War and Peace (146 page)

“My father, too, laid out Bleak Hills, and thought it was his place, his land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came along, and without even knowing of his existence, swept him away like a chip out of his path, and his Bleak Hills laid in the dust, and all his life with it brought to nought. Princess Marya says that it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, since he is not and never will be? He will never come back again! He is not! So for whom is it a trial? Fatherland, the spoiling of Moscow! But to-morrow I shall be killed; and not by a Frenchman even, maybe, but by one of our own men, like the soldier who let off his gun close to my ear yesterday; and the French will come and pick me up by
my head and my heels and pitch me into a hole that I may not stink under their noses; and new conditions of life will arise, and I shall know nothing of them, and I shall not be at all.”

He gazed at the row of birch-trees with their motionless yellows and greens, and the white bark shining in the sun. “To die then, let them kill me to-morrow, let me be no more … let it all go on, and let me be at an end.” He vividly pictured his own absence from that life. And those birch-trees, with their light and shade, and the curling clouds and the smoke of the fires, everything around seemed suddenly transformed into something weird and menacing. A shiver ran down his back. Rising quickly to his feet, he went out of the barn, and began to walk about.

He heard voices behind the barn.

“Who’s there?” called Prince Andrey.

The red-nosed Captain Timohin, once the officer in command of Dolohov’s company, now in the lack of officers promoted to the command of a battalion, came shyly into the barn. He was followed by an adjutant and the paymaster of the regiment.

Prince Andrey got up hurriedly, listened to the matters relating to their duties that the officers had come to him about, gave a few instructions, and was about to dismiss them, when he heard a familiar, lisping voice behind the barn.

“
Que diable!
” said the voice of some one stumbling over something.

Prince Andrey, peeping out of the barn, saw Pierre, who had just hit against a post lying on the ground, and had almost fallen over. Prince Andrey always disliked seeing people from his own circle, especially Pierre, who reminded him of all the painful moments he had passed through on his last stay at Moscow.

“Well!” he cried. “What fate has brought you? I didn’t expect to see you.”

While he said this there was in his eyes and his whole face more than coldness, positive hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached the barn with the greatest eagerness, but now, on seeing Prince Andrey’s face, he felt constrained and ill at ease.

“I have come … you know … simply … I have come … it’s interesting,” said Pierre, who had so many times already that day repeated that word “interesting” without meaning it. “I wanted to see the battle!”

“Yes, yes; but your mason brethren, what do they say of war? How would they avert it?” said Prince Andrey sarcastically. “Well, tell me
about Moscow. And my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?” he asked seriously.

“Yes. Julie Drubetskoy told me so. I went to call, but missed them. They had started for your Moscow estate.”

The officers would have taken leave, but Prince Andrey, apparently unwilling to be left alone with his friend, pressed them to stay and have some tea. Benches were set, and tea was brought. With some astonishment the officers stared at Pierre’s huge, bulky figure, and heard his talk of Moscow, and of the position of our troops, which he had succeeded in getting a view of. Prince Andrey did not speak, and his face was so forbidding that Pierre addressed his remarks more to the simple-hearted Timohin than to Bolkonsky.

“So you understand the whole disposition of the troops?” Prince Andrey put in.

“Yes. At least, how do you mean?” said Pierre. “As I am not a military man, I can’t say I do fully; but still I understand the general arrangement.”

“Well, then, you know more than anybody else,” said Prince Andrey.

“Oh!” said Pierre incredulously, looking over his spectacles at Prince Andrey. “Well, and what do you say of the appointment of Kutuzov?” he asked.

“I was very glad of his appointment; that’s all I know,” said Prince Andrey.

“Well, tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are saying all kinds of things about him. What do you think of him?”

“Ask them,” said Prince Andrey, indicating the officers.

With the condescendingly doubtful smile with which every one addressed him, Pierre looked at Timohin.

“It was a gleam of light in the dark, your excellency, when his highness took the command,” said Timohin, stealing shy glances continually at his colonel.

“Why so?” asked Pierre.

