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Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in
the evening and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night
with dark purple clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but
not muddy, and the troops advanced noiselessly, only occasionally
a jingling of the artillery could be faintly heard. The men were
forbidden to talk out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike
a light, and they tried to prevent their horses neighing. The
secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm and they marched
gaily. Some columns, supposing. they had reached their destination,
halted, piled arms, and settled down on the cold ground, but the
majority marched all night and arrived at places where they evidently
should not have been.
Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least important
detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time.
This detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path
leading from the village of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.
Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off, was awakened
by a deserter from the French army being brought to him. This
was a Polish sergeant of Poniatowski's corps, who explained in
Polish that he had come over because he had been slighted in the
service: that he ought long ago to have been made an officer,
that he was braver than any of them, and so he had left them and
wished to pay them out. He said that Murat was spending the night
less than a mile from where they were, and that if they would
let him have a convoy of a hundred men he would capture him alive.
Count Orlov-Denisov consulted his fellow officers.
The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered
to go and everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing
and arguing, Major-General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided
to go with the Polish sergeant.
"Now, remember," said Count Orlov-Denisov to the
sergeant at parting, "if you have been lying I'll have you
hanged like a dog; but if it's true you shall have a hundred gold
pieces!"
Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted
and rode away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They
disappeared into the forest, and Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen
Grekov off, returned, shivering from the freshness of the early
dawn and excited by what he had undertaken on his own responsibility,
and began looking at the enemy camp, now just visible in the deceptive
light of dawn and the dying campfires. Our columns ought to have
begun to appear on an open declivity to his right. He looked in
that direction, but though the columns would have been visible
quite far off, they were not to be seen. It seemed to the count
that things were beginning to stir in the French camp, and his
keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.
"Oh, it is really too late," said Count Orlov, looking
at the camp.
As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer
before our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to
him that the sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that
the whole Russian attack would be ruined by the absence of those
two regiments, which he would lead away heaven only knew where.
How could one capture a commander in chief from among such a mass
of troops!
"I am sure that rascal was lying," said the count.
"They can still be called back," said one of his
suite, who like Count Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure
when he looked at the enemy's camp.
"Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them
go on or not?"
"Will you have them fetched back?"
"Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov
with sudden determination, looking at his watch. "It will
be too late. It is quite light."
And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov.
When Grekov returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited both by the
abandoned attempt and by vainly awaiting the infantry columns
that still did not appear, as well as by the proximity of the
enemy, resolved to advance. All his men felt the same excitement.
"Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took
their places and crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's
aid!"
"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and
the Cossack companies, trailing their lances and advancing one
after another as if poured out of a sack, dashed gaily across
the brook toward the camp.
One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier
who saw the Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed
and only just waking up, ran off in all directions, abandoning
cannons, muskets, and horses.
Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what
was behind and around them, they would have captured Murat and
everything there. That was what the officers desired. But it was
impossible to make the Cossacks budge when once they had got booty
and prisoners. None of them listened to orders. Fifteen hundred
prisoners and thirty-eight guns were taken on the spot, besides
standards and (what seemed most important to the Cossacks) horses,
saddles, horsecloths, and the like. All this had to be dealt with,
the prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided- not without
some shouting and even a little themselves- and it was on this
that the Cossacks all busied themselves.
The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover themselves:
they formed into detachments and began firing. Orlov-Denisov,
still waiting for the other columns to arrive, advanced no further.
Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the
First Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated
columns, commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started
in due order and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not
to their appointed places. As always happens the men, starting
cheerfully, began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense
of confusion, and finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals
galloped about, shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had
come quite wrong and were late, gave vent to a little abuse, and
at last gave it all up and went forward, simply to get somewhere.
"We shall get somewhere or other!" And they did indeed
get somewhere, though not to their right places; a few eventually
even got to their right place, but too late to be of any use and
only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this battle played the
part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped assiduously from place
to place, finding everything upside down everywhere. Thus he stumbled
on Bagovut's corps in a wood when it was already broad daylight,
though the corps should long before have joined Orlov-Denisov.
Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing that someone must
be responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the commander of the
corps and began upbraiding him severely, saying that he ought
to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of placid
temperament, being also upset by all the delay, confusion, and
cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise and quite
contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things to
Toll.
"I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can
die with my men as well as anybody," he said, and advanced
with a single division.
Coming out onto a field under the enemy's fire, this brave
general went straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without
considering in his agitation whether going into action now, with
a single division, would be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls,
and bullets were just what he needed in his angry mood. One of
the first bullets killed him, and other bullets killed many of
his men. And his division remained under fire for some time quite
uselessly.
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