He looked round. There before him was the handsome face of Nesvitsky, sticking out of a little window. Nesvitsky was munching something (as his moist lips showed), waving like mad and calling him in.
'Bolkonsky! Hey, Bolkonsky! Come on in. Quick!' he shouted.
Prince Andrey went in and found Nesvitsky and another adjutant eating. They turned round quickly to ask Bolkonsky whether he had any news. Prince Andrey read alarm and uneasiness on their familiar features, especially Nesvitsky's, which were usually so good-humoured.
'Where's the commander-in-chief?' asked Bolkonsky
'He's here - over there in that house,' answered the adjutant.
'Well, is it true - peace and surrender?' asked Nesvitsky.
'I thought you might know. I don't know anything - beyond the fact that it wasn't easy to get here.'
'Wait till you hear about us, my boy! It's terrible! To think I laughed at Mack. We're worse off than he ever was,' said Nesvitsky. 'But look, sit down and have something to eat.'
'You won't find your baggage or anything else here, Prince, and God knows where your man's gone,' said the other adjutant.
'Where are the headquarters?'
'We're spending the night in Znaim.'
'Well, I managed to pack everything I need on two horses,' said Nesvitsky. 'Very good packs too. They'd see me over the mountains of Bohemia. We're up against it, old fellow. But look at you, you don't look very well. You're shivering.' Nesvitsky had seen Prince Andrey jump as if he'd had an electric shock.
'No, I'm all right,' answered Prince Andrey. He had just recalled the brush between the doctor's wife and the transport officer.
'What is the commander-in-chief doing here?' he asked.
'I haven't the slightest idea,' said Nesvitsky.
'All I know is - it's a disaster, an absolute disaster,' said Prince Andrey, and he went over to the house where the commander-in-chief was said to be.
He walked past Kutuzov's carriage, the weary saddle horses belonging to members of his entourage, and the Cossacks talking loudly together, and approached the entry. He was informed that Kutuzov was in the inner room of the hut with Prince Bagration and Weierother, an Austrian general who had taken Schmidt's place. There in the entry sat little Kozlovsky squatting on his heels in front of a copying-clerk. The latter was sitting on an upturned tub with the cuffs of his uniform rolled up, writing at speed. Kozlovsky looked worn out, someone else who had obviously not slept all night. He glanced up at Prince Andrey, but didn't even nod.
'Line two . . . Have you got that?' he went on, dictating to the clerk. 'The Kiev Grenadiers, the Podolyan . . .'
'You're going too fast, sir,' protested the clerk with a brazen, angry glance at Kozlovsky. At that moment he heard Kutuzov's strong and impatient voice through the door, with another unknown voice interrupting him. The sound of those voices, Kozlovsky's perfunctory glance at him, the rudeness of the harassed clerk, the fact that he and Kozlovsky were sitting around a tub on the floor at so little distance from the commander-in-chief and those Cossack horse-minders laughing so raucously just outside the window - all of this made Prince Andrey feel that some great and ghastly misfortune was about to descend on them.
He turned to Kozlovsky with some urgent questions.
'Prince, you'll have to wait . . .' said Kozlovsky. 'The disposition of Bagration's troops . . .'
'Is it surrender?'
'No, it's not. We're getting ready to take them on!'
Prince Andrey walked over towards the door of the room from which the voices were coming. But just as he was about to open it, the voices inside stopped speaking; the door opened and there in the doorway stood Kutuzov with his familiar aquiline nose and podgy features. Prince Andrey was standing directly opposite Kutuzov, but from the look in the commander-in-chief's one good eye it was clear that he was observing very little, being preoccupied with so many thoughts and anxieties. He looked his adjutant straight in the face and didn't recognize him.
'Well, have you finished?' he inquired of Kozlovsky.
'Very nearly, your Excellency.'
Bagration followed his commander-in-chief out of the room, a short lean man, still relatively young, his semi-oriental features suggesting a phlegmatic man of strong character.
