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KUTUZOV, accompanied by his adjutants, followed the carabineers at a walking
pace.
After going on for half a mile at the tail of the column, he stopped at a
solitary, deserted house (probably once an inn), near the branching of two
roads. Both roads led downhill, and troops were marching along both.
The fog was beginning to part, and a mile and a half away the enemy's troops
could be indistinctly seen on the opposite heights. On the left below, the
firing became more distinct. Kutuzov stood still in conversation with an
Austrian general. Prince Andrey standing a little behind watched them intently,
and turned to an adjutant, meaning to ask him for a field-glass.
“Look, look!” this adjutant said, looking not at the troops in the distance,
but down the hill before him. “It's the French!”
The two generals and the adjutant began snatching at the field-glass, pulling
it from one another. All their faces suddenly changed, and horror was apparent
in them all. They had supposed the French to be over a mile and a half away, and
here they were all of a sudden confronting us.
“Is it the enemy? … No. … But, look, it is … for certain.… What does it
mean?” voices were heard saying.
With the naked eye Prince Andrey saw to the right, below them, a dense column
of French soldiers coming up towards the Apsheron regiment, not over five
hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing.
“Here it is, it is coming, the decisive moment! My moment has come,” thought
Prince Andrey, and slashing his horse, he rode up to Kutuzov.
“We must stop the Apsheron regiment,” he shouted, “your most high
excellency.”
But at that instant everything was lost in a cloud of smoke, there was a
sound of firing close by, and a voice in naïve terror cried not two paces from
Prince Andrey: “Hey, mates, it's all up!” And this voice was like a command. At
that voice there was a general rush, crowds, growing larger every moment, ran
back in confusion to the spot where five minutes before they had marched by the
Emperors. It was not simply difficult to check this rushing crowd, it was
impossible not to be carried back with the stream oneself. Bolkonsky tried only
not to be left behind by it, and looked about him in bewilderment, unable to
grasp what was taking place. Nesvitsky, with an exasperated, crimson face,
utterly unlike himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he didn't get away at
once he'd be taken prisoner to a certainty. Kutuzov was standing in the same
place: he was taking out his handkerchief, and did not answer. The blood was
flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrey forced his way up to him.
“You are wounded?” he asked, hardly able to control the quivering of his
lower jaw.
“The wound's not here, but there, see!” said Kutuzov, pressing the
handkerchief to his wounded cheek, and pointing to the running soldiers.
“Stop them!” he shouted, and at the same time convinced that it was
impossible to stop them, he lashed his horse and rode to the right. A fresh rush
of flying crowds caught him up with it and carried him back.
The troops were running in such a dense multitude, that once getting into the
midst of the crowd, it was a hard matter to get out of it. One was shouting:
“Get on! what are you lagging for?” Another was turning round to fire in the
air; another striking the very horse on which Kutuzov was mounted. Getting out
with an immense effort from the stream on the left, Kutuzov, with his suite
diminished to a half, rode towards the sounds of cannon close by. Prince Andrey,
trying not to be left behind by Kutuzov, saw, as he got out of the racing
multitude, a Russian battery still firing in the smoke on the hillside and the
French running towards it. A little higher up stood Russian infantry, neither
moving forward to the support of the battery, nor back in the same direction as
the runaways. A general on horseback detached himself from the infantry and rode
towards Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four men were left. They were all pale
and looking at one another dumbly.
“Stop those wretches!” Kutuzov gasped to the officer in command of the
regiment, pointing to the flying soldiers. But at the same instant, as though in
revenge for the words, the bullets came whizzing over the regiment and Kutuzov's
suite like a flock of birds. The French were attacking the battery, and catching
sight of Kutuzov, they were shooting at him. With this volley the general
clutched at his leg; several soldiers fell, and the second lieutenant standing
with the flag let it drop out of his hands. The flag tottered and was caught on
the guns of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers had begun firing without
orders.
“Ooogh!” Kutuzov growled with an expression of despair, and he looked round
him. “Bolkonsky,” he whispered in a voice shaking with the consciousness of his
old age and helplessness. “Bolkonsky,” he whispered, pointing to the routed
battalion and the enemy, “what's this?”
But before he had uttered the words, Prince Andrey, feeling the tears of
shame and mortification rising in his throat, was jumping off his horse and
running to the flag.
“Lads, forward!” he shrieked in a voice of childish shrillness. “Here, it is
come!” Prince Andrey thought, seizing the staff of the flag, and hearing with
relief the whiz of bullets, unmistakably aimed at him. Several soldiers
dropped.
“Hurrah!” shouted Prince Andrey, and hardly able to hold up the heavy flag in
both his hands, he ran forward in the unhesitating conviction that the whole
battalion would run after him. And in fact it was only for a few steps that he
ran alone. One soldier started, then another, and then the whole battalion with
a shout of “hurrah!” was running forward and overtaking him. An under-officer of
the battalion ran up and took the flag which tottered from its weight in Prince
Andrey's hands, but he was at once killed. Prince Andrey snatched up the flag
again, and waving it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front of him he
saw our artillery men, of whom some were fighting, while others had abandoned
their cannons and were running towards him. He saw French infantry soldiers,
too, seizing the artillery horses and turning the cannons round. Prince Andrey
and the battalion were within twenty paces of the cannons. He heard the bullets
whizzing over him incessantly, and continually the soldiers moaned and fell to
the right and left of him. But he did not look at them; his eyes were fixed on
what was going on in front of him—at the battery. He could now see distinctly
the figure of the red-haired artilleryman, with a shako crushed on one side,
pulling a mop one way, while a French soldier was tugging it the other way.
Prince Andrey could see distinctly now the distraught, and at the same time
exasperated expression of the faces of the two men, who were obviously quite
unconscious of what they were doing.
“What are they about?” wondered Prince Andrey, watching them; “why doesn't
the red-haired artilleryman run, since he has no weapon? Why doesn't the
Frenchman stab him? He won't have time to run away before the Frenchman will
think of his gun, and knock him on the head.” Another Frenchman did, indeed, run
up to the combatants with his gun almost overbalancing him, and the fate of the
red-haired artilleryman, who still had no conception of what was awaiting him,
and was pulling the mop away in triumph, was probably sealed. But Prince Andrey
did not see how it ended. It seemed to him as though a hard stick was swung full
at him by some soldier near, dealing him a violent blow on the head. It hurt a
little, but the worst of it was that the pain distracted his attention, and
prevented him from seeing what he was looking at.
“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! …”
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