“Well, as regards firewood and food, let me tell you. Why, all the way we retreated from Sventsyan not a twig, nor a wisp of hay, nor anything, dare we touch. We were retreating, you see, so
he
would get it, wouldn’t
he, your excellency?” he said, turning to his prince, “but we mustn’t dare to. In our regiment two officers were court-martialled for such things. Well, since his highness is in command, it’s all straightforward as regards that. We see daylight …”

“Then why did he forbid it?”

Timohin looked round in confusion, at a loss how to answer such a question. Pierre turned to Prince Andrey with the same inquiry.

“Why, so as not to waste the country we were leaving for the enemy,” said Prince Andrey, with angry sarcasm. “That’s a first principle: never to allow pillage and accustom your men to marauding. And at Smolensk too he very correctly judged that the French were the stronger and might overcome us. But he could not understand,” cried Prince Andrey in a voice suddenly shrill, “he could not understand that for the first time we were fighting on Russian soil, that there was a spirit in the men such as I had never seen before, that we had twice in succession beaten back the French, and that success had multiplied our strength tenfold. He ordered a retreat, and all our efforts and our curses were in vain. He had no thought of treachery; he tried to do everything for the best and thought over everything well. But for that very reason he was no good. He is no good now just because be considers everything soundly and accurately as every German must. How can I explain to you.… Well, your father has a German valet, say, and he’s an excellent valet and satisfies all his requirements better than you can do and all’s well and good; but if your father is sick unto death, you’ll send away the valet and wait on your father yourself with your awkward, unpractised hands, and be more comfort to him than a skilful man who’s a stranger. That’s how we have done with Barclay. While Russia was well, she might be served by a stranger, and an excellent minister he was, but as soon as she’s in danger, she wants a man of her own kith and kin. So you in your club have been making him out to be a traitor! They slander him now as a traitor; and afterwards, ashamed of their false accusations, they will suddenly glorify him as a hero or a genius, which would be even more unfair to him. He’s an honest and conscientious German …”

“They say he’s an able general, though,” said Pierre.

“I don’t know what’s meant by an able general,” Prince Andrey said ironically.

“An able general,” said Pierre; “well, it’s one who foresees all contingencies … well, divines the enemy’s projects.”

“But that’s impossible,” said Prince Andrey, as though of a matter long ago settled.

Pierre looked at him in surprise.

“But you know they say,” he said, “that war is like a game of chess.”

“Yes,” said Prince Andrey, “only with this little difference, that in chess you may think over each move as long as you please, that you are not limited as to time, and with this further difference that a knight is always stronger than a pawn and two pawns are always stronger than one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division, and sometimes weaker than a company. No one can ever be certain of the relative strength of armies. Believe me,” he said, “if anything did depend on the arrangements made by the staff, I would be there, and helping to make them, but instead of that I have the honour of serving here in the regiment with these gentlemen here, and I consider that the day really depends upon us to-morrow and not on them.… Success never has depended and never will depend on position, on arms, nor even on numbers; and, least of all, on position.”

“On what then?”

“On the feeling that is in me and him,” he indicated Timohin, “and every soldier.”

Prince Andrey glanced at Timohin, who was staring in alarm and bewilderment at his colonel. In contrast to his usual reserved taciturnity, Prince Andrey seemed excited now. Apparently he could not refrain from expressing the ideas that suddenly rose to his mind. “The battle is won by the side that has firmly resolved to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our losses were almost equalled by the French losses; but we said to ourselves very early in the day that we were losing the battle, and we lost it. And we said so because we had nothing to fight for then; we wanted to get out of fighting as quick as we could. ‘We are defeated; so let us run!’ and we did run. If we had not said that till evening, God knows what might not have happened. But to-morrow we shan’t say that. You talk of our position, of the left flank being weak, and the right flank too extended,” he went on; “all that’s nonsense; that’s all nothing. But what awaits us to-morrow? A hundred millions of the most diverse contingencies, which will determine on the instant whether they run or we do; whether one man is killed and then another; but all that’s being done now is all mere child’s play. The fact is that these people with whom you have been inspecting the positions do nothing towards the progress of things;
they are a positive hindrance. They are entirely taken up with their own petty interests.”

