Napoléon.*217 17
Bonaparte’s adjutant galloped off at full speed with this threatening letter to Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting his generals, moved with all his guards to the field of battle, fearing to let the ready victim slip, while Bagration’s four-thousand-man division cheerfully lit campfires, dried out, warmed up, cooked kasha for the first time in three days, and not one man in the division knew or thought about what lay ahead of him.
XV
It was past three o’clock in the afternoon when Prince Andrei, who had persuaded Kutuzov to grant his request, arrived in Grunt and went to Bagration. Bonaparte’s adjutant had not yet reached Murat’s division, and the battle had not yet begun. In Bagration’s division, nothing was known about the general course of affairs; they talked of peace, but did not believe in its possibility. They talked of battle and also did not believe in the nearness of battle.
Bagration, knowing Bolkonsky to be a favorite and trusted adjutant, received him with a superior officer’s special distinction and indulgence, explained to him that there would probably be a battle that day or the next, and allowed him full freedom to stay by him during the battle or to supervise the order of retreat in the rear guard, “which was also very important.”
“However, there will probably be no action today,” said Bagration, as if to soothe Prince Andrei.
“If he’s one of those ordinary staff dandies sent to earn himself a little cross, he can earn it just as well in the rear guard, but if he wants to be with me, let him…he’ll be useful, if he’s a brave officer,” thought Bagration. Prince Andrei, having said nothing, asked permission to go around the lines and learn the disposition of the forces, so as to know where to go in case of an errand. The officer on duty in the detachment, a handsome man, foppishly dressed and with a diamond ring on his index finger, who spoke French poorly but eagerly, volunteered to accompany Prince Andrei.
On all sides one saw wet, sad-faced officers, who seemed to be looking for something, and soldiers, who were dragging doors, benches, and fences from the village.
“You see, Prince, we can’t rid ourselves of these folk,” said the staff officer, pointing to them. “The commanders neglect discipline. And here,” he pointed to a sutler’s tent, “they crowd in and sit. This morning I drove them all out: look, it’s full again. We must ride over, Prince, and scare them away. For a moment.”
“Let’s go in. I’ll have some bread and cheese,” said Prince Andrei, who had not yet had time to eat.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Prince? I’d have offered you my hospitality.”
They dismounted and went into the sutler’s tent. Several officers with flushed and languorous faces were sitting at tables eating and drinking.
“Well, what is this, gentlemen?” the staff officer said in a tone of reproach, like a man who has already repeated the same thing several times. “You can’t absent yourselves like this. The prince ordered that nobody should be found here. Well, take you, Mister Staff Captain,” he addressed a small, dirty, thin artillery officer, who was standing bootless before the entering men (he had given his boots to the sutler to dry), just in his stockings, smiling not quite naturally.
“Well, Captain Tushin, aren’t you ashamed?” the staff officer went on. “It would seem that you, as an artillerist, ought to set an example, and here you are bootless. They’ll sound the alarm, and a fine one you’ll be with no boots on.” (The staff officer smiled.) “Kindly go back to your posts, gentlemen—all, all of you,” he added in a superior’s tone.
Prince Andrei smiled involuntarily, looking at Captain Tushin. Silent and smiling, Tushin shifted from one bare foot to the other, and looked questioningly with his large, intelligent and kindly eyes first at Prince Andrei, then at the staff officer.
“Soldiers say it’s nimbler barefoot,” said Captain Tushin with a timorous smile, evidently wishing to turn his awkward position into a joke.
But before he finished, he felt that his joke was unsuccessful and had not gone over. He became embarrassed.
“Kindly go,” said the staff officer, trying to maintain his seriousness.
Prince Andrei looked once more at the little figure of the artillerist. There was something special in it, totally unmilitary, slightly comical, but extremely attractive.
The staff officer and Prince Andrei got on their horses and rode further.
Having left the village, constantly meeting and going ahead of walking soldiers, officers of various detachments, they saw to their left the reddish, fresh, newly dug clay of the fortification under construction. Several battalions of soldiers in nothing but their shirts, despite the cold wind, were swarming like white ants over this fortification; someone invisible kept shoveling out red clay from behind the rampart. They rode up to the fortification, examined it, and rode on. Just behind the fortification they ran into several dozen soldiers, constantly replacing each other, running down the rampart. They had to hold their noses and set their horses at a trot to get away from that poisoned atmosphere.
“Voilà l’agrément des camps, monsieur le prince,”*218 said the staff officer on duty.
They rode to the opposite hill. From this hill they could already see the French. Prince Andrei stopped and began to examine.
“Here’s where our battery stands,” said the staff officer, indicating the highest point, “the one of that odd bird who was sitting there without boots. You can see everything from there: let’s go, Prince.”
“I humbly thank you, I’ll go by myself now,” said Prince Andrei, wishing to rid himself of the staff officer, “don’t trouble yourself, please.”
The staff officer stayed behind, and Prince Andrei rode on alone.
The further ahead he moved, the closer to the enemy, the more orderly and cheerful the troops looked. The greatest disorder and despondency had been in that baggage train before Znaim, which Prince Andrei had circled around in the morning, and which was some seven miles away from the French. In Grunt there was also a feeling of a certain alarm and fear of something. But the closer Prince Andrei rode to the French line, the more self-assured our troops looked. Lined up in ranks, the soldiers stood in their greatcoats, and a sergeant major and a company commander counted heads, jabbing a finger towards the last soldier in the row and ordering him to raise his hand; scattered all over the area, soldiers were carrying firewood and brushwood and building little lean-tos, laughing merrily and talking among themselves; some sat by the campfires, dressed or naked, drying their shirts and foot cloths, or mending boots and greatcoats, crowding around the cauldrons and cooks. In one company, dinner was ready, and the soldiers looked greedily at the steaming cauldrons, waiting until an officer who was sitting on a log facing his lean-to had tried the kasha brought to him in a wooden bowl by a quartermaster sergeant.
In another, more fortunate company, since not all of them had vodka, soldiers crowded around a pockmarked, broad-shouldered sergeant major, who, tipping a keg, poured into the canteen caps that the soldiers held out in turn. The soldiers, with pious faces, brought the caps to their mouths, upended them, and, rinsing their mouths and wiping them on their greatcoat sleeves, walked away from the sergeant major with cheered faces. All the faces were as calm as though everything was happening not in view of the enemy, prior to an action in which at least half the division would be left on the field, but somewhere in their home country, in expectation of a peaceful stay. Having passed the regiment of chasseurs, and through the lines of the Kievsky grenadiers—brave folk, occupied with the same peaceful affairs—Prince Andrei drew near the tall lean-to, unlike the others, of the regimental commander, and came out to a lined-up platoon of grenadiers before whom lay a stripped man. Two soldiers were holding him, and two, swinging supple switches, were beating him rhythmically on his stripped back. The punished man was crying out unnaturally. A fat major walked in front of the line and, paying no attention to the cries, ceaselessly repeated: