless to say any
more.
1907
The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers
and told to march in front. There were about thirty officers,
with Pierre among them, and about three hundred men.
The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all
strangers to Pierre and much better dressed than he. They
looked at him and at his shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien.
Not far from him walked a fat major with a sallow, bloated,
angry face, who was wearing a Kazan dressing grown tied
round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of
his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in which he clasped
his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing gown
and held the stem of his pipe firmly with the other. Panting
and puffing, the major grumbled and growled at everybody
because he thought he was being pushed and that they were
all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry to and were
all surprised at something when there was nothing to be
surprised at. Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to
everyone, conjecturing where they were now being taken
and how far they would get that day. An official in felt boots
and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side
to side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his observations as to what had been burned down and
what this or that part of the city was that they could see. A
third officer, who by his accent was a Pole, disputed with the
commissariat officer, arguing that he was mistaken in his
identification of the different wards of Moscow.
‘What are you disputing about?’ said the major angrily.
‘What does it matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius?
You see it’s burned down, and there’s an end of it…. What
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are you pushing for? Isn’t the road wide enough?’ said he,
turning to a man behind him who was not pushing him at
all.
‘Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?’ the prisoners on one
side and another were heard saying as they gazed on the
charred ruins. ‘All beyond the river, and Zubova, and in the
Kremlin…. Just look! There’s not half of it left. Yes, I told
youthe whole quarter beyond the river, and so it is.’
‘Well, you know it’s burned, so what’s the use of talking?’
said the major.
As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of
the few unburned quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of
prisoners suddenly started to one side and exclamations of
horror and disgust were heard.
‘Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he
is… And smeared with something!’
Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that
evoked these exclamations, and dimly made out something
leaning against the palings surrounding the church. From
the words of his comrades who saw better than he did, he
found that this was the body of a man, set upright against
the palings with its face smeared with soot.
‘Go on! What the devil… Go on! Thirty thousand devils!…’ the convoy guards began cursing and the French
soldiers, with fresh virulence, drove away with their swords
the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at the dead man.
1909
Chapter XIV
Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter
the prisoners marched, followed only by their escort and
the vehicles and wagons belonging to that escort, but when
they reached the supply stores they came among a huge and
closely packed train of artillery mingled with private vehicles.
At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to
get across. From the bridge they had a view of endless lines
of moving baggage trains before and behind them. To the
right, where the Kaluga road turns near Neskuchny, endless
rows of troops and carts stretched away into the distance.
These were troops of Beauharnais’ corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the riverside and
across the Stone Bridge, were Ney’s troops and transport.
Davout’s troops, in whose charge were the prisoners,
were crossing the Crimean bridge and some were already
debouching into the Kaluga road. But the baggage trains
stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais’ train had not
yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kaluga road when
the vanguard of Ney’s army was already emerging from the
Great Ordynka Street.
When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few steps forward, halted, and again moved
on, and from all sides vehicles and men crowded closer
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and closer together. They advanced the few hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking
more than an hour to do so, and came out upon the square
where the streets of the Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and the prisoners jammed close together
had to stand for some hours at that crossway. From all sides,
like the roar of the sea, were heard the rattle of wheels, the
tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger and abuse.
Pierre stood pressed against the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise which mingled in his imagination with
the roll of the drums.
To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed
onto the wall of the half-burned house against which Pierre
was leaning.
‘What crowds! Just look at the crowds!… They’ve loaded goods even on the cannon! Look there, those are furs!’
they exclaimed. ‘Just see what the blackguards have looted…. There! See what that one has behind in the cart….
Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by heaven!…
Oh, the rascals!… See how that fellow has loaded himself
up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they’ve even grabbed
those chaises!… See that fellow there sitting on the trunks….
Heavens! They’re fighting.’
‘That’s right, hit him on the snouton his snout! Like this,
we shan’t get away before evening. Look, look there…. Why,
that must be Napoleon’s own. See what horses! And the
monograms with a crown! It’s like a portable house…. That
fellow’s dropped his sack and doesn’t see it. Fighting again…
A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking either! Yes, I
1911
dare say, that’s the way they’ll let you pass… Just look, there’s
no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In
carriagessee how comfortably they’ve settled themselves!’
Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general
curiosity bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and
Pierre, thanks to his stature, saw over the heads of the others
what so attracted their curiosity. In three carriages involved
among the munition carts, closely squeezed together, sat
women with rouged faces, dressed in glaring colors, who
were shouting something in shrill voices.
From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious force nothing had seemed to him
strange or dreadful: neither the corpse smeared with soot
for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned ruins of Moscow. All that he now witnessed scarcely made an
impression on himas if his soul, making ready for a hard
struggle, refused to receive impressions that might weaken
it.
The women’s vehicles drove by. Behind them came more
carts, soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages,
soldiers, ammunition carts, more soldiers, and now and
then women.
Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their
movement.
All these people and horses seemed driven forward by
some invisible power. During the hour Pierre watched
them they all came flowing from the different streets with
one and the same desire to get on quickly; they all jostled
one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white teeth
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gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse flew
from side to side, and all the faces bore the same swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck
Pierre that morning on the corporal’s face when the drums
were beating.
It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding
the escort collected his men and with shouts and quarrels
forced his way in among the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged onto the Kaluga road.
They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun began to set. The baggage carts drew
up close together and the men began to prepare for their
night’s rest. They all appeared angry and dissatisfied. For a
long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could be heard
from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran into
one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole. Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some
beat the carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside,
others fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one
German was badly wounded on the head by a sword.
It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped
amid fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same feeling of unpleasant awakening
from the hurry and eagerness to push on that had seized
them at the start. Once at a standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet know where they were going,
and that much that was painful and difficult awaited them
on this journey.
During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even
1913
worse than they had done at the start. It was here that the
prisoners for the first time received horseflesh for their meat
ration.
From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed
what seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to their former friendly
relations.
This spite increased still more when, on calling over the
roll of prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving
Moscow one Russian soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman beat
a Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from the road,
and heard his friend the captain reprimand and threaten
to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on account of
the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer’s
excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order was to shoot those who lagged
behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force which had crushed
him during the executions, but which be had not felt during his
