“Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nikolay Ivanovitch! ha, ha! …”
The officer felt doubly guilty in breaking in at such a moment with important business, and he would have waited; but one of the generals caught sight of him, and hearing what he had come for, told Yermolov. The latter, with a frowning face, came out to the officer, and hearing his story, took the papers from him without a word.
“Do you suppose it was by chance that he was not at home?” said a comrade of the officer’s who was on the staff, speaking of Yermolov that evening. “That’s all stuff and nonsense; it was all done on purpose. To play a trick on Konovnitsyn. You see, there’ll be a pretty kettle of fish to-morrow!”
Chapter 5
THE DECREPIT OLD MAN, Kutuzov, had bade them wake him early next day, and in the early morning he said his prayers, dressed, and with a disagreeable consciousness that he had to command in a battle of which he did not approve, he got into his carriage and drove from Letashevka, five versts behind Tarutino, to the place where the attacking columns were to be gathered together. Kutuzov drove along, dropping asleep and waking up again, and listening to hear whether that were the sound of shots on the right, whether the action had not begun. But everything was still quiet. A damp and cloudy autumn day was dawning. As he approached Tarutino, Kutuzov noticed cavalry soldiers leading their horses to a watercourse across the road along which he was riding. Kutuzov looked at them, stopped his carriage, and asked what regiment did they belong to. They belonged to a column which was to have been far away in front in ambush.
“A mistake, perhaps,” thought the old commander-in-chief. But as he drove on further, Kutuzov saw infantry regiments with their arms stacked, and the soldiers in their drawers busy cooking porridge and fetching wood. He sent for their officer. The officer submitted that no command to advance had been given.
“No command …” Kutuzov began, but he checked himself at once, and ordered the senior officer to be summoned to him. Getting out of the carriage, with drooping head he walked to and fro in silence, breathing heavily. When the general staff officer, Eichen, for whom he had sent, arrived, Kutuzov turned purple with rage, 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. And staggering and gasping, the old man fell into that state of fury in which he would sometimes roll on the ground in frenzy, and flew at Eichen, shaking his fists, and shouting abuse in the language of the gutter. Another officer, Captain Brozin, who was in no way to blame, happening to appear, suffered the same fate.
“What will the blackguards do next? Shoot them! The scoundrels!” he shouted hoarsely, shaking his fist and staggering. He was in a state of actual physical suffering. He, his highness the commander-in-chief, who was assured by every one that no one in Russia had ever had such power as he, he put into this position—made a laughing-stock to the whole army. “Worrying myself, praying over to-day, not sleeping all night, and thinking about everything—all for nothing!” he thought about himself. “When I was a mere boy of an officer no one would have dared to make a laughing-stock of me like this … And now!” He was in a state of physical suffering, as though from corporal punishment, and could not help expressing it in wrathful and agonised outcries. But soon his strength was exhausted, and looking about him, feeling that he had said a great deal that was unjust, he got into his carriage and drove back in silence.
His wrath once spent did not return again, and Kutuzov, blinking feebly, listened to explanations and self-justifications (Yermolov himself did not put in an appearance till next day), and to the earnest representation of Bennigsen, Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the battle that had not come off should take place on the following day. And again Kutuzov had to acquiesce.
Chapter 6
NEXT DAY the troops were massed in their appointed places by the evening, and were moving forward in the night. It was an autumn night with a sky overcast by purplish-black clouds, but free from rain. The earth was damp, but not muddy, and the troops advanced noiselessly, except for a hardly audible jingling now and then from the artillery. They were forbidden to talk aloud, to smoke or to strike a light; the horses were kept from neighing. The secrecy of the enterprise increased its attractiveness. The men marched on gaily. Several columns halted, stacked their guns in piles, and lay down on the chilly ground, supposing they had reached their destination. Other columns (the majority) marched all night long, and arrived somewhere, unmistakably not where they were meant to be.
Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the detachment of least importance of the lot) was the only one that reached the right place at the right time. This detachment halted at the extreme edge of a forest, on a path from the village of Stromilovo to Dmitrovskoe.