“At such a moment?” said Pierre reproachfully.

“At such a moment,”
repeated Prince Andrey. “To them this is simply a moment on which one may score off a rival and win a cross or ribbon the more. To my mind what is before us to-morrow is this: a hundred thousand Russian and a hundred thousand French troops have met to fight, and the fact is that these two hundred thousand men will fight, and the side that fights most desperataly and spares itself least will conquer. And if you like, I’ll tell you that whatever happens, and whatever mess they make up yonder, we shall win the battle to-morrow; whatever happens we shall win the victory.”

“Your excellency, that’s the truth of it, the holy truth,” put in Timohin; “who would spare himself now! The soldiers in my battalion, would you believe it, wouldn’t drink their vodka; this isn’t an ordinary day, they say.”

All were silent.

The officers rose. Prince Andrey went with them out of the barn, giving the last instructions to the adjutant. When the officers had gone, Pierre came nearer to Prince Andrey, and was just about to begin talking when they heard the tramp of hoofs not far away on the road, and glancing in that direction Prince Andrey recognised Woltzogen and Klausewitz, accompanied by a Cossack. They rode close by them, still talking, and Pierre and Prince Andrey could not help overhearing the following phrases in German:

“The war ought to be carried on over a wide extent of country. I cannot sufficiently strongly express that view of the matter,” one said in German.

“Oh yes,” said another voice, “since the object is to wear out the enemy, one must not consider the losses of private persons.”

“Certainly not,” acquiesced the first voice.

“Carried into a wide extent of country,” Prince Andrey repeated with a wrathful snort, when they had ridden by. “In that open country I had a father and son and sister at Bleak Hills. He doesn’t care about that. That’s just what I was saying to you: these excellent Germans won’t win the battle to-morrow, they will only make a mess of it, so far as they are able, because they have nothing in their German noddles but calculations that are not worth a rotten egg, and they haven’t in their hearts the one thing that’s wanted for to-morrow, that Timohin has. They have
given all Europe up to
him
, and now they have come to teach us—fine teachers!” he added, his voice growing shrill again

“So you think the battle to-morrow will be a victory,” said Pierre.

“Yes, yes,” said Prince Andrey absently. “There’s one thing I would do, if I were in power,” he began again. “I wouldn’t take prisoners. What sense is there in taking prisoners? That’s chivalry. The French have destroyed my home and are coming to destroy Moscow; they have outraged and are outraging me at every second. They are my enemies, they are all criminals to my way of thinking. And so thinks Timohin, and all the army with him. They must be put to death. Since they are my enemies, they can’t be my friends, whatever they may have said at Tilsit.”

“Yes, yes,” said Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince Andrey. “I entirely agree with you!”

The question that had been disturbing Pierre all that day, since the Mozhaisk hill, now struck him as perfectly clear and fully solved. He saw now all the import and all the gravity of the war and the impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the stern, grave faces of which he had had glimpses, appeared to him in a new light now. He saw, to borrow a term from physics, the latent heat of patriotism in all those men he had seen, and saw in it the explanation of the composure and apparent levity with which they were all preparing for death. “We ought not to take prisoners,” said Prince Andrey. “That change alone would transform the whole aspect of war and would make it less cruel. But playing at war, that’s what’s vile; and playing at magnanimity and all the rest of it. That magnanimity and sensibility is like the magnanimity and sensibility of the lady who turns sick at the sight of a slaughtered calf—she is so kind-hearted she can’t see blood—but eats fricasseed veal with a very good appetite. They talk of the laws of warfare, of chivalry, of flags of truce, and humanity to the wounded, and so on. That’s all rubbish. I saw enough in 1805 of chivalry and flags of truce: they duped us, and we duped them. They plunder other people’s homes, issue false money, and, worse than all, kill my children, my father, and then talk of the laws of warfare, and generosity to a fallen foe. No prisoners; and go to give and to meet death! Any one who has come to think this as I have, through the same sufferings …”