Nikolay Rostov could not get his head around the idea of being defeated and running away. Even though he could see French cannons and French troops deployed on Pratzen hill, the very hill where he had been told to look for the commander-in-chief, he could not and would not believe it.
CHAPTER 18
Rostov had been told to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor somewhere near the village of Pratzen. But they were not there, nor was there a single officer to be found in command, nothing but motley crowds of shambling troops. He urged on his weary horse to get through this rabble as fast as he could, but the further he went the more ragged the crowds became. When he reached the high road he found it teeming with carriages and every kind of vehicle, and all sorts of Austrian and Russian soldiers, some wounded, some not. There was a dull roar of people and traffic swarming along to the sinister sound of the cannonballs whizzing over from the French batteries now deployed on the heights of Pratzen.
'Where's the Emperor? Where's Kutuzov?' Rostov asked anyone prepared to stop. He got no answers.
At last, grabbing a soldier by the collar, he forced him to respond.
'Listen, mate - that lot went off ages ago!' the soldier said to Rostov, laughing for no good reason as he wrenched himself free. Letting him go - he must surely have been drunk - Rostov stopped the horse of a batman or groom serving someone of rank and started to interrogate him. He informed Rostov that only an hour before the Tsar had been driven down this very road in a carriage going at full speed, and the Tsar was seriously wounded.
'It can't be him,' said Rostov. 'It must be someone else.'
'Saw it with my own eyes,' said the groom with a complacent smirk, 'I'm one as ought to know the Emperor - seen him lots of times in Petersburg. Sat in his carriage white as a sheet. You should've seen them driving those four black horses! Went past like thunder! You'd have to know the Tsar's horses and Ilya Ivanych. Old Ilya, never drives nobody but the Tsar.'
Rostov let go of his horse and was about to move on when a wounded officer who happened to be passing spoke to him. 'Who is it you're looking for?' he asked. 'The commander-in-chief? Oh, he was killed by a cannonball. Got him in the chest right in front of our regiment.'
But another officer corrected him. 'No, he was wounded, not killed.'
'Who? Kutuzov?' asked Rostov.
'No, not Kutuzov, that other one, what's his name? Same difference - not many left alive. That's the way. Go to that village. They're all there, the commanding officers,' said the officer, pointing to the village of Gostieradeck, and he walked away.
Rostov kept his horse at walking pace, not knowing why he should go on or who to look for. The Tsar was wounded, the battle lost. He had to believe it now. He was heading where he had been directed, and in the distance he could see a church with a tower. Why hurry? What would he say now to the Tsar or Kutuzov, even if they were still alive and not wounded?
'Go down this road, sir, and you'll get killed!' a soldier shouted to him. 'You'll get killed down there!'
'Stupid nonsense!' said another. 'There's no other way. That's nearest.' Rostov wondered for a moment but then rode off towards the place where they had said he would get killed.
'It makes no difference now! If the Emperor's wounded why should I save my skin?' he thought. He rode into a patch of land where more men had been killed running away from Pratzen than anywhere else. The French had yet to take that ground, though the Russians - those who were unscathed or only lightly wounded - had long abandoned it. The dead and wounded lay about everywhere like heaps of manure on good plough-land, half a dozen bodies to an acre. The wounded crawled together in little groups of two or three with pitiful shouts and groans, though some of them struck Rostov as rather forced. He put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all those suffering people, and now he felt scared, scared that he might lose not his life but the courage that he needed so much, and he knew it would not survive the sight of those wretched creatures.
The French had stopped firing at this field strewn with dead and wounded, because there was no one left to fire at, but once they spotted an adjutant trotting across they aimed a cannon at him and loosed off a few cannonballs. The impression made on him by these terrible whizzing noises and the dead bodies all round him blurred into a single sensation - he felt horrified and sorry for himself. He thought of his mother's last letter. 'What would she think,' he wondered, 'if she could see me now on this field with cannons aiming at me?'
