Rostov, preoccupied by his relations with Bogdanych, stopped on the bridge, not knowing what to do with himself. There was no one to cut down (as he had always pictured battle to himself), nor could he help set fire to the bridge, because, unlike the other soldiers, he had not brought a plait of straw with him. He was standing and looking about, when suddenly there was a rattling on the bridge, as if someone had spilled nuts, and one of the hussars, the one nearest him, fell on the railing with a groan. Rostov ran to him with the others. Again someone cried: “Stretcher!” Four men took hold of the hussar and began to lift him up.
“Oooh! Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake,” the wounded man cried; but all the same they lifted him up and laid him on the stretcher.
Nikolai Rostov turned away, and, as if searching for something, began looking at the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, at the sun! How good the sky seemed, how blue, calm, and deep! How bright and solemn the setting sun! How tenderly and lustrously glistened the waters of the distant Danube! And better still were the distant blue hills beyond the Danube, the convent, the mysterious gorges, the pine forests bathed in mist to their tops…there was peace, happiness…“There’s nothing, nothing I would wish for, there’s nothing I would wish for, if only I were there,” thought Rostov. “In me alone and in this sun there is so much happiness, but here…groans, suffering, fear, and this obscurity, this hurry…Again they’re shouting something, and again everybody’s run back somewhere, and I’m running with them, and here it is, here it is, death, above me, around me…An instant, and I’ll never again see this sun, this water, this gorge…”
Just then the sun began to hide itself behind the clouds. Ahead of Rostov, another stretcher appeared. And his fear of death and the stretcher, and his love of the sun and life—all merged into one painfully disturbing impression.
“Lord God! the one there in this sky, save, forgive, and protect me!” Rostov whispered to himself.
The hussars ran up to the handlers, the voices became louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.
“What, brother, got a whiff of powder?” Denisov’s voice shouted by his ear.
“It’s all over, but I’m a coward, yes, I’m a coward,” thought Rostov and, sighing deeply, he took his lame Little Rook from the handler and began to mount.
“What was it, canister shot?” he asked Denisov.
“And then some!” shouted Denisov. “Good work, lads! And it was a rotten job! Attacking’s a lovely thing, cut ’em to pieces, but here, devil knows, it’s more like target practice.”
And Denisov rode off to a group that had stopped not far from Rostov: the regimental commander, Nesvitsky, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite.
“However, it seems nobody noticed,” Rostov thought to himself. And indeed no one had noticed anything, because they were all familiar with the feeling a junker experiences when he is under fire for the first time.
“There’ll be a report in it for you,” said Zherkov. “Just see if I don’t get promoted sublieutenant.”
“Inform the prince that I haf set feuer to the bridge,” the colonel said triumphantly and cheerfully.
“And what if he asks about the losses?”
“Trifles!” the colonel boomed. “Two hussars wounded and one killed on the spot,” he said with obvious joy, unable to hold back a happy smile, sonorously rapping out the beautiful phrase killed on the spot.
IX
Pursued by the hundred-thousand-man French army under the leadership of Bonaparte, encountering a hostile local populace, no longer trusting their allies, suffering from a shortness of supplies, and forced to act outside all foreseeable conditions of war, the thirty-five-thousand-man Russian army, under the leadership of Kutuzov, hastily retreated down the Danube, stopping whenever the enemy caught up with it and fighting rear-guard actions, only insofar as it was necessary in order to retreat without loss of heavy equipment. There was action at Lambach, Amstetten, and Mölk;6 but despite the courage and steadfastness, acknowledged by the enemy themselves, with which the Russians fought, the result of these actions was only a still speedier retreat. The Austrian troops that had escaped capture at Ulm and joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and Kutuzov was left with nothing but his own weak, exhausted forces. To defend Vienna was no longer thinkable. Instead of the offensive war, profoundly thought out according to the laws of the new science of strategy, the plan of which had been given to Kutuzov while in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole, almost unattainable goal now remaining for Kutuzov was to unite with the troops coming from Russia without losing his own army, as Mack had done at Ulm.
On the twenty-eighth of October, Kutuzov crossed with his army to the left bank of the Danube and halted for the first time, having put the Danube between himself and the main forces of the French. On the thirtieth he attacked Mortier’s division, which was on the left bank of the Danube, and crushed it. In this action trophies were taken for the first time: a banner, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time, after a two-week retreat, the Russian troops halted and after the fighting not only held the field of battle but drove the French away. Despite the fact that the troops were ill-clad, worn-out, weakened by a third with the stragglers, the wounded, the dead, and the sick; despite the fact that the sick and the wounded had been left on the other side of the Danube with a letter from Kutuzov entrusting them to the humaneness of the enemy; despite the fact that the big hospitals and the houses in Krems that had been turned into infirmaries could no longer accommodate all the sick and wounded—despite all that, the halt at Krems and the victory over Mortier raised the spirits of the troops significantly. Throughout the army and in headquarters joyful, though incorrect, rumors were rife about the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, about some victory won by the Austrians, and about the retreat of the frightened Bonaparte.
At the time of the battle, Prince Andrei was attached to the Austrian general Schmidt, killed in that action. His horse had been shot from under him, and his arm had been slightly grazed by a bullet. As a sign of special favor, the commander in chief had sent him with news of the victory to the Austrian court, no longer in Vienna, which was threatened by the French, but in Brünn. On the night of the battle, Prince Andrei, agitated but not tired (despite his apparently slight build, Prince Andrei could endure physical fatigue far better than the strongest people), having come on horseback with a message from Dokhturov to Kutuzov in Krems, was sent that same night as a courier to Brünn. Being sent as a courier, apart from its rewards, also signified an important step towards promotion.
The night was dark, starry; the road lay black amidst the white snow that had fallen that day, the day of the battle. Now going over his impressions of the past battle, now joyfully imagining the impression he would make with his news of the victory, recalling his leavetaking from the commander in chief and his comrades, Prince Andrei galloped along in a post britzka, experiencing the feeling of a man who has long been awaiting and has finally achieved the beginning of the happiness he desired. As soon as he closed his eyes, the firing of muskets and cannon resounded in his ears, merging with the rattle of the carriage and the impression of the victory. Now he would begin to imagine that the Russians were fleeing, that he himself had been killed; but then he would hurriedly wake up and happily learn as if for the first time that none of it had happened and that, on the contrary, the French had fled. He would recall once more all the details of the victory, his calm manliness during the battle, and, reassured, would doze off…After the dark starry night came a bright, cheerful morning. The snow melted in the sun, the horses galloped swiftly, and to right and left alike passed new and various forests, fields, villages.