'Beg to report back, sir.' Prince Andrey had to say it twice in rather a loud voice before handing Kutuzov an envelope.
'Oh yes, back from Vienna? Very good! Later, later!' Kutuzov went out to the steps accompanied by Bagration.
'Well, Prince, I bid you farewell,' he said to Bagration. 'Christ be with you! You have my blessing for the great task ahead!' Kutuzov's face suddenly softened; there were tears in his eyes. With his left hand he drew Bagration to him, and with the other, which bore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him, a gesture which seemed to have become second nature. He offered him a podgy cheek, but Bagration ended up kissing him on the neck. 'Christ be with you!' repeated Kutuzov, walking away towards his carriage. 'Get in with me,' he said to Bolkonsky.
'Your most high Excellency, I would like to be of some use here. Please allow me to remain in Prince Bagration's detachment.'
'Come in,' said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonsky was still hanging back, he added, 'I need some good officers myself. Yes, indeed I do.'
They took their seats in the carriage and for some time neither of them spoke.
'We still have a very great deal ahead of us,' Kutuzov said, seeming to penetrate with the sharp wisdom of a veteran all the spiritual torment that was troubling Bolkonsky. 'If one-tenth of his detachment gets through tomorrow, I shall thank God for it,' added Kutuzov, apparently to himself.
Prince Andrey glanced at this man, only inches away from him, and his eyes were drawn to the sharp outline of the scar on his temple where that bullet had gone through his head at Izmail, and the empty eye-socket. 'Oh yes, he's earned the right to talk so casually about the destruction of all these men,' thought Bolkonsky.
'That's why I'm asking ask you to send me to that detachment,' he said.
Kutuzov didn't reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been saying, and sat deep in thought. But five minutes later, rocking comfortably in the smoothly sprung carriage, Kutuzov looked at Prince Andrey. His face now showed no trace of emotion. With shrewd amusement he questioned Prince Andrey about the details of his interview with the Emperor, and how the court had reacted to the Krems affair and also about certain ladies known to them both.
CHAPTER 14
On the 1st of November Kutuzov received an intelligence report that placed his army in an almost impossible situation. A spy reported that the French, having crossed the bridge at Vienna, were moving in great numbers on Kutuzov's line of communications with the reinforcements marching up from Russia. If Kutuzov were to remain at Krems, Napoleon's army of a hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him off from all communications, and surround his weary army of forty thousand, and he would find himself in the same situation as Mack before Ulm. If he wanted to abandon the road connecting him with the Russian reinforcements, he would have to go off the roads altogether into unknown territory, the mountainous region of Bohemia, pursued by the cream of the enemy's forces, and would give up all hope of joining with Buxhowden. If he decided to retreat down the road from Krems to Olmutz to join up with the forces coming from Russia he ran the risk of being intercepted by the French who had crossed the Vienna bridge and having to engage them on the march, encumbered with stores and transport - an enemy three times as numerous and hemming him in on two sides. Kutuzov went for this last option.
According to his intelligence the French, once over the river, had set off on a forced march towards Znaim, which was on Kutuzov's route, sixty or seventy miles away. To get to Znaim before the French offered the best hope of saving the army. To let the French get there first would mean exposing the whole army to a disgrace like that of the Austrians at Ulm, or to complete destruction. But to reach Znaim with the whole army before the French got there was impo
ssible. The road for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim.
On the night he received the report Kutuzov dispatched Bagration's advance guard of four thousand men off to the right over the mountains from the Krems-Znaim road to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to march without stopping, and take up a position facing Vienna with his back to Znaim, and if he did manage to get there before the French, his task was to delay them for as long as possible. Meanwhile Kutuzov set off for Znaim with all the heavy transport.
