|
At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops
of the center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not
yet moved, but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry,
and artillery, which were to be the first to descend the heights
to attack the French right flank and drive it into the Bohemian
mountains according to plan, were already up and astir. The smoke
of the campfires, into which they were throwing everything superfluous,
made the eyes smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly
drinking tea and breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit
and beating a tattoo with their feet to warm themselves, gathering
round the fires throwing into the flames the remains of sheds,
chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that they did not
want or could not carry away with them. Austrian column guides
were moving in and out among the Russian troops and served as
heralds of the advance. As soon as an Austrian officer showed
himself near a commanding officer's quarters, the regiment began
to move: the soldiers ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into
their boots, their bags into the carts, got their muskets ready,
and formed rank. The officers buttoned up their coats, buckled
on their swords and pouches, and moved along the ranks shouting.
The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and packed the wagons
and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion and regimental
commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final instructions,
orders, and commissions to the baggage men who remained behind,
and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet resounded. The column
moved forward without knowing where and unable, from the masses
around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, to see either the
place they were leaving or that to which they were going.
A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his
regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has
walked, whatever strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches,
just as a sailor is always surrounded by the same decks, masts,
and rigging of his ship, so the soldier always has around him
the same comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan
Mitrich, the same company dog Jack, and the same commanders. The
sailor rarely cares to know the latitude in which his ship is
sailing, but on the day of battle- heaven knows how and whence-
a stern note of which all are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere
of an army, announcing the approach of something decisive and
solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the
day of battle the soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests
of their regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly
ask concerning what is going on around them.
The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light
they could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic
trees and level ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any
side, one might encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But
the columns advanced for a long time, always in the same fog,
descending and ascending hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures,
going over new and unknown ground, and nowhere encountering the
enemy. On the contrary, the soldiers became aware that in front,
behind, and on all sides, other Russian columns were moving in
the same direction. Every soldier felt glad to know that to the
unknown place where he was going, many more of our men were going
too.
"There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was
being said in the ranks.
"It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered,
lads! Last night I looked at the campfires and there was no end
of them. A regular Moscow!"
Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks
or talked to the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council
of war, were out of humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and
so did not exert themselves to cheer the men but merely carried
out the orders), yet the troops marched gaily, as they always
do when going into action, especially to an attack. But when they
had marched for about an hour in the dense fog, the greater part
of the men had to halt and an unpleasant consciousness of some
dislocation and blunder spread through the ranks. How such a consciousness
is communicated is very difficult to define, but it certainly
is communicated very surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly,
and irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the Russian army
been alone without any allies, it might perhaps have been a long
time before this consciousness of mismanagement became a general
conviction, but as it was, the disorder was readily and naturally
attributed to the stupid Germans, and everyone was convinced that
a dangerous muddle had been occasioned by the sausage eaters.
"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we
already come up against the French?"
"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had."
"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here
we stand in the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's
all those damned Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"
"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're
crowding up behind. And now here we stand hungry."
"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry
are blocking the way," said an officer.
"Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own
country!" said another.
"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding
up.
"The Eighteenth."
"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long
ago, now you won't get there till evening."
"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what
they are doing!" said the officer and rode off.
Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in
Russian.
"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out,"
said a soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd
shoot them, the scoundrels!"
"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but
we haven't got halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated
on different sides.
And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started
began to turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements
and at the Germans.
The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry
was moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that
our center was too far separated from our right flank and the
cavalry were all ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand
cavalry crossed in front of the infantry, who had to wait.
At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide
and a Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry
should be halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher
command, was to blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless
and dispirited. After an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending
the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more
densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog
a shot was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying
intervals- trata... tat- and then more and more regularly and
rapidly, and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.
Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and
having stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word
from their commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late
spreading through the ranks, and above all being unable to see
anything in front or around them in the thick fog, the Russians
exchanged shots with the enemy lazily and advanced and again halted,
receiving no timely orders from the officers or adjutants who
wandered about in the fog in those unknown surroundings unable
to find their own regiments. In this way the action began for
the first, second, and third columns, which had gone down into
the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov was, stood on
the Pratzen Heights.
Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick
fog; on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be
seen of what was going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces
were, as we supposed, six miles away, or whether they were near
by in that sea of mist, no one knew till after eight o'clock.
It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like
a sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz
where Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite
light. Above him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb
quivered like a huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that
milky sea of mist. The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself
with his staff, were not on the far side of the streams and hollows
of Sokolnitz and Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take
up our position and begin the action, but were on this side, so
close to our own forces that Napoleon with the naked eye could
distinguish a mounted man from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue
cloak which he had worn on his Italian campaign, sat on his small
gray Arab horse a little in front of his marshals. He gazed silently
at the hills which seemed to rise out of the sea of mist and on
which the Russian troops were moving in the distance, and he listened
to the sounds of firing in the valley. Not a single muscle of
his face- which in those days was still thin- moved. His gleaming
eyes were fixed intently on one spot. His predictions were being
justified. Part of the Russian force had already descended into
the valley toward the ponds and lakes and part were leaving these
Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack and regarded as the
key to the position. He saw over the mist that in a hollow between
two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian columns, their
bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one direction
toward the valley and disappearing one after another into the
mist. From information he had received the evening before, from
the sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during
the night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns,
and from all indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed
him to be far away in front of them, and that the columns moving
near Pratzen constituted the center of the Russian army, and that
that center was already sufficiently weakened to be successfully
attacked. But still he did not begin the engagement.
Today was a great day for him- the anniversary of his coronation.
Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous,
and in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the
field in that happy mood in which everything seems possible and
everything succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights
visible above the mist, and his cold face wore that special look
of confident, self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face
of a boy happily in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing
to distract his attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights,
now at the sun floating up out of the mist.
When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields
and mist were aglow with dazzling light- as if he had only awaited
this to begin the action- he drew the glove from his shapely white
hand, made a sign with it to the marshals, and ordered the action
to begin. The marshals, accompanied by adjutants, galloped off
in different directions, and a few minutes later the chief forces
of the French army moved rapidly toward those Pratzen Heights
which were being more and more denuded by Russian troops moving
down the valley to their left.
|
