afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much afraid that his
heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his horse
into an orderly’s charge, and he felt the blood rush to his
heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him, leaning back and
shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the hussars
running all around him, their spurs catching and their sabers clattering.
‘Stretchers!’ shouted someone behind him.
Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant;
he ran on, trying only to be ahead of the others; but just
at the bridge, not looking at the ground, he came on some
sticky, trodden mud, stumbled, and fell on his hands. The
others outstripped him.
‘At boss zides, Captain,’ he heard the voice of the colonel,
who, having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the
bridge, with a triumphant, cheerful face.
Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked
at his enemy and was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the front the better. But Bogdanich, without
looking at or recognizing Rostov, shouted to him:
‘Who’s that running on the middle of the bridge? To the
right! Come back, Cadet!’ he cried angrily; and turning to
Denisov, who, showing off his courage, had ridden on to the
planks of the bridge:
‘Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount,’ he
said.
‘Oh, every bullet has its billet,’ answered Vaska Denisov,
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turning in his saddle.
Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite
were standing together out of range of the shots, watching,
now the small group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green
jackets braided with cord, and blue riding breeches, who
were swarming near the bridge, and then at what was approaching in the distance from the opposite sidethe blue
uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as artillery.
‘Will they burn the bridge or not? Who’ll get there first?
Will they get there and fire the bridge or will the French get
within grapeshot range and wipe them out?’ These were the
questions each man of the troops on the high ground above
the bridge involuntarily asked himself with a sinking heartwatching the bridge and the hussars in the bright evening
light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with
their bayonets and guns.
‘Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!’ said Nesvitski; ‘they are
within grapeshot range now.’
‘He shouldn’t have taken so many men,’ said the officer
of the suite.
‘True enough,’ answered Nesvitski; ‘two smart fellows
could have done the job just as well.’
‘Ah, your excellency,’ put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on
the hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest.
‘Ah, your excellency! How you look at things! Send two
men? And who then would give us the Vladimir medal and
ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the squadron
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may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon.
Our Bogdanich knows how things are done.’
‘There now!’ said the officer of the suite, ‘that’s grapeshot.’
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which
were being detached and hurriedly removed.
On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a
cloud of smoke appeared, then a second and a third almost
simultaneously, and at the moment when the first report
was heard a fourth was seen. Then two reports one after another, and a third.
‘Oh! Oh!’ groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing
the officer of the suite by the arm. ‘Look! A man has fallen!
Fallen, fallen!’
‘Two, I think.’
‘If I were Tsar I would never go to war,’ said Nesvitski,
turning away.
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in
their blue uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run.
Smoke appeared again but at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the bridge. But this time
Nesvitski could not see what was happening there, as a
dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were
now firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because
the guns were trained and there was someone to fire at.
The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot
before the hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot went too high, but the last round fell in
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the midst of a group of hussars and knocked three of them
over.
Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had
paused on the bridge not knowing what to do. There was no
one to hew down (as he had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the bridge because he had not
brought any burning straw with him like the other soldiers.
He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar
nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran
up to him with the others. Again someone shouted, ‘Stretchers!’ Four men seized the hussar and began lifting him.
‘Oooh! For Christ’s sake let me alone!’ cried the wounded man, but still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for
something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the
Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky
looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and
glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the
faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the
mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of
their summits… There was peace and happiness… ‘I should
wishing for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there,’
thought Rostov. ‘In myself alone and in that sunshine there
is so much happiness; but here… groans, suffering, fear, and
this uncertainty and hurry… Therethey are shouting again,
and again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run
with them, and it, death, is here above me and around… An
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other instant and I shall never again see the sun, this water,
that gorge!..’
At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds,
and other stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the
fear of death and of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of
life, all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation.
‘O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive,
and protect me!’ Rostov whispered.
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses;
their voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.
‘Well, fwiend? So you’ve smelt powdah!’ shouted Vaska
Denisov just above his ear.
‘It’s all over; but I am a cowardyes, a coward!’ thought
Rostov, and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which
stood resting one foot, from the orderly and began to
mount.
‘Was that grapeshot?’ he asked Denisov.
‘Yes and no mistake!’ cried Denisov. ‘You worked like
wegular bwicks and it’s nasty work! An attack’s pleasant
work! Hacking away at the dogs! But this sort of thing is the
very devil, with them shooting at you like a target.’
And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near
Rostov, composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and
the officer from the suite.
‘Well, it seems that no one has noticed,’ thought Rostov.
And this was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation which the cadet under fire for the
first time had experienced.
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‘Here’s something for you to report,’ said Zherkov. ‘See if
I don’t get promoted to a sublieutenancy.’
‘Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!’ said the colonel triumphantly and gaily.
‘And if he asks about the losses?’
‘A trifle,’ said the colonel in his bass voice: ‘two hussars
wounded, and one knocked out,’ he added, unable to restrain a happy smile, and pronouncing the phrase ‘knocked
out’ with ringing distinctness.
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Chapter IX
Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men
under the command of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it, losing confidence in its allies,
suffering from shortness of supplies, and compelled to act
under conditions of war unlike anything that had been
foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men
commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the
Danube, stopping where overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions only as far as necessary to enable it to
retreat without losing its heavy equipment. There had been
actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the
courage and enduranceacknowledged even by the enemywith which the Russians fought, the only consequence of
these actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops
that had escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at
Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces.
The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared
in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been
handed to Kutuzov when he was in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost unattainable aim
remaining for him was to effect a junction with the forces
that were advancing from Russia, without losing his army
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as Mack had done at Ulm.
On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army
crossed to the left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with the river between himself and
the main body of the French. On the thirtieth he attacked
Mortier’s division, which was on the left bank, and broke it
up. In this action for the first time trophies were taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time,
after a fortnight’s retreat, the Russian troops had halted and
after a fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the
French. Though the troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and
had lost a third of their number in killed, wounded, sick,
and stragglers; though a number of sick and wounded had
been abandoned on the other side of the Danube with a letter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of
the enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in
Krems