In the village of Gostieradeck there were some Russian troops, disorientated but still in some sort of order, walking away from the battlefield. Here they were out of range of the French cannons and the sounds of gunfire seemed a long way away. Here it was clear to everyone that the battle had been lost, and defeat was on everyone's lips. Rostov asked around, but no one could tell him where the Tsar, or Kutuzov, might be found. Some said that the rumour about the Tsar being wounded was true. Others said it wasn't, and the false report that had spread like wildfire could be easily explained - it was the Grand Marshal Tolstoy, a member of the Emperor's entourage out with the others on the battlefield, who had been seen rushing back in the Tsar's carriage all pale and terrified. One officer mentioned to Rostov that over to the left outside the village he had seen a senior officer from headquarters, and Rostov rode off in that direction, no longer hoping to find anyone, but just to keep his conscience clear. He had ridden for a couple of miles, passing the last of the Russian troops, when he came to a kitchen-garden enclosed by a ditch; two men on horseback stood facing the ditch. One of them had a white plume in his hat and Rostov fancied he had seen him before. The other man was a stranger on a fine chestnut (in his case it was the horse that looked familiar). He rode up to the ditch, gave his horse a touch of the spurs, loosened the reins and jumped easily across into the garden, disturbing nothing but a little earth that crumbled down from the bank under his horse's hind hooves. Turning the horse sharply, he jumped back over the ditch and made a respectful approach to the horseman with the white plume, as if inviting him to do the same. Rostov was suddenly fascinated by the rider whose general appearance had struck him as familiar, and when this man made a gesture of refusal with his head and his hand Rostov instantly recognized his idolized and much-lamented sovereign.
'No, it can't be. Not him on his own in the middle of this empty field,' thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov caught sight of the beloved features so sharply etched into his memory. The Tsar was pale, his cheeks looked haggard and his eyes hollow, but this made his features look even more charming and gentle. Rostov was delighted to discover that the rumour about the Emperor being wounded was untrue. He was delighted to see him. Now was his chance - indeed it was his duty - to go straight up to him and deliver the message entrusted to him by Dolgorukov.
But, just as a lovelorn youth dithers and freezes, too scared to force out the words he has dreamt about for nights on end, panics and looks around for help or any chance of delay and escape now that the longed-for moment is here and he and she are alone together, so Rostov, suddenly presented with what he wanted most in all the world, had no idea how to approach the Emperor, and his mind was assailed by thousands of reasons why it would be wrong, inconvenient and impossible to do so.
'No! It would be like taking advantage of him when he's alone and despondent. It might be unpleasant and painful for him to see an unfamiliar face when he's suffering like that. Anyway, what could I say to him now, when one look at him makes my heart leap and my mouth go all dry?' In his imagination he had composed innumerable speeches addressed to the Tsar, but not one of them came to mind now. They had been intended for other occasions; they were meant to be spoken mainly at moments of victory and triumph, and predominantly on his deathbed, when the Emperor thanked him for his heroism and he with his dying breath gave voice to the love that he had just proved in action.
'Then again, how can I ask the Emperor for instructions about the right flank when it's nearly four o'clock in the afternoon and we'v
e lost the battle? No, I mustn't go up to him. I mustn't interrupt him while he's thinking. Better die a thousand deaths than get one angry glance from him, one sign of his disapproval,' Rostov decided, and with a heavy heart he rode away in some despair, constantly turning to look back at the Tsar, still standing there, a picture of indecision.
While Rostov was thinking things over and riding sadly away, a certain Captain Von Toll happened to ride up to the same spot, saw the Emperor and went straight up to him, offering his services and helping him to walk across the ditch. Feeling unwell and in need of rest, the Tsar sat down under an apple-tree, and Von Toll remained at his side. Rostov looked back down the long road and watched with envy and regret as Von Toll stayed with the Emperor for some time, talking eagerly, and the Emperor, clearly in tears, put a hand over his eyes and shook hands with Von Toll.
