there, Prince.’
‘Thank you very much, I will go on alone,’ said Prince
Andrew, wishing to rid himself of this staff officer’s company, ‘please don’t trouble yourself further.’
The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew
rode on alone.
The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the
more orderly and cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had been in the baggage train he had
passed that morning on the Znaim road seven miles away
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from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and
alarm could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to
the French lines the more confident was the appearance of
our troops. The soldiers in their greatcoats were ranged in
lines, the sergeants major and company officers were counting the men, poking the last man in each section in the ribs
and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers scattered over
the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and
were building shelters with merry chatter and laughter;
around the fires sat others, dressed and undressed, drying
their shirts and leg bands or mending boots or overcoats
and crowding round the boilers and porridge cookers. In
one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers were gazing eagerly at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample,
which a quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden
bowl to an officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had
been tasted.
Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies
had vodka, crowded round a pock-marked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who, tilting a keg, filled one after
another the canteen lids held out to him. The soldiers lifted
the canteen lids to their lips with reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, and walked
away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions,
licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their
greatcoats. All their faces were as serene as if all this were
happening at home awaiting peaceful encampment, and not
within sight of the enemy before an action in which at least
half of them would be left on the field. After passing a chas
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seur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev grenadiersfine
fellows busy with similar peaceful affairsnear the shelter of
the regimental commander, higher than and different from
the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of
grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held
him while two others were flourishing their switches and
striking him regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked
unnaturally. A stout major was pacing up and down the
line, and regardless of the screams kept repeating:
‘It’s a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest, honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is
no honor in him, he’s a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!’
So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate
but unnatural screams, continued.
‘Go on, go on!’ said the major.
A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression
on his face stepped away from the man and looked round
inquiringly at the adjutant as he rode by.
Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along
it. Our front line and that of the enemy were far apart on
the right and left flanks, but in the center where the men
with a flag of truce had passed that morning, the lines were
so near together that the men could see one another’s faces
and speak to one another. Besides the soldiers who formed
the picket line on either side, there were many curious onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their strange
foreign enemies.
Since early morningdespite an injunction not to approach the picket linethe officers had been unable to keep
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sight-seers away. The soldiers forming the picket line, like
showmen exhibiting a curiosity, no longer looked at the
French but paid attention to the sight-seers and grew weary
waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew halted to have a look
at the French.
‘Look! Look there!’ one soldier was saying to another,
pointing to a Russian musketeer who had gone up to the
picket line with an officer and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. ‘Hark to him jabbering!
Fine, isn’t it? It’s all the Frenchy can do to keep up with him.
There now, Sidorov!’
‘Wait a bit and listen. It’s fine!’ answered Sidorov, who
was considered an adept at French.
The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince Andrew recognized him and stopped to listen
to what he was saying. Dolokhov had come from the left
flank where their regiment was stationed, with his captain.
‘Now then, go on, go on!’ incited the officer, bending forward and trying not to lose a word of the speech which was
incomprehensible to him. ‘More, please: more! What’s he
saying?’
Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn
into a hot dispute with the French grenadier. They were
naturally talking about the campaign. The Frenchman,
confusing the Austrians with the Russians, was trying to
prove that the Russians had surrendered and had fled all the
way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the Russians had not surrendered but had beaten the French.
‘We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive
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you off,’ said Dolokhov.
‘Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!’ said the French grenadier.
The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
‘We’ll make you dance as we did under Suvorov…,’* said
Dolokhov.
”On vous fera danser.’ ‘Qu’ est-ce qu’il chante?’ asked a Frenchman.
*”What’s he singing about?’
‘It’s ancient history,’ said another, guessing that it referred to a former war. ‘The Emperor will teach your Suvara
as he has taught the others..’
‘Bonaparte…’ began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
‘Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom…!’ cried
he angrily.
‘The devil skin your Emperor.’
And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier’s Russian
and shouldering his musket walked away.
‘Let us go, Ivan Lukich,’ he said to the captain.
‘Ah, that’s the way to talk French,’ said the picket soldiers. ‘Now, Sidorov, you have a try!’
Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to
jabber meaningless sounds very fast: ‘Kari, mala, tafa, safi,
muter, Kaska,’ he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.
‘Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!’ came peals of
such healthy and good-humored laughter from the soldiers
that it infected the French involuntarily, so much so that the
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only thing left to do seemed to be to unload the muskets,
muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return home as
quickly as possible.
But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and entrenchments looked out just as menacingly,
and the unlimbered cannon confronted one another as before.
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Chapter XVI
Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to
left, Prince Andrew made his way up to the battery from
which the staff officer had told him the whole field could be
seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped beside the farthest
of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns an artillery
sentry was pacing up and down; he stood at attention when
the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were their limbers and
still farther back picket ropes and artillerymen’s bonfires.
To the left, not far from the farthest cannon, was a small,
newly constructed wattle shed from which came the sound
of officers’ voices in eager conversation.
It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and the greater part of the enemy’s opened out from
this battery. Just facing it, on the crest of the opposite hill,
the village of Schon Grabern could be seen, and in three
places to left and right the French troops amid the smoke
of their campfires, the greater part of whom were evidently
in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left from that
village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a battery, but it was impossible to see it clearly with the naked
eye. Our right flank was posted on a rather steep incline
which dominated the French position. Our infantry were
stationed there, and at the farthest point the dragoons. In
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the center, where Tushin’s battery stood and from which
Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the easiest
and most direct descent and ascent to the brook separating
us from Schon Grabern. On the left our troops were close to
a copse, in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who
were felling wood. The French line was wider than ours, and
it was plain that they could easily outflank us on both sides.
Behind our position was a steep and deep dip, making it
difficult for artillery and cavalry to retire. Prince Andrew
took out his notebook and, leaning on the cannon, sketched
a plan of the position. He made some notes on two points,
intending to mention them to Bagration. His idea was, first,
to concentrate all the artillery in the center, and secondly,
to withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince
Andrew, being always near the commander in chief, closely
following the mass movements and general orders, and constantly studying historical accounts of battles, involuntarily
pictured to himself the course of events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only important
possibilities: ‘If the enemy attacks the right flank,’ he said
to himself, ‘the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs
must hold their position till reserves from the center come
up. In that case the dragoons could successfully make a
flank counterattack. If they attack our center we, having the
center battery on this high ground, shall withdraw the left
flank under its cover, and retreat to the dip by echelons.’
So he reasoned…. All the time he had been beside the gun,
he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly, but as often happens had not understood a word of what they were
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saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming
from the shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not
but listen.
‘No, friend,’ said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince
Andrew, a familiar voice, ‘what I say is that if it were possible to know what is beyond death, none of us would
