War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [111]
Having gone thirty miles across the hills with hungry, ill-shod soldiers, with no road, on a stormy night, losing a third of his men as stragglers, Bagration came out in Hollabrunn, on the Vienna–Znaim road, several hours ahead of the French, who were approaching Hollabrunn from Vienna. Kutuzov still needed to go a whole twenty-four hours with his baggage train to reach Znaim, and therefore, to save the army, Bagration, with four thousand hungry, exhausted soldiers, had to hold off for twenty-four hours the entire enemy army coming to meet him at Hollabrunn, which was obviously impossible. But a freak of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the trick which gave the Vienna bridge into the hands of the French without a fight prompted Murat to try to trick Kutuzov in the same way. Murat, meeting Bagration’s weak detachment on the Znaim road, thought it was the whole of Kutuzov’s army. In order to crush this army indubitably, he awaited the troops that lagged behind on the road from Vienna, and with that aim suggested a three-day truce, on condition that neither army change its position or stir from its place. Murat assured them that peace negotiations were already under way and that therefore, to avoid useless bloodshed, he was suggesting a truce. The Austrian general, Count Nostitz, who occupied the advance posts, believed the words of Murat’s envoy and fell back, exposing Bagration’s detachment. Another envoy rode to the Russian line to announce the same news of peace negotiations and offer the Russian army a three-day truce. Bagration replied that he could neither accept nor reject a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutuzov with a report of the offer made to him.
For Kutuzov the truce was the sole means of gaining time, giving Bagration’s exhausted detachment some rest, and allowing the train and heavy baggage (whose movement was concealed from the French) to make at least one extra march towards Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the sole and unexpected possibility of saving the army. On receiving this news, Kutuzov immediately sent the adjutant general Wintzingerode, who was attached to him, to the enemy camp. Wintzingerode was not only to accept the truce, but also to offer conditions for capitulation, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back to speed up as much as possible the movement of the whole army’s baggage trains along the Krems–Znaim road. Bagration’s exhausted, hungry detachment, covering this movement of the baggage trains and the whole army, had alone to remain unmoving before an enemy eight times its strength.
Kutuzov’s expectations came true both with regard to the fact that the offer of capitulation, without committing them to anything, might gain time for some portion of the baggage train to pass, and with regard to the fact that Murat’s mistake was bound to be discovered very quickly. As soon as Bonaparte, who was in Schönbrunn, some fifteen miles from Hollabrunn, received Murat’s communication with the project of a truce and capitulation, he saw through the deception and wrote the following letter to Murat.
Au Prince Murat.
Schoenbrunn, 25 brumaire en 1805
à huit heures du matin.
Il m’est impossible de trouver des termes pour vous exprimer mon mécontentement. Vous ne commandez que mon avant-garde et vous n’avez pas le droit de faire d’armistice sans mon ordre. Vous me faites perdre le fruit d’une campagne. Rompez l’armistice sur-le-champ et marchez à l’ennemi. Vous lui ferez déclarer, que le général qui a signé cette capitulation, n’avait pas le droit de le faire, qu’il n’y a que l’Empereur de Russie qui ait ce droit.
Toutes les fois cependant que l’Empereur de Russie ratifierait la dite convention, je la ratifierai; mais ce n’est q’une ruse. Marchez, détruisez l’arm