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Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor
near the village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding
officer were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various
kinds. He urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past
these crowds, but the farther he went the more disorganized they
were. The highroad on which he had come out was thronged with
caleches, carriages of all sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers
of all arms, some wounded and some not. This whole mass droned
and jostled in confusion under the dismal influence of cannon
balls flying from the French batteries stationed on the Pratzen
Heights.
"Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov
kept asking everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.
At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.
"Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said
the soldier, laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.
Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped
the horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and
began to question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been
driven in a carriage at full speed about an hour before along
that very road and that he was dangerously wounded.
"It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been
someone else."
"I saw him myself." replied the man with a self-confident
smile of derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after
the times I've seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see
you.... There he sat in the carriage as pale as anything. How
they made the four black horses fly! Gracious me, they did rattle
past! It's time I knew the Imperial horses and Ilya Ivanych. I
don't think Ilya drives anyone except the Tsar!"
Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when
a wounded officer passing by addressed him:
"Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander
in chief? He was killed by a cannon ball- struck in the breast
before our regiment."
"Not killed- wounded!" another officer corrected
him.
"Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov.
"Not Kutuzov, but what's his name- well, never mind...
there are not many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all
the commanders are there," said the officer, pointing to
the village of Hosjeradek, and he walked on.
Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he
was now going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was
impossible to doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed
out to him, in which he saw turrets and a church. What need to
hurry? What was he now to say to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even
if they were alive and unwounded?
"Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed
at once!" a soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you
there!"
"Oh, what are you talking about?" said another.
"Where is he to go? That way is nearer."
Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they
said he would be killed.
"It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am
I to try to save myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region
where the greatest number of men had perished in fleeing from
Pratzen. The French had not yet occupied that region, and the
Russians- the uninjured and slightly wounded- had left it long
ago. All about the field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland,
lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres.
The wounded crept together in twos and threes and one could hear
their distressing screams and groans, sometimes feigned- or so
it seemed to Rostov. He put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing
all these suffering men, and he felt afraid- afraid not for his
life, but for the courage he needed and which he knew would not
stand the sight of these unfortunates.
The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with
dead and wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing
an adjutant riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several
shots. The sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of
the corpses around him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling
of terror and pity for himself. He remembered his mother's last
letter. "What would she feel," thought he, "if
she saw me here now on this field with the cannon aimed at me?"
In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring
from the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were
less disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the
musketry fire sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and
said that the battle was lost. No one whom Rostov asked could
tell him where the Emperor or Kutuzov was. Some said the report
that the Emperor was wounded was correct, others that it was not,
and explained the false rumor that had spread by the fact that
the Emperor's carriage had really galloped from the field of battle
with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal Count Tolstoy, who
had ridden out to the battlefield with others in the Emperor's
suite. One officer told Rostov that he had seen someone from headquarters
behind the village to the left, and thither Rostov rode, not hoping
to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience. When he had
ridden about two miles and had passed the last of the Russian
troops, he saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two
men on horseback facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his
hat seemed familiar to Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut
horse (which Rostov fancied he had seen before) rode up to the
ditch, struck his horse with his spurs, and giving it the rein
leaped lightly over. Only a little earth crumbled from the bank
under the horse's hind hoofs. Turning the horse sharply, he again
jumped the ditch, and deferentially addressed the horseman with
the white plumes, evidently suggesting that he should do the same.
The rider, whose figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily
riveted his attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head
and hand and by that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lamented
and adored monarch.
"But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty
field!" thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his
head and Rostov saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved
on his memory. The Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his
eyes hollow, but the charm, the mildness of his features, was
all the greater. Rostov was happy in the assurance that the rumors
about the Emperor being wounded were false. He was happy to be
seeing him. He knew that he might and even ought to go straight
to him and give the message Dolgorukov had ordered him to deliver.
But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not
utter the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around
for help or a chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment
comes and he is alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained
what he had longed for more than anything else in the world, did
not know how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred
to him why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible
to do so.
