《War And Peace》 Book2 CHAPTER XX
by Leo Tolstoy
THE INFANTRY, who had been caught unawares in the copse, had run away,
and the different companies all confused together had retreated in disorderly
crowds. One soldier in a panic had uttered those words—terrible in war
and meaningless: “Cut off!” and those words had infected the whole mass
with panic.
“Outflanked! Cut off! Lost!” they shouted as they ran.
When their general heard the firing and the shouts in the rear he had
grasped at the instant that something awful was happening to his regiment;
and the thought that he, an exemplary officer, who had served so many
years without ever having been guilty of the slightest shortcoming,
might be held responsible by his superiors for negligence or lack of
discipline, so affected him that, instantly oblivious of the insubordinate
cavalry colonel and his dignity as a general, utterly oblivious even
of danger and of the instinct of self-preservation, he clutched at the
crupper of his saddle, and spurring his horse, galloped off to the regiment
under a perfect hail of bullets that luckily missed him. He was possessed
by the one desire to find out what was wrong, and to help and correct
the mistake whatever it might be, if it were a mistake on his part,
so that after twenty-two years of exemplary service, without incurring
a reprimand for anything, he might avoid being responsible for this
blunder.
Galloping successfully between the French forces, he reached the field
behind the copse across which our men were running downhill, not heeding
the word of command. That moment had come of moral vacillation which
decides the fate of battles. Would these disorderly crowds of soldiers
hear the voice of their commander, or, looking back at him, run on further?
In spite of the despairing yell of the commander, who had once been
so awe-inspiring to his soldiers, in spite of his infuriated, purple
face, distorted out of all likeness to itself, in spite of his brandished
sword, the soldiers still ran and talked together, shooting into the
air and not listening to the word of command. The moral balance which
decides the fate of battle was unmistakably falling on the side of panic.
The general was choked with screaming and gunpowder-smoke, and he stood
still in despair. All seemed lost; but at that moment the French, who
had been advancing against our men, suddenly, for no apparent reason,
ran back, vanished from the edge of the copse, and Russian sharp-shooters
appeared in the copse. This was Timohin's division, the only one that
had retained its good order in the copse, and hiding in ambush in the
ditch behind the copse, had suddenly attacked the French. Timohin had
rushed with such a desperate yell upon the French, and with such desperate
and drunken energy had he dashed at the enemy with only a sword in his
hand, that the French flung down their weapons and fled without pausing
to recover themselves. Dolohov, running beside Timohin, killed one French
soldier at close quarters, and was the first to seize by the collar
an officer who surrendered. The fleeing Russians came back; the battalions
were brought together; and the French, who had been on the point of
splitting the forces of the left flank into two parts, were for the
moment held in check. The reserves had time to join the main forces,
and the runaways were stopped. The general stood with Major Ekonomov
at the bridge, watching the retreating companies go by, when a soldier
ran up to him, caught hold of his stirrup, and almost clung on to it.
The soldier was wearing a coat of blue fine cloth, he had no knapsack
nor shako, his head was bound up, and across his shoulders was slung
a French cartridge case. In his hand he held an officer's sword. The
soldier was pale, his blue eyes looked impudently into the general's
face, but his mouth was smiling. Although the general was engaged in
giving instructions to Major Ekonomov, he could not help noticing this
soldier.
“Your excellency, here are two trophies,” said Dolohov, pointing to
the French sword and cartridge case. “An officer was taken prisoner
by me. I stopped the company.” Dolohov breathed hard from weariness;
he spoke in jerks. “The whole company can bear me witness. I beg you
to remember me, your excellency!”
“Very good, very good,” said the general, and he turned to Major Ekonomov.
But Dolohov did not leave him; he undid the bandage, and showed the
blood congealed on his head.
“A bayonet wound; I kept my place in the front. Remember me, your excellency.”
Tushin's battery had been forgotten, and it was only at the very end
of the action that Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in
the centre, sent the staff-officer on duty and then Prince Andrey to
command the battery to retire as quickly as possible. The force which
had been stationed near Tushin's cannons to protect them had by somebody's
orders retreated in the middle of the battle. But the battery still
kept up its fire, and was not taken by the French simply because the
enemy could not conceive of the reckless daring of firing from four
cannons that were quite unprotected. The French supposed, on the contrary,
judging from the energetic action of the battery, that the chief forces
of the Russians were concentrated here in the centre, and twice attempted
to attack that point, and both times were driven back by the grapeshot
fired on them from the four cannons which stood in solitude on the heights.
Shortly after Prince Bagration's departure, Tushin had succeeded in
setting fire to Schöngraben.
“Look, what a fuss they're in! It's flaming! What a smoke! Smartly
done! First-rate! The smoke! the smoke!” cried the gunners, their spirits
reviving.
All the guns were aimed without instructions in the direction of the
conflagration. The soldiers, as though they were urging each other on,
shouted at every volley: “Bravo! That's something like now! Go it!…
First-rate!” The fire, fanned by the wind, soon spread. The French columns,
who had marched out beyond the village, went back, but as though in
revenge for this mischance, the enemy stationed ten cannons a little
to the right of the village, and began firing from them on Tushin.
In their childlike glee at the conflagration of the village, and the
excitement of their successful firing on the French, our artillerymen
only noticed this battery when two cannon-balls and after them four
more fell among their cannons, and one knocked over two horses and another
tore off the foot of a gunner. Their spirits, however, once raised,
did not flag; their excitement simply found another direction. The horses
were replaced by others from the ammunition carriage; the wounded were
removed, and the four cannons were turned facing the ten of the enemy's
battery. The other officer, Tushin's comrade, was killed at the beginning
of the action, and after an hour's time, of the forty gunners of the
battery, seventeen were disabled, but they were still as merry and as
eager as ever. Twice they noticed the French appearing below close to
them, and they sent volleys of grapeshot at them.