Before dawn Count Orlov, who had fallen asleep, was waked up. A deserter from the French camp was brought to him. It was a Polish under-officer of Poniatovsky’s corps. This under-officer explained in Polish that he had deserted because he had been insulted in the service; because he ought long ago to have been an officer, and was braver than any of them, and so he had thrown them up and wanted to punish them. He said that Murat was camping for the night a verst from them, and that if they would give him a convoy of a hundred men he would take him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov took council with his comrades. The proposition was too alluring to be refused. Every one clamoured to go, everyone advised making the attempt. After many disputes and confabulations, it was settled that Major-General Grekov, with two regiments of Cossacks, should go with the Polish deserter.
“Now, remember,” said Count Orlov-Denisov to the Polish deserter, as he dismissed him, “if you have been lying, I will have you shot like a dog, but if it’s true, a hundred crowns.”
The deserter made no reply to these words, and with a resolute air mounted his horse and rode off with Grekov’s men, who were hurriedly gathered together. They disappeared into the wood. Count Orlov, shivering from the freshness of the dawning morning, and excited by the enterprise he had undertaken on his own responsibility, came out of the wood, accompanying Grekov, and began scrutinising the enemy’s camp, faintly visible now in the deceptive light of the approaching dawn and the smouldering camp-fires. On the open copse on Count Orlov-Denisov’s right our columns ought to have been visible. Count Orlov-Denisov looked in that direction; but although they could have been seen even if a long distance away, these columns were not in sight. Count Orlov-Denisov fancied, and his adjutant, who was extremely long-sighted; confirmed the idea, that they were beginning to move in the French camp.
“Oh, of course it’s too late,” said Count Orlov, staring at the camp. As so often happens when the man in whom we are putting faith is no longer before our eyes, it all seemed at once perfectly clear and obvious to him that the deserter had been playing them false, that he had been telling them lies, and was only spoiling the whole attack by removing these two regiments, which he was leading away—God only knew where! As if it were possible to capture the general out of such a mass of troops.
“No doubt he was lying, the scoundrel,” said the Count.
“We can turn them back,” said one of the suite, who was feeling just the same mistrust in the undertaking as he gazed at the camp.
“Ah! Yes … what do you think, or shall we leave them? Or not?”
“Do you command them to return?”
“To return, yes, to return!” Count Orlov said, with sudden decision, looking at his watch; “it will be too late; it’s quite light.”
And an adjutant galloped into the wood after Grekov. When Grekov came back, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited by giving up this enterprise, and by vainly waiting for the infantry columns, which still did not appear, and by the enemy’s being so near (every man in his detachment was feeling the same), resolved to attack.
In a whisper he gave the command: “Mount!”
The men got into their places, crossed themselves … “In God’s name, off!”
“Hurrah!” rang out in the wood, and the Cossacks, with spears lowered, flew gaily, one hundred after another, across the stream into the camp, as though they were being shot out of a sack.
One desperate, frightened scream from the first Frenchman who caught sight of the Cossacks, and every creature in the camp, undressed and half-asleep, was running away, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.
If the Cossacks had pursued the French without regard to what they left all around and behind them, they could have captured Murat and all there was there. Their commanding officers tried to make them do so. But there was no making the Cossacks budge when they had got booty and prisoners. No one heeded the word of command. They had taken fifteen hundred prisoners, thirty-eight cannons, flags, and, what was of most consequence in the eyes of the Cossacks, horses, saddles, coverings and various other objects. All of this they wanted to see after, to secure the prisoners and the cannons, to divide the booty, to shout at and even fight with one another over the spoils; and all this absorbed the Cossacks’ attention. The Frenchmen, finding themselves not pursued further, began to rally; they formed into companies and began firing. Orlov-Denisov still expected the other columns to arrive, and did not advance further.