Bagration covered the thirty miles over the mountains at night in foul weather, with no road and with hungry, badly shod soldiers. Leaving a third of his men straggling in his wake, Bagration reached Hollabrunn, on the Vienna-Znaim road, a few hours before the French, who were marching there from Vienna. Kutuzov still needed a good twenty-four hours to get to Znaim with his heavy transport and so, to save the army, Bagration with his four thousand hungry and exhausted soldiers needed to hold up the entire enemy army confronting him at Hollabrunn for a day and a night - an obvious impossibility. But an odd twist of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the trick that had given the Vienna bridge into the hands of the French encouraged Murat to try and outwit Kutuzov too. Encountering Bagration's feeble detachment on the Znaim road, Murat mistook it for Kutuzov's whole army. With a view to administering one final, crushing defeat to this army, he decided to wait for the troops coming up behind him from Vienna. With this in mind he proposed a three-day truce on condition that neither army changed position or made any movement. Murat insisted that peace negotiations were under way and this truce was proposed to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count Nostitz, the Austrian general in charge of the advance posts, trusted Murat's word as conveyed by an emissary and fell back, leaving Bagration's detachment unprotected. Another emissary rode along the Russian lines to make the same announcement about peace negotiations and propose a three-day truce to the Russian troops. Bagration's response was that he had no authority to accept or to decline any truce, and he dispatched an adjutant to Kutuzov with a report of the French proposal.
A truce was Kutuzov's only hope of gaining time in order to give Bagration's exhausted forces some rest and to get the transport and heavy convoys (the movement of which was concealed from the French) one stage further along the road to Znaim. The offer of a truce gave them out of the blue one last chance to save the army. Once informed of it, Kutuzov promptly dispatched Adjutant General Wintzengerode, who was with him, to the enemy's camp. Wintzengerode was instructed not only to accept the truce, but to propose terms for surrender, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back to speed up the transport of the baggage and equipment of the whole army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagration's starving and exhausted detachment was to provide cover single-handedly for the troop and transport convoy by just staying there facing an enemy eight times as strong.
Kutuzov was right in two respects: that the offer of surrender, which did not tie his hands in any way, gave time for at least some of the transport to reach Znaim, and also that Murat's blunder would very soon be discovered. Napoleon was at Schonbrunn, less than twenty miles from Hollabrunn, when he received Murat's dispatch and the proposals for a truce and surrender. He saw through the trick immediately and sent the following letter to Murat by return: Schonbrunn,
25 Brumaire, 1805 at eight o'clock in the morning.
TO PRINCE MURAT
I can find no words to express to you my displeasure. As a mere advance guard commander you have no right to enter into truces without orders from me. You are losing for me the spoils of a whole campaign. Break the truce immediately and march on the enemy. You must have it declared to them that the general who signed this surrender had no right to do so, and that only the Emperor of Russia has that right. If, however, the Emperor of Russia should ratify the aforesaid convention, I shall do likewise; but this is nothing but a trick. March on and destroy the Russian army . . . You are well placed to seize its baggage and artillery.
The Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are nothing when they have no power; this one had none . . . The Austrians let themselves be tricked into allowing us across the Vienna bridge; now you are falling for a trick played on you by one of the Emperor's adjutants.
NAPOLEON.
Napoleon's adjutant galloped off at full speed bearing this ominous letter to Murat. Distrusting his generals, Napoleon himself moved to the battlefield with his whole guard, worried that a ready victim might slip through his fingers. Meanwhile the four thousand men of Bagration's detachment cheerfully lit their campfires, dried themselves out and got warm, and cooked porridge for the first time in three days, none of them realizing or even dreaming of what might be in store for them.
CHAPTER 15
It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon when Prince Andrey, who had finally persuaded Kutuzov to release him, reached Grunth and joined Bagration. Napoleon's adjutant had not yet reached Murat's detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In Bagration's detachment they had no idea how things were going. There was talk of peace, but no one believed it was possible. There was also talk of battle, but no one believed that was about to happen either.
