XX
The infantry regiments, caught unawares in the woods, ran out of the woods, and, companies mixing with other companies, retreated in disordered crowds. One soldier uttered in fear the words: “Cut off!”—senseless and terrible in time of war—and the words, together with the fear, communicated themselves to the whole mass.
“We’re surrounded! Cut off! Lost!” cried the voices of running men.
The regimental commander, the moment he heard shooting and cries behind him, knew that something terrible had happened to his regiment, and the thought that he, an exemplary officer, with many years of service, to blame for nothing, might be blamed before his superiors for negligence or inefficiency, struck him so much that, at that same moment, forgetting both the disobedient cavalry colonel and his own dignity as a general, and above all totally forgetting danger and the sense of self-preservation, he gripped the pommel, spurred his horse, and galloped off to his regiment under a hail of bullets that poured down on but luckily missed him. He wanted one thing: to find out what was going on, and help to rectify at all costs any error, if there was one, on his part, so that he, an exemplary officer, with twenty-two years of service, and never reprimanded for anything, would not be blamed for it.
Having galloped luckily through the French, he came to the field beyond the woods through which our men were running and, disobeying commands, heading down the hill. That moment of moral hesitation came which decides the fate of battles: would these disorderly crowds of soldiers heed the voice of their commander, or look at him and go on running? Despite the desperate shouts of the regimental commander, formerly so terrible for the soldiers, despite the furious, crimson face of the regimental commander, who no longer resembled himself, and the waving of his sword, the soldiers went on running, talking, firing into the air, and not listening to his commands. The moral hesitation that decides the fate of battles was obviously being resolved in favor of fear.
The general began to choke from shouting and powder smoke, and stopped in despair. All seemed lost, but at that moment the French, who had been advancing upon our men, suddenly, for no visible reason, ran back, disappeared from the edge of the woods, and in the woods Russian riflemen appeared. This was Timokhin’s company, which alone had kept its order in the woods and, having hidden in a ditch nearby, had unexpectedly attacked the French. Timokhin had fallen upon the French with such a desperate cry and such insane and drunken determination, running at the enemy with nothing but a little sword, that the French, having no time to recover, threw down their arms and fled. Dolokhov, who was running beside Timokhin, killed one Frenchman point-blank and was the first to take a surrendering officer by the collar. The fleeing men returned, the battalions formed up, and the French, who had divided the troops of the left flank in two, were momentarily pressed back. The reserve units had time to join in, and the fleeing soldiers stopped. The regimental commander was standing by the bridge with Major Ekonomov, letting the retreating companies pass by him, when a soldier came up to him, took hold of his stirrup, and almost leaned against him. The soldier was wearing a greatcoat of bluish factory broadcloth, he had no pack or shako, his head was bandaged, and there was a French ammunition pouch slung over his shoulder. In his hand he was holding an officer’s sword. The soldier was pale, his blue eyes looked insolently into the regimental commander’s face, and his mouth smiled. Though the regimental commander was busy giving orders to Major Ekonomov, he could not help paying attention to this soldier.
“Your Excellency, here are two trophies,” said Dolokhov, pointing to the French sword and pouch. “I captured an officer. I stopped the company.” Dolokhov was breathing heavily from fatigue; he spoke with pauses. “The whole company can testify. I ask you to remember, Your Excellency!”
“Very well, very well,” said the regimental commander, and he turned to Major Ekonomov.
But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief, pulled it off, and showed the clotted blood on his head.
“A bayonet wound. I stayed at the front. Remember, Your Excellency.”
Tushin’s battery was forgotten, and only at the very end of the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing cannon fire from the center, send the staff officer on duty there and then Prince Andrei, to order the battery to retreat as quickly as possible. The covering troops stationed next to Tushin’s cannon had left on somebody’s order in the middle of the action; but the battery went on firing and was not taken by the French only because the enemy could not suppose that such bold firing was coming from four unprotected cannon. On the contrary, from the energetic operation of the battery, they supposed that the main Russian forces were concentrated there in the center, and they tried twice to attack that point, and were driven off both times by the canister fire of the four cannon standing solitarily on the elevation.
Soon after Prince Bagration’s departure, Tushin managed to set fire to Schöngraben.
“Look, they’re scurrying around! It’s burning! Look at the smoke! Fine work! Grand! What smoke, what smoke!” said the crews, growing animated.
Without any order, all the cannon were turned in the direction of the fire. As if egging it on, the soldiers kept crying at each shot: “Fine work! That’s the way! Just look…Grand!” The fire, borne by the wind, spread quickly. The French columns that had moved out of the village went back, but, as if in punishment for this failure, the enemy set up ten guns to the right of the village and began firing them at Tushin.
Owing to the childlike joy aroused by the fire, and the excitement of their successful shooting at the French, our artillerists noticed this battery only when two cannonballs and then four more landed among the guns, and one brought down two horses and another tore the leg off a caisson master. The animation, once established, did not weaken, however, but only changed in mood. The horses were replaced by others from spare carriages, the wounded were removed, and the four guns were turned against the ten-cannon battery. An officer, Tushin’s comrade, had been killed at the beginning of the action, and in the course of an hour seventeen out of the forty men of the gun crews had been eliminated, yet the artillerists were still just as merry and animated. Twice they noticed that the French had appeared below, close to them, and then they fired on them with canister shot.