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Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to be called
early, said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant consciousness
of having to direct a battle he did not approve of, got into his
caleche and drove from Letashovka (a village three and a half
miles from Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns
were to meet. He sat in the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns,
and listening for any sound of firing on the right as an indication
that the action had begun. But all was still quiet. A damp dull
autumn morning was just dawning. On approaching Tarutino Kutuzov
noticed cavalrymen leading their horses to water across the road
along which he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them searchingly,
stopped his carriage, and inquired what regiment they belonged
to. They belonged to a column that should have been far in front
and in ambush long before then. "It may be a mistake,"
thought the old commander in chief. But a little further on he
saw infantry regiments with their arms piled and the soldiers,
only partly dressed, eating their rye porridge and carrying fuel.
He sent for an officer. The officer reported that no order to
advance had been received.
"How! Not rec..." Kutuzov began, but checked himself
immediately and sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his
caleche, he waited with drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing
silently up and down. When Eykhen, the officer of the general
staff whom he had summoned, appeared, Kutuzov went purple in the
face, not because that officer was to blame for the mistake, but
because he was an object of sufficient importance for him to vent
his wrath on. Trembling and panting the old man fell into that
state of fury in which he sometimes used to roll on the ground,
and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him with his hands, shouting
and loading him with gross abuse. Another man, Captain Brozin,
who happened to turn up and who was not at all to blame, suffered
the same fate.
"What sort of another blackguard are you? I'll have you
shot! Scoundrels!" yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving
his arms and reeling.
He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a
Serene Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no
man had ever had in Russia, to be placed in this position- made
the laughingstock of the whole army! "I needn't have been
in such a hurry to pray about today, or have kept awake thinking
everything over all night," thought he to himself. "When
I was a chit of an officer no one would have dared to mock me
so... and now!" He was in a state of physical suffering as
if from corporal punishment, and could not avoid expressing it
by cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon began to
fail him, and looking about him, conscious of having said much
that was amiss, he again got into his caleche and drove back in
silence.
His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly
he listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not
come to see him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen,
Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should
be executed next day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent.
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