'And it could have been me not him!' Rostov thought, and hardly able to hold back his tears of sympathy for the Tsar, he rode away in the depths of despair, not knowing where to go or why. Worst of all, he knew that his despair was all his own fault - his weakness had caused all this misery. He could have gone up to the Emperor . . . he should have done. This had been his one chance to demonstrate his devotion to the Emperor. And he had missed it . . . 'What have I done?' he thought. He turned his horse and galloped back to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but there was no one there across the ditch. Nothing but wagons and carriages going by. He learnt from one of the drivers that Kutuzov's staff were not far away; they were in the village where the wagons were going. Rostov followed them.
In front of him Kutuzov's groom was leading horses covered with their cloths. A wagon followed the groom, and after the wagon came a bow-legged old servant, hobbling along in cap and jacket.
'Hey, Titus!' said the groom.
'What?' answered the old man absent-mindedly.
'Titus a drum!'
'Stupid idiot!' said the old man, spitting angrily. For a few minutes they all moved on in silence, and then the same silly joke was repeated.
It was coming up to five o'clock and the battle had been lost at every point. More than a hundred cannons were in French hands. Przebyszewski and his corps had surrendered. The other columns, having lost half their men, were retreating in complete disarray. The surviving forces of Langeron and Dokhturov mingled together in crowds on the banks of dams and ponds near the village of Augest.
By six o'clock the Augest dam was the only place where heavy gunfire could still be heard, and it came only from the French side, where several batteries newly deployed on the hillside outside Pratzen continued to fire down on our troops as they retreated.
In the rearguard Dokhturov and the others had re-formed their battalions and were firing back at the pursuing French cavalry. It was now getting dark. On the bank of the narrow Augest dam, where year after year the old miller in his cap had sat fishing while his grandson rolled up his sleeves and ran his fingers through the silvery fish thrashing about in the bucket; on the same dam where year after year the Moravians in their shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse wagons of wheat up to the mill, and trundled back, dusty with flour that whitened their carts - on this narrow dam hideous men with hideous expressions running for their lives now scrambled together, jostling with wagons and cannons, falling under horses' hooves and carriage-wheels, all squashed up close, falling down dead, stepping over dying men and killing each other, only to stagger a few steps and get killed in the same way.
Every ten seconds a cannonball would blast the air and come whizzing down, or a grenade would burst in the thick of the crowd, dealing out death and splashing the bystanders with blood. The newly promoted Dolokhov, who had been wounded in the hand, walked along with a dozen soldiers of his company and his general on horseback, the sole survivors from an entire regiment. Borne along by the crowd, they all squeezed together in the approach to the dam and stood there, squashed in from every side because a horse pulling a cannon had fallen down and the crowd were dragging it away. A cannonball killed somebody behind them, another one crashed down just ahead and Dolokhov was spattered with blood. The crowd surged forward desperately, squeezed up, moved on a step or two and stopped again. Everyone had the same thought: 'If I can just get through the next hundred yards I'm sure I'll be all right. Two minutes here and I'm a dead man.'
Dolokhov scrambled through from the centre of the crowd to the edge of the dam, shoved two soldiers aside and ran down on to the slippery ice that covered the millpond.
'Come on down here!' he shouted, bounding over the ice as it cracked under him. 'Come on down here!' he kept shouting to the cannon crew. 'The ice is good! . . .'
The ice was good, but it sank and cracked, and it was obviously going to give way under his weight alone, never mind a cannon or a crowd of people. They all stared down at him and flooded to the brink, too scared to venture out on to the ice. His regimental commander, waiting on horseback at the end of the dam, raised one hand and opened his mouth wide to speak to Dolokhov. Suddenly a stray cannonball whizzed across so low over the heads of the crowd that everybody ducked. There was a terrible splashing sound and the general fell from his horse in a pool of blood. No one even looked at him, let alone thought of picking him up.
'On to the ice! Get on the ice! Come down here! This way! Can't you hear? Come on!' Voices rang out on all sides after the ball had hit the general, though nobody knew what he was shouting or why.
