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By Root 4074 0

French, who had divided the troops of the left flank in two, were momentarily pressed back. The reserve units had time to join in, and the fleeing soldiers stopped. The regimental commander was standing by the bridge with Major Ekonomov, letting the retreating companies pass by him, when a soldier came up to him, took hold of his stirrup, and almost leaned against him. The soldier was wearing a greatcoat of bluish factory broadcloth, he had no pack or shako, his head was bandaged, and there was a French ammunition pouch slung over his shoulder. In his hand he was holding an officer’s sword. The soldier was pale, his blue eyes looked insolently into the regimental commander’s face, and his mouth smiled. Though the regimental commander was busy giving orders to Major Ekonomov, he could not help paying attention to this soldier.

“Your Excellency, here are two trophies,” said Dolokhov, pointing to the French sword and pouch. “I captured an officer. I stopped the company.” Dolokhov was breathing heavily from fatigue; he spoke with pauses. “The whole company can testify. I ask you to remember, Your Excellency!”

“Very well, very well,” said the regimental commander, and he turned to Major Ekonomov.

But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief, pulled it off, and showed the clotted blood on his head.

“A bayonet wound. I stayed at the front. Remember, Your Excellency.”

Tushin’s battery was forgotten, and only at the very end of the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing cannon fire from the center, send the staff officer on duty there and then Prince Andrei, to order the battery to retreat as quickly as possible. The covering troops stationed next to Tushin’s cannon had left on somebody’s order in the middle of the action; but the battery went on firing and was not taken by the French only because the enemy could not suppose that such bold firing was coming from four unprotected cannon. On the contrary, from the energetic operation of the battery, they supposed that the main Russian forces were concentrated there in the center, and they tried twice to attack that point, and were driven off both times by the canister fire of the four cannon standing solitarily on the elevation.

Soon after Prince Bagration’s departure, Tushin managed to set fire to Schöngraben.

“Look, they’re scurrying around! It’s burning! Look at the smoke! Fine work! Grand! What smoke, what smoke!” said the crews, growing animated.

Without any order, all the cannon were turned in the direction of the fire. As if egging it on, the soldiers kept crying at each shot: “Fine work! That’s the way! Just look…Grand!” The fire, borne by the wind, spread quickly. The French columns that had moved out of the village went back, but, as if in punishment for this failure, the enemy set up ten guns to the right of the village and began firing them at Tushin.

Owing to the childlike joy aroused by the fire, and the excitement of their successful shooting at the French, our artillerists noticed this battery only when two cannonballs and then four more landed among the guns, and one brought down two horses and another tore the leg off a caisson master. The animation, once established, did not weaken, however, but only changed in mood. The horses were replaced by others from spare carriages, the wounded were removed, and the four guns were turned against the ten-cannon battery. An officer, Tushin’s comrade, had been killed at the beginning of the action, and in the course of an hour seventeen out of the forty men of the gun crews had been eliminated, yet the artillerists were still just as merry and animated. Twice they noticed that the French had appeared below, close to them, and then they fired on them with canister shot.

The small man with weak, awkward movements constantly asked his orderly to give him another little pipeful for that, as he put it, and spilling fire from it, ran forward and looked at the French from under his small hand.

“Smash ’em, lads!” he kept saying and would seize the guns by the wheel and unscrew the screws himself.

Amidst