Meanwhile, in accordance with the disposition—“die erste Colonne marschirt,” and so on—the infantry regiments of the belated columns, under the command of Bennigsen and the direction of Toll, had started off in due course, and had, in the usual way, arrived somewhere, but not where they were intended to arrive. In the usual way too, the soldiers who had set off gaily, began to halt; there were murmurs of dissatisfaction and a sense of muddle, and they were marched back to some point. Adjutants and generals galloped to and fro, shouting angrily, quarrelling, declaring they had come utterly wrong and were too late, upbraiding some one, and so on; and finally, all washed their hands of the business in despair, and marched on simply in order to get somewhere. “We must arrive somewhere sooner or later!” And so they did, in fact, arrive somewhere, but not where they were wanted. And some did even reach their destination, but reached it so late that their doing so was of no use at all, and only resulted in their being fired at for nothing. Toll, who in this battle played the part of Weierother in the battle of Austerlitz, galloped with unflagging energy from one part of the field to another, and found everything at sixes and sevens everywhere. So, for instance, he found Bagovut’s corps in the wood, when it was broad daylight, though the corps ought to have been there long before, and to have gone to support Orlov-Denisov. Disappointed and excited at the failure, and supposing some one must be to blame for it, Toll galloped up to the general in command of the corps, and began sternly reprimanding him, declaring that he deserved to be shot. Bagovut, a sturdy old general of placid disposition, had been worried too by all the delays, the muddles, and the contradictory orders, and, to the amazement of everybody, he flew into a violent rage, quite out of keeping with his character, and said some very nasty things to Toll.
“I am not going to be taught my duty by anybody, but I can face death with my men as well as any one,” he said, and he marched forward with one division. The valiant Bagovut, not considering in his excitement whether his advance into action now with a single division was likely to be of use or not, marched his men straight forward into the enemy’s fire. Danger, shells, and bullets were just what he wanted in his fury. One of the first bullets killed him, the other bullets killed many of his men. And his division remained for some time under fire for no object whatever.
Chapter 7
MEANWHILE another column was to have fallen upon the French in the centre, but of this column Kutuzov was in command. He knew very well that nothing but muddle would come of this battle, begun against his will, and, as far as it was in his power, he held his forces back. He did not move.
Kutuzov rode mutely about on his grey horse, making languid replies to the suggestions for an attack.
“You can all talk about attacking, but you don’t see that we don’t know how to execute complicated man?uvres,” he said to Miloradovitch, who was begging to be allowed to advance.
“We couldn’t take Murat alive in the morning, nor be in our places in time; now there’s nothing to be done!” he said to another.
When it was reported to Kutuzov that there were now two battalions of Poles in the rear of the French, where according to the earlier reports of the Cossacks there had been none, he took a sidelong glance behind him at Yermolov, to whom he had not spoken since the previous day.
“Here they are begging to advance, proposing projects of all sorts, and as soon as you get to work, there’s nothing ready, and the enemy, forewarned, takes his measures.”
Yermolov half closed his eyelids, and faintly smiled, as he heard those words. He knew that the storm had blown over him, and that Kutuzov would not go beyond that hint.
“That’s his little joke at my expense,” said Yermolov softly, poking Raevsky, near him, with his knee.
Soon after that, Yermolov moved forward to Kutuzov and respectfully submitted:
“The time has not passed, your highness; the enemy has not gone away. If you were to command an advance? Or else the guards won’t have a sight of smoke.”
Kutuzov said nothing, but when news was brought him that Murat’s troops were in retreat, he gave orders for an advance; but every hundred paces he halted for three-quarters of an hour.
The whole battle was confined to what had been done by the Cossacks of Orlov-Denisov; the rest of the troops simply lost a few hundreds of men for nothing.
In consequence of this battle, Kutuzov received a diamond decoration; Bennigsen, too, was rewarded with diamonds and a hundred thousand roubles; and the other generals, too, received agreeable recognition according to their rank, and more changes were made on the staff.
“That’s how things are always done among us, everything topsy-turvy!” the Russian officers and generals said after the battle of Tarutino; just as they say it nowadays, with an assumption that some stupid person had muddled everything, while we would have managed quite differently. But the men who speak like this either do not understand what they are talking of, or intentionally deceive themselves. Every battle—Tarutino, Borodino, Austerlitz—fails to come off as those who planned it expected it to do. That is inevitable.
An innumerable collection of freely acting forces (and nowhere is a man freer than on the field of battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence the direction taken by a battle, and that can never be known beforehand and never corresponds with the direction of any one force.