"What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage
of his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant
or painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can
I say to him now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry
at the mere sight of him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches
addressed to the Emperor that he had composed in his imagination
could he now recall. Those speeches were intended for quite other
conditions, they were for the most part to be spoken at a moment
of victory and triumph, generally when he was dying of wounds
and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic deeds, and while
dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.
"Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions
for the right flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the
battle is lost? No, certainly I must not approach him, I must
not intrude on his reflections. Better die a thousand times than
risk receiving an unkind look or bad opinion from him," Rostov
decided; and sorrowfully and with a heart full despair he rode
away, continually looking back at the Tsar, who still remained
in the same attitude of indecision.
While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly
away, Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing
the Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and
assisted him to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing
to rest and feeling unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von
Toll remained beside him. Rostov from a distance saw with envy
and remorse how von Toll spoke long and warmly to the Emperor
and how the Emperor, evidently weeping, covered his eyes with
his hand and pressed von Toll's hand.
"And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov,
and hardly restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode
on in utter despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.
His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own
weakness was the cause his grief.
He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the
sovereign. It was a unique chance to show his devotion to the
Emperor and he had not made use of it.... "What have I done?"
thought he. And he turned round and galloped back to the place
where he had seen the Emperor, but there was no one beyond the
ditch now. Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From
one of the drivers he learned that Kutuzov's staff were not far
off, in the village the vehicles were going to. Rostov followed
them. In front of him walked Kutuzov's groom leading horses in
horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old,
bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.
"Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom.
"What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly.
"Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!"
"Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily.
Some time passed in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.
Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all
points. More than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of
the French.
Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other
columns after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly
confused masses.
The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were
crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village
of Augesd.
After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot
cannonade (delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard
from numerous batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights,
directed at our retreating forces.
In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions
kept up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing
our troops. It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where
for so many years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in
his tasseled cap peacefully angling, while his grandson, with
shirt sleeves rolled up, handled the floundering silvery fish
in the watering can, on that dam over which for so many years
Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully driven
their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty
with flour whitening their carts- on that narrow dam amid the
wagons and the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and between the
wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together,
crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying and killing
one another, only to move on a few steps and be killed themselves
in the same way.
Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around,
or a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some
and splashing with blood those near them.
Dolokhov- now an officer- wounded in the arm, and on foot,
with the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of
his company, represented all that was left of that whole regiment.
Impelled by the crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach
to the dam and, jammed in on all sides, had stopped because a
horse in front had fallen under a cannon and the crowd were dragging
it out. A cannon ball killed someone behind them, another fell
in front and splashed Dolokhov with blood. The crowd, pushing
forward desperately, squeezed together, moved a few steps, and
again stopped.
"Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved,
remain here another two minutes and it is certain death,"
thought each one.
Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way
to the edge of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet,
and ran onto the slippery ice that covered the millpool.
"Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice
which creaked under him; "turn this way!" he shouted
to those with the gun. "It bears!..."
The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain
that it would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but
very soon even under his weight alone. The men looked at him and
pressed to the bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general
on horseback at the entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened
his mouth to address Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so
low above the crowd that everyone ducked. It flopped into something
moist, and the general fell from his horse in a pool of blood.
Nobody gave him a look or thought of raising him.
"Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you
hear? Go on!" innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the
ball had struck the general, the men themselves not knowing what,
or why, they were shouting.
One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned
off onto the ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running
onto the frozen pond. The ice gave way under one of the foremost
soldiers, and one leg slipped into the water. He tried to right
himself but fell in up to his waist. The nearest soldiers shrank
back, the gun driver stopped his horse, but from behind still
came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why do you stop? Go on! Go
on!" And cries of horror were heard in the crowd. The soldiers
near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to make them
turn and move on. The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that
had held under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some
forty men who were on it dashed, some forward and some back, drowning
one another.
Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and
flop onto the ice and into the water and oftenest of all among
the crowd that covered the dam, the pond, and the bank.
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