One of the rear cannons that had been manhandled up on to the dam was trundled down on to the ice. Crowds of soldiers began running down on to the frozen surface. The ice cracked under one of the leading soldiers, and one leg slipped into the water. He tried to drag himself out but he was in waist-deep. The nearest soldiers tried to stop, the cannon driver reined in his horse, but still the shouts came from behind: 'Get down on the ice. Don't stop! Go on! Go on!' Screams of horror came from the crowd. The soldiers near to the cannon waved furiously at the horses, and lashed at them to make them turn round and go back. But the horses moved on and stepped over the edge. The ice that had been strong enough to hold walking people cracked across in one huge piece and three dozen men standing on it lunged forwards and backwards, shoving one another down into the water.
Meanwhile cannonballs continued to zoom across and crash down everywhere, on the ice, in the water, and more often than not straight into the crowd that had engulfed the dam, the nearby ponds and the bank.
CHAPTER 19
Up on the Pratzen heights Prince Andrey Bolkonsky was lying where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his hands, bleeding from a head-wound and moaning pitifully, without being aware of it, in a soft voice like that of a child. By late afternoon he had stopped moaning and lay there perfectly still. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious, but now suddenly he felt alive again, not least from the burning, lacerating pain in his head.
'Where's it gone, that lofty sky that I had never known before until I saw it today?' was his first thought. 'And I've never known pain like this before either,' he thought. 'No, up to now I have known nothing, absolutely nothing. But where am I?'
He listened, and there was the sound of approaching hooves and French-speaking voices. He opened his eyes wide. There was the same lofty sky above him, with clouds floating higher than ever and through them glimpses of a blue infinity. He didn't turn his head and couldn't see the men who, if the voices and the hooves were anything to go by, had ridden up near by and stopped.
It was Napoleon himself with two of his adjutants. Bonaparte was going round everywhere, issuing final instructions for reinforcing the batteries firing down at the Augest dam, and inspecting the dead and wounded on the battlefield.
'Fine men!' said Napoleon, looking down at a dead Russian grenadier lying on his belly with his face rammed into the soil. The back of his head had gone black and one of his arms, flung out wide, was already stiffening.
'The field-guns are out of ammunition, your Majesty,' said an adjutant, arriving that
moment from the batteries that were firing at Augest.
'Bring some more up from the reserves,' said Napoleon before riding on a few steps and then coming to a halt right above Prince Andrey, who was lying on his back with the flagstaff still where he had dropped it, though the flag itself had been taken by the French as a trophy.
'A fine death this one!' said Napoleon, looking down at Bolkonsky. Prince Andrey knew they were talking about him, and Napoleon was doing the talking - he had heard the speaker addressed as 'your Majesty'. But the words sounded like buzzing flies. They were of no interest to him, he didn't take them in and he immediately forgot them. He had a burning headache, he could feel himself losing blood, and there above him was the lofty, far-distant, unending sky. He knew it was Napoleon - his hero - but at that moment Napoleon seemed to him such a tiny, inconsequential creature compared with everything that was now transpiring between his spirit and that lofty, sky-blue infinity with its busy clouds. At that moment he could not have cared less who was standing over him, or what they were saying about him. He was just glad that someone had stopped and was standing over him, and his only desire was for these people to help him and bring him back to life, because life was good and he saw it all differently now. He made a huge effort to move and make some kind of noise. He stirred one leg faintly, and produced a feeble, sickly moan that he himself found moving.
'Oh, he's alive,' said Napoleon. 'Pick him up, this young man and have him taken to a dressing-station!'
This said, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who had removed his hat and was now advancing, all smiles, to meet his Emperor and congratulate him on his victory.
Prince Andrey remembered nothing more. He had lost consciousness from the terrible pain that shot through him as they laid him on the stretcher and continued with every jolt as they carried him over to the dressing-station and began to explore the extent of his wound. When at last he came round it was late evening and he was being taken to the field-hospital along with some other wounded and captured Russian officers. During the transfer he felt a little stronger and could look around, even speak.