“Captain Tushin’s, Your Excellency,” the red-haired, freckle-faced fireworker cried out in a merry voice, snapping to attention.
“So, so,” said Bagration, calculating something, and he rode past the limbers to the end cannon.
While he was on his way there, a shot rang out from that cannon, deafening him and his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the cannon one could see the artillerists seize hold of it and, straining hurriedly, pull it back to its former place. The broad-shouldered, enormous soldier number one, with a swab in his hand, his legs spread wide, jumped over to the wheel. Number two was loading a charge into the muzzle with a trembling hand. A small, stooping man, the officer Tushin, stumbling over the trail, ran forward, not noticing the general and peering from under his small hand.
“Add two more notches and it’ll be just right,” he shouted in a high-pitched voice, trying to give it a dashing sound, which did not go with his little figure. “Number two,” he squeaked. “Smash ’em, Medvedev!”
Bagration called to the officer, and Tushin went over to the general, putting three fingers to his visor in a timid and awkward movement, not as military men salute, but as priests bless. Though Tushin’s guns were meant to be shooting into the hollow, he was sending fireballs at the village of Schöngraben visible straight ahead, before which large masses of French were moving forward.
No one had given Tushin any orders about where to shoot or with what, and, having consulted his sergeant major Zakharchenko, for whom he had great respect, he had decided that it would be good to set fire to the village. “Very good!” Bagration said to the officer’s report, and he began to survey the whole battlefield opened out before him, as if calculating something. On the right side the French had come nearest of all. Below the elevation on which the Kievsky regiment stood, in the river hollow, the soul-wrenching roll and crackle of musketfire could be heard, and much further to the right, beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to the prince a column of the French turning our flank. To the left the horizon was limited by the neighboring woods. Prince Bagration ordered two battalions from the center to go as reinforcements to the right. The officer of the suite ventured to observe to the prince that, with those two battalions gone, the cannon would remain exposed. Prince Bagration turned to the officer of the suite and looked at him silently with his lackluster eyes. It seemed to Prince Andrei that the officer of the suite’s observation was correct and there was indeed nothing to say. But just then an adjutant came galloping from the regimental commander who was in the hollow with a report that huge masses of the French were coming from below, that the regiment was in disarray and was falling back towards the Kievsky grenadiers. Prince Bagration inclined his head as a sign of assent and approval. He rode to the right at a walk and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with an order to attack the French. But the adjutant sent there came back half an hour later with the report that the regimental commander of the dragoons had already pulled back beyond the ravine, because heavy fire had been directed at him and he had been losing men uselessly, and therefore he had dismounted his riflemen in the woods.
“Very good!” said Bagration.
As he was riding away from the battery, shots were also heard to the left, in the woods, and as it was too far from the left flank for him to get there in time himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov there to tell the senior general, the one who had presented the regiment to Kutuzov in Braunau, to pull back beyond the ravine as quickly as possible, because the right flank would probably be unable to hold the enemy for long. Tushin and the battalion covering him were forgotten. Prince Andrei listened carefully to Prince Bagration’s exchanges with the commanders and to the orders he gave, and noticed, to his surprise, that no orders were given, and that Prince Bagration only tried to pretend that all that was done by necessity, chance, or the will of a particular commander, that it was all done, if not on his orders, then in accord with his intentions. Owing to the tact shown by Prince Bagration, Prince Andrei noticed that, in spite of the chance character of events and their independence of the commander’s will, his presence accomplished a very great deal. Commanders who rode up to Prince Bagration with troubled faces became calm, soldiers and officers greeted him merrily and became more animated in his presence, and obviously showed off their courage before him.
XVIII
Prince Bagration, having ridden to the highest point on our right flank, started down to where rolling gunfire could be heard and nothing could be seen through the powder smoke. The further they descended into the hollow, the less they could see, but the more they could sense the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began to meet the wounded. One with a bloodied head, hatless, was being dragged under the arms by two soldiers. He gurgled and spat. The bullet seemed to have hit him in the mouth or the throat. Another came towards them, walking briskly by himself, without his musket, groaning loudly and waving his arm from the fresh pain, while blood poured over his greatcoat as if from a flask. His face showed more fear than suffering. He had been wounded a moment before. Crossing the road, they began a steep descent and on the slope saw several men who were lying down; they met a crowd of soldiers, some of whom were not wounded. The soldiers were walking up the hill, breathing heavily and, though they saw the general, were talking loudly and waving their arms. Ahead, in the smoke, lines of gray greatcoats could now be seen, and an officer, catching sight of Bagration, ran shouting after the soldiers walking in a crowd, demanding that they turn back. Bagration rode up to the lines, along which there was here and there a rapid crackle of gunfire, drowning out talk and shouts of command. The air was completely saturated with powder smoke. The soldiers’ faces were all smudged with powder and animated. Some tamped down with ramrods, others primed the pans and took shot from their pouches, still others fired. But who they were firing at could not be seen owing to the smoke, which there was no wind to scatter. Pleasant buzzing and whistling noises were heard rather often. “What’s that?” thought Prince Andrei, riding up to the crowd of soldiers. “It can’t be a line, because they’re in a bunch! It can’t be an attack, because they’re not moving; it can’t be a square: they’re not standing right.”
A lean, weak-looking old man, a regimental commander, with a pleasant smile, with eyelids that more than half covered his old man’s eyes, giving him a meek look, rode up to Prince Bagration and received him as a host receives a welcome guest. He reported to Prince Bagration that the French had mounted a cavalry attack against his regiment, and that, while the attack had been beaten off, the regiment had lost more than half its men. The regimental commander said that the attack had been beaten off, coming up with this military term to describe what had happened in his regiment; but in reality he did not know himself what had happened in that half hour among the troops entrusted to him, and he could not say for certain whether the attack had been beaten off or his regiment had been crushed by the attack. At the start of the action he knew only that cannonballs and shells began flying all over his regiment and hitting people, that someone then shouted, “Cavalry!” and our men began to fire. And they were still firing, no longer at the cavalry, who had disappeared, but at the French infantry who had appeared in the hollow and were shooting at our men. Prince Bagration inclined his head as a sign that this was all exactly as he had wished and supposed. Turning to the adjutant, he ordered him to bring down from the hill two battalions of the sixth chasseurs, which they had just ridden past. Prince Andrei was struck at that moment by the change that came over Prince Bagration’s face. His face expressed that concentrated and happy resolve which occurs in a man who is about to throw himself into the water on a hot day and is making a running start. Neither the sleepy, lackluster eyes nor the falsely profound look was there: his round, firm, hawk’s eyes looked straight ahead with rapture and a certain disdain, apparently not resting on anything, though his movements were as slow and measured as before.