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By Root 3935 0

right flank, started down to where rolling gunfire could be heard and nothing could be seen through the powder smoke. The further they descended into the hollow, the less they could see, but the more they could sense the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began to meet the wounded. One with a bloodied head, hatless, was being dragged under the arms by two soldiers. He gurgled and spat. The bullet seemed to have hit him in the mouth or the throat. Another came towards them, walking briskly by himself, without his musket, groaning loudly and waving his arm from the fresh pain, while blood poured over his greatcoat as if from a flask. His face showed more fear than suffering. He had been wounded a moment before. Crossing the road, they began a steep descent and on the slope saw several men who were lying down; they met a crowd of soldiers, some of whom were not wounded. The soldiers were walking up the hill, breathing heavily and, though they saw the general, were talking loudly and waving their arms. Ahead, in the smoke, lines of gray greatcoats could now be seen, and an officer, catching sight of Bagration, ran shouting after the soldiers walking in a crowd, demanding that they turn back. Bagration rode up to the lines, along which there was here and there a rapid crackle of gunfire, drowning out talk and shouts of command. The air was completely saturated with powder smoke. The soldiers’ faces were all smudged with powder and animated. Some tamped down with ramrods, others primed the pans and took shot from their pouches, still others fired. But who they were firing at could not be seen owing to the smoke, which there was no wind to scatter. Pleasant buzzing and whistling noises were heard rather often. “What’s that?” thought Prince Andrei, riding up to the crowd of soldiers. “It can’t be a line, because they’re in a bunch! It can’t be an attack, because they’re not moving; it can’t be a square: they’re not standing right.”

A lean, weak-looking old man, a regimental commander, with a pleasant smile, with eyelids that more than half covered his old man’s eyes, giving him a meek look, rode up to Prince Bagration and received him as a host receives a welcome guest. He reported to Prince Bagration that the French had mounted a cavalry attack against his regiment, and that, while the attack had been beaten off, the regiment had lost more than half its men. The regimental commander said that the attack had been beaten off, coming up with this military term to describe what had happened in his regiment; but in reality he did not know himself what had happened in that half hour among the troops entrusted to him, and he could not say for certain whether the attack had been beaten off or his regiment had been crushed by the attack. At the start of the action he knew only that cannonballs and shells began flying all over his regiment and hitting people, that someone then shouted, “Cavalry!” and our men began to fire. And they were still firing, no longer at the cavalry, who had disappeared, but at the French infantry who had appeared in the hollow and were shooting at our men. Prince Bagration inclined his head as a sign that this was all exactly as he had wished and supposed. Turning to the adjutant, he ordered him to bring down from the hill two battalions of the sixth chasseurs, which they had just ridden past. Prince Andrei was struck at that moment by the change that came over Prince Bagration’s face. His face expressed that concentrated and happy resolve which occurs in a man who is about to throw himself into the water on a hot day and is making a running start. Neither the sleepy, lackluster eyes nor the falsely profound look was there: his round, firm, hawk’s eyes looked straight ahead with rapture and a certain disdain, apparently not resting on anything, though his movements were as slow and measured as before.

The regimental commander turned to Prince Bagration, entreating him to ride back, because here it was too dangerous. “Please, Your Excellency, for God’s sake!” he repeated, glancing for confirmation at the