War and Peace (53 page)

“What’s this? am I falling? my legs are giving way under me,” he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky—the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds creeping quietly over it. “How quietly, peacefully, and triumphantly, and not like us running, shouting, and fighting, not like the Frenchman and artilleryman dragging the mop from one another with frightened and frantic faces, how differently are those clouds creeping over that lofty, limitless sky. How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! all is vanity, all is a cheat, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing but that. But even that is not, there is nothing but peace and stillness. And thank God!…”

On the right flank in Bagration’s detachment, at nine o’clock the battle had not yet begun. Not caring to assent to Dolgorukov’s request that he should advance into action, and anxious to be rid of all responsibility, Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to inquire of the commander-in-chief. Bagration was aware that as the distance between one flank and the other was almost eight miles, if the messenger sent were not killed (which was highly probable), and if he were to succeed in finding the commander-in-chief (which would be very difficult), he would hardly succeed in making his way back before the evening.

Bagration looked up and down his suite with his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes, and the childish face of Rostov, unconsciously all a-quiver with excitement and hope, was the first that caught his eye. And he sent him.

“And if I meet his majesty before the commander-in-chief, your excellency?” said Rostov, with his hand to the peak of his cap.

“You can give the message to his majesty,” said Dolgorukov, hurriedly interposing before Bagration.

On being relieved from picket duty, Rostov had managed to get a few hours’ sleep before morning, and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute, with a peculiar springiness in his movements, and confidence in his luck, and in that frame of mind in which everything seems easy and possible.

All his hopes had been fulfilled that morning: there was to be a general engagement, he was taking part in it; more than that, he was in attendance on the bravest general; more than that, he was being sent on a commission to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the Tsar himself. It was a fine morning, he had a good horse under him, his heart was full of joy and happiness. On receiving his orders, he spurred his horse and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the line of Bagration’s troops which had not yet advanced into action, and were standing motionless, then he rode into the region occupied by Uvarov’s cavalry, and here he began to observe activity and signs of preparation for battle. After he had passed Uvarov’s cavalry, he could distinctly hear the sound of musket-fire and the booming of cannons ahead of him. The firing grew louder and more intense.

The sound that reached him in the fresh morning air was not now, as before, the report of two or three shots at irregular intervals, and then one or two cannons booming. Down the slopes of the hillsides before Pratzen, he could hear volleys of musketry, interspersed with such frequent shots of cannon that sometimes several booming shots could not be distinguished from one another, but melted into one mingled roar of sound.

He could see the puffs of musket smoke flying down the hillsides, as though racing one another, while the cannon smoke hung in clouds, that floated along and melted into one another. He could see, from the gleam of bayonets in the smoke, that masses of infantry were moving down, and narrow lines of artillery with green caissons.

On a hillock Rostov stopped his horse to try and make out what was going on. But however much he strained his attention, he could not make out and understand what he saw; there were men of some sort moving about there in the smoke, lines of troops were moving both backwards and forwards; but what for? Who? where were they going? it was impossible to make out. This sight, and these sounds, so far from exciting any feeling of depression or timidity in him, only increased his energy and determination.

“Come, fire away, at them again!” was his mental response to the sounds he heard. Again he galloped along the line, penetrating further and further into the part where the troops were already in action.

“How it will be there, I don’t know, but it will all be all right!” thought Rostov.

After passing Austrian troops of some sort, Rostov noticed that the next part of the forces (they were the guards) had already advanced into action.

“So much the better! I shall see it close,” he thought.

He was riding almost along the front line. A body of horsemen came galloping towards him. They were a troop of our Uhlans returning in disorder from the attack. Rostov, as he passed them, could not help noticing one of them covered with blood, but he galloped on.

“That’s no affair of mine!” he thought.

He had not ridden on many hundred paces further when there came into sight, on his left, across the whole extent of the field, an immense mass of cavalry on black horses, in dazzling white uniforms, trotting straight towards him, cutting off his advance. Rostov put his horse to his utmost speed to get out of the way of these cavalrymen, and he would have cleared them had they been advancing at the same rate, but they kept increasing their pace, so that several horses broke into a gallop. More and more loudly Rostov could hear the thud of their horses’ hoofs, and the jingle of their weapons, and more and more distinctly he could see their horses, their figures, and even their faces. These were our horse-guards, charging to attack the French cavalry, who were advancing to meet them.

The cavalry guards were galloping, though still holding in their horses. Rostov could see their faces now, and hear the word of command, “Charge!” uttered by an officer, as he let his thoroughbred go at full speed. Rostov, in danger of being trampled underfoot or carried away to attack the French, galloped along before their line as fast as his horse could go, and still he was not in time to escape them.

The last of the line of cavalry, a pock-marked man of immense stature, scowled viciously on seeing Rostov just in front of him, where he must inevitably come into collision with him. This horse-guard would infallibly have overturned Rostov and his Bedouin (Rostov felt himself so little and feeble beside these gigantic men and horses) if he had not bethought himself of striking the horse-guard’s horse in the face with his riding-whip. The heavy, black, high horse twitched its ears
and reared, but its pock-marked rider brought it down with a violent thrust of the spurs into its huge sides, and the horse, lashing it tail and dragging its neck, flew on faster than ever. The horse-guard had hardly passed Rostov when he heard their shout, “Hurrah!” and looking round saw their foremost ranks mixed up with some strange cavalry, in red epaulettes, probably French. He could see nothing more, for immediately after cannons were fired from somewhere, and everything was lost in the smoke.

At the moment when the horse-guards passing him vanished into the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go on where he had to go. This was the brilliant charge of the horse-guards of which the French themselves expressed their admiration. Rostov was appalled to hear afterwards that of all that mass of huge, fine men, of all those brilliant, rich young officers and ensigns who had galloped by him on horses worth thousands of roubles, only eighteen were left after the charge.