The little man with his weak, clumsy movements, was continually asking
his orderly for just one more pipe for that stroke, as he said,
and scattering sparks from it, he kept running out in front and looking
from under his little hand at the French.
“Smash away, lads!” he was continually saying, and he clutched at the
cannon wheels himself and unscrewed the screws. In the smoke, deafened
by the incessant booming of the cannons that made him shudder every
time one was fired, Tushin ran from one cannon to the other, his short
pipe never out of his mouth. At one moment he was taking aim, then reckoning
the charges, then arranging for the changing and unharnessing of the
killed and wounded horses, and all the time shouting in his weak, shrill,
hesitating voice. His face grew more and more eager. Only when men were
killed and wounded he knitted his brows, and turning away from the dead
man, shouted angrily to the men, slow, as they always are, to pick up
a wounded man or a dead body. The soldiers, for the most part fine,
handsome fellows (a couple of heads taller than their officer and twice
as broad in the chest, as they mostly are in the artillery), all looked
to their commanding officer like children in a difficult position, and
the expression they found on his face was invariably reflected at once
on their own.
Owing to the fearful uproar and noise and the necessity of attention
and activity, Tushin experienced not the slightest unpleasant sensation
of fear; and the idea that he might be killed or badly wounded never
entered his head. On the contrary, he felt more and more lively. It
seemed to him that the moment in which he had first seen the enemy and
had fired the first shot was long, long ago, yesterday perhaps, and
that the spot of earth on which he stood was a place long familiar to
him, in which he was quite at home. Although he thought of everything,
considered everything, did everything the very best officer could have
done in his position, he was in a state of mind akin to the delirium
of fever or the intoxication of a drunken man.
The deafening sound of his own guns on all sides, the hiss and thud
of the enemy's shells, the sight of the perspiring, flushed gunners
hurrying about the cannons, the sight of the blood of men and horses,
and of the puffs of smoke from the enemy on the opposite side (always
followed by a cannon-ball that flew across and hit the earth, a man,
a horse, or a cannon)—all these images made up for him a fantastic world
of his own, in which he found enjoyment at the moment. The enemy's cannons
in his fancy were not cannons, but pipes from which an invisible smoker
blew puffs of smoke at intervals.
“There he's puffing away again,” Tushin murmured to himself as a cloud
of smoke rolled downhill, and was borne off by the wind in a wreath
to the left. “Now, your ball—throw it back.”
“What is it, your honour?” asked a gunner who stood near him, and heard
him muttering something.
“Nothing, a grenade…” he answered. “Now for it, our Matvyevna,” he
said to himself. Matvyevna was the name his fancy gave to the big cannon,
cast in an old-fashioned mould, that stood at the end. The French seemed
to be ants swarming about their cannons. The handsome, drunken soldier,
number one gunner of the second cannon, was in his dreamworld “uncle”;
Tushin looked at him more often than at any of the rest, and took delight
in every gesture of the man. The sound— dying away, then quickening
again—of the musketry fire below the hill seemed to him like the heaving
of some creature's breathing. He listened to the ebb and flow of these
sounds.
“Ah, she's taking another breath again,” he was saying to himself.
He himself figured in his imagination as a mighty man of immense stature,
who was flinging cannon balls at the French with both hands.
“Come, Matvyevna, old lady, stick by us!” he was saying, moving back
from the cannon, when a strange, unfamiliar voice called over his head.
“Captain Tushin! Captain!”
Tushin looked round in dismay. It was the same staff-officer who had
turned him out of the booth at Grunte. He was shouting to him in a breathless
voice:
“I say, are you mad? You've been commanded twice to retreat, and you…”
“Now, what are they pitching into me for?” … Tushin wondered, looking
in alarm at the superior officer.
“I…don't…” he began, putting two fingers to the peak of his cap. “I…”
But the staff-officer did not say all he had meant to. A cannon ball
flying near him made him duck down on his horse. He paused, and was
just going to say something more, when another ball stopped him. He
turned his horse's head and galloped away.
“Retreat! All to retreat!” he shouted from a distance.
The soldiers laughed. A minute later an adjutant arrived with the same
message. This was Prince Andrey. The first thing he saw, on reaching
the place where Tushin's cannons were stationed, was an unharnessed
horse with a broken leg, which was neighing beside the harnessed horses.
The blood was flowing in a perfect stream from its leg. Among the platforms
lay several dead men. One cannon ball after another flew over him as
he rode up, and he felt a nervous shudder running down his spine. But
the very idea that he was afraid was enough to rouse him again. “I can't
be frightened,” he thought, and he deliberately dismounted from his
horse between the cannons. He gave his message, but he did not leave
the battery. He decided to stay and assist in removing the cannons from
the position and getting them away. Stepping over the corpses, under
the fearful fire from the French, he helped Tushin in getting the cannons
ready.
“The officer that came just now ran off quicker than he came,” said
a gunner to Prince Andrey, “not like your honour.”
Prince Andrey had no conversation with Tushin. They were both so busy
that they hardly seemed to see each other. When they had got the two
out of the four cannons that were uninjured on to the platforms and
were moving downhill (one cannon that had been smashed and a howitzer
were left behind), Prince Andrey went up to Tushin.
“Well, good-bye till we meet again,” said Prince Andrey, holding out
his hand to Tushin.
“Good-bye, my dear fellow,” said Tushin, “dear soul! good-bye, my dear
fellow,” he said with tears, which for some unknown reason started suddenly
into his eyes.
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