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During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders
had been issued by the French authorities concerning the party
of prisoners among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October
that party was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains
with which it had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack
that had traveled the first stages with them had been captured
by Cossacks, the other half had gone on ahead. Not one of those
dismounted cavalrymen who had marched in front of the prisoners
was left; they had all disappeared. The artillery the prisoners
had seen in front of them during the first days was now replaced
by Marshal Junot's enormous baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians.
Behind the prisoners came a cavalry baggage train.
From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved
in three columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder
that Pierre had noticed at their first halting place after leaving
Moscow had now reached the utmost limit.
The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides
by dead horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various
regiments continually changed about, now joining the moving column,
now again lagging behind it.
Several times during the march false alarms had been given
and the soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired,
and run headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled
and abused each other for their causeless panic.
These three groups traveling together- the cavalry stores,
the convoy of prisoners, and Junot's baggage train- still constituted
a separate and united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly
melting away.
Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred
and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest
had been captured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also
had been captured or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and
robbed by stragglers from Davout's corps. From the talk of the
Germans Pierre learned that a larger guard had been allotted to
that baggage train than to the prisoners, and that one of their
comrades, a German soldier, had been shot by the marshal's own
order because a silver spoon belonging to the marshal had been
found in his possession.
The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the
three hundred and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer
than a hundred now remained. The prisoners were more burdensome
to the escort than even the cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage.
They understood that the saddles and Junot's spoon might be of
some use, but that cold and hungry soldiers should have to stand
and guard equally cold and hungry Russians who froze and lagged
behind on the road (in which case the order was to shoot them)
was not merely incomprehensible but revolting. And the escort,
as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were in,
of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering
their own plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness
and severity.
At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking
the prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores,
several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran
away, but were recaptured by the French and shot.
The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer
prisoners should be kept separate from the rest, had long since
been abandoned. All who could walk went together, and after the
third stage Pierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged
dog that had chosen Karataev for its master.
On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell
ill with the fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow,
and as he grew gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre
did not know why, but since Karataev had begun to grow weaker
it had cost him an effort to go near him. When he did so and heard
the subdued moaning with which Karataev generally lay down at
the halting places, and when he smelled the odor emanating from
him which was now stronger than before, Pierre moved farther away
and did not think about him.
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his
intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is
created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction
of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from
privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three
weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory
truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned
that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely
free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and
lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their
limits and that those limits are very near together; that the
person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly
as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing
chilled while the other was warming; and that when he had put
on tight dancing shoes he had suffered just as he did now when
he walked with bare feet that were covered with sores- his footgear
having long since fallen to pieces. He discovered that when he
had married his wife- of his own free will as it had seemed to
him- he had been no more free than now when they locked him up
at night in a stable. Of all that he himself subsequently termed
his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely felt, the worst
was the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh
was appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder
they used instead of salt was even pleasant; there was no great
cold, it was always warm walking in the daytime, and at night
there were the campfires; the lice that devoured him warmed his
body.) The one thing that was at first hard to bear was his feet.
After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet
by the campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them;
but when everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he
had warmed up, walked without feeling the pain, though at night
his feet were more terrible to look at than before. However, he
did not look at them now, but thought of other things.
Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man
and the saving power he has of transferring his attention from
one thing to another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler
that allows superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds
a certain limit.
He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners
who lagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that
way. He did not think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and
evidently would soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre
think about himself. The harder his position became and the more
terrible the future, the more independent of that position in
which he found himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts,
memories, and imaginings that came to him.
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