“I have no need to envy them, my share won’t be taken from me, and may be I shall see the Emperor in a minute!” thought Rostov, and he galloped on.

When he reached the infantry of the guards, he noticed that cannon balls were flying over and about them, not so much from the sound of the cannon balls, as from the uneasiness he saw in the faces of the soldiers and the unnatural, martial solemnity on the faces of the officers.

As he rode behind one of the lines of the regiments of footguards, he heard a voice calling him by name: “Rostov!”

“Eh?” he called back, not recognising Boris.

“I say, we’ve been in the front line! Our regiment marched to the attack!” said Boris, smiling that happy smile that is seen in young men who have been for the first time under fire. Rostov stopped.

“Really!” he said. “Well, how was it?”

“We beat them!” said Boris, growing talkative in his eagerness. “You can fancy …” and Boris began describing how the guards having taken up their position, and seeing troops in front of them had taken them for Austrians, and all at once had found out from the cannon balls aimed at them from those troops that they were in the front line, and had quite unexpectedly to advance to battle. Rostov set his horse moving without waiting to hear Boris to the end.

“Where are you off to?” asked Boris.

“To his majesty with a commission.”

“Here he is!” said Boris, who had not caught what Rostov said, and
thinking it was the grand duke he wanted, he pointed him out, standing a hundred paces from them, wearing a helmet and a horse-guard’s white elk tunic, with his high shoulders and scowling brows, shouting something to a pale, white-uniformed Austrian officer.

“Why, that’s the grand duke, and I must see the commander-in-chief or the Emperor,” said Rostov, and he was about to start again.

“Count, count!” shouted Berg, running up on the other side, as eager as Boris. “I was wounded in my right hand” (he pointed to his bloodstained hand, bound up with a pocket-handkerchief), “and I kept my place in the front. Count, I held my sabre in my left hand. All my family, count, the Von Bergs, have been knights.” Berg would have said more, but Rostov rode on without listening.

After riding by the guards, and on through an empty space, Rostov rode along the line of the reserves for fear of getting in the way of the front line, as he had done in the charge of the horse-guards, and made a wide circuit round the place where he heard the hottest musket-fire and cannonade. All of a sudden, in front of him and behind our troops, in a place where he could never have expected the enemy to be, he heard the sound of musket-fire quite close

“What can it be?” thought Rostov. “The enemy in the rear of our troops? It can’t be,” thought Rostov, but a panic of fear for himself and for the issue of the whole battle came over him all at once. “Whatever happens, though,” he reflected, “it’s useless to try and escape now. It’s my duty to seek the commander-in-chief here, and if everything’s lost, it’s my duty to perish with all the rest.”

The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come upon Rostov grew stronger and stronger the further he advanced into the region behind the village of Pratzen, which was full of crowds of troops of all sorts.

“What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is firing?” Rostov kept asking, as he met Austrian and Russian soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.

“Devil knows! Killed them all! Damn it all,” he was answered in Russian, in German, and in Czech, by the hurrying rabble, who knew no more than he what was being done.

“Kill the Germans!” shouted one.

“To hell with them—the traitors.”

“
Zum Henker diese Russen
,” muttered a German.

Several wounded were among the crowds on the road. Shouts, oaths, moans were mingled in the general hubbub. The firing began to subside,
and, as Rostov found out later, the Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing at one another.

“My God! how can this be?” thought Rostov. “And here, where any minute the Emperor may see them.… No, these can only be a few wretches. It will soon be over, it’s not the real thing, it can’t be,” he thought. “Only to make haste, make haste, and get by them.”

The idea of defeat and flight could not force its way into Rostov’s head. Though he saw the French cannons and troops precisely on Pratzen hill, the very spot where he had been told to look for the commander-in-chief, he could not and would not believe in it.

Near the village of Pratzen Rostov had been told to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor. But there they were not, nor was there a single officer to be found in command, nothing but disorderly crowds of troops of different sorts. He urged on his weary horse to hasten through this rabble, but the further he went the more disorderly the crowds became. The high road along which he rode, was thronged with carriages, with vehicles of all sorts, and Austrian and Russian soldiers of every kind, wounded and unwounded. It was all uproar and confused bustle under the sinister whiz of the flying cannon balls from the French batteries stationed on the heights of Pratzen.

“Where’s the Emperor? Where’s Kutuzov?” Rostov kept asking of every one he could stop, and from no one could he get an answer.

At last clutching a soldier by the collar, he forced him to answer him.

“Aye! brother! they’ve all bolted long ago!” the soldier said to Rostov, laughing for some reason as he pulled himself away. Letting go that soldier, who must, he thought, be drunk, Rostov stopped the horse of a groom or postillion of some personage of consequence, and began to cross-question him. The groom informed Rostov that an hour before the Tsar had been driven at full speed in a carriage along this very road, and that the Tsar was dangerously wounded.

“It can’t be,” said Rostov; “probably some one else.”

“I saw him myself,” said the groom with a self-satisfied smirk; “it’s high time I should know the Emperor, I should think, after the many times I’ve seen him in Petersburg; I saw him as it might be here. Pale, deadly pale, sitting in the carriage. The way they drove the four raven
horses! my goodness, didn’t they dash by us! It would be strange, I should think, if I didn’t know the Tsar’s horses and Ilya Ivanitch; why, Ilya never drives any one else but the Tsar.”

Rostov let go of the horse and would have gone on. A wounded officer passing by addressed him. “Why, who is it you want?” asked the officer, “the commander-in-chief? Oh, he was killed by a cannon ball, struck in the breast before our regiment.”