Knowing Bolkonsky to be a popular and trusted adjutant, Bagration gave him his warmest welcome and special indulgence, as a commanding officer. He informed him that action would probably begin that day or the next, and gave him absolute freedom either to remain with him during the battle or to retire to the rearguard and supervise the order of the retreat, also 'a matter of some importance'.
'But I don't think there'll be any fighting today,' said Bagration reassuringly to Prince Andrey.
'If he is one of the run-of-the-mill little staff dandies sent here to win himself a cross,' he was thinking, 'he can do that in the rearguard, but if he really wants to be with me, I may as well let him . . . I can use him, if he's got any guts.' Without replying, Prince Andrey asked leave to ride around the territory and learn the disposition of the forces, so that if he had to deliver any messages he would know where to take them. One of the duty officers, a handsome and elegantly dressed man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, a confident speaker of bad French, was detailed to conduct Prince Andrey.
On all sides they could see rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who seemed to be looking for something, and soldiers carrying doors, planks and fences from somewhere in the village.
'Just look at these men. They're all over the place,' said the staff officer, pointing to them. 'Their officers let them run riot. And look here.' He pointed to a canteen set up under a tent. 'They come in here and just sit around doing nothing. I sent them all out this morning, and look, it's full again. I must just ride over and give them a scare, Prince. One moment.'
'Let's both go, and I'll get myself some bread and cheese,' said Prince Andrey, who had not yet had time to eat.
'Why didn't you say, Prince? I could have offered you something.'
They got off their horses and went in under the tent. Several officers, with flushed and exhausted faces, were sitting at the tables, eating and drinking.
'Now what's all this, gentlemen?' said the staff officer, in the reproachful tone of a man who has said the same thing over and over again. 'You can't keep leaving your posts like this. The prince gave orders that nobody should be in here. What about you, Captain?' he said to a grimy, thin little artillery officer standing there in his stockings having handed his boots to the stallholder to dry them. He stood up when they came in, with a rather forced smile on his face.
'What about you, Captain Tushin? Shame on you,' the staff officer persisted. 'I'd have expected you as an artillery officer to set an example, and here you are in bare feet. If the alarm goes you'll look fine with no boots on.' (The staff officer smiled.) 'Back to your stations, gentlemen, if you don't mind,' he added in a tone of authority.
Prince Andrey couldn't help smiling as he glanced at Captain Tushin. Saying not a word, Tushin wa
s smiling at them, hopping from one bare foot to the other and looking inquiringly with his big, shrewd, kindly eyes from Prince Andrey to the staff officer and back.
'The men say it's easier in your bare feet,' said Captain Tushin, with a shy smile, keen to cover his embarrassment with a joke or two. But before the words were out of his mouth he could see that this one was going wrong; they didn't like it. He was even more embarrassed.
'Please go back to your post,' said the staff officer, struggling to maintain due gravity.
Prince Andrey glanced again at the little figure of the artillery officer. There was something odd about him, something unmilitary, rather comic but very engaging.
The staff officer and Prince Andrey mounted their horses and rode on.
Riding out beyond the village, continually meeting or overtaking soldiers and officers of various divisions, they saw that on their left trenches were being dug, piling up mounds of fresh red clay. Several battalions of soldiers, in shirtsleeves despite the cold wind, were swarming like white ants all over the trench works; spadefuls of red clay came soaring out on to the mounds thrown up by hands unseen. They went over to inspect the work and then rode on further. Just beyond the entrenchment they came across dozens of soldiers continually running over to the latrine, changing places and running off again, and they had to hold their noses and get their horses to trot away from the noxious atmosphere.
'Here we have it - the nice side of camp life,' said the staff officer.
They rode up the hill opposite, from where they could get a good view of the French. Prince Andrey stopped and looked.
'That's our battery up yonder,' said the staff-officer, showing him the highest point, 'commanded by that funny fellow sitting there with no boots on. From there you can see everything. Shall we go up, Prince?'
'I'm most grateful to you, but I can manage now,' said Prince Andrey, anxious to be rid of the staff officer. 'Please don't worry about me.'