War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [183]
The two generals and the adjutants began snatching at the field glass, pulling it away from each other. All their faces suddenly changed, and on all of them horror appeared. The French were supposed to be a mile and a half from us, and they suddenly turned up right in front of us.
“Is it the enemy?…No!…Yes, look, he’s…for certain…What is this?” voices said.
With his naked eye, Prince Andrei saw below, to the right, a dense column of French coming up to meet the Apsherontsy, no further than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing.
“Here it is, the decisive moment has come! Now it’s my turn,” thought Prince Andrei, and, spurring his horse, he rode up to Kutuzov.
“The Apsherontsy must be stopped, Your Excellency!” he cried.
But at that same moment everything became covered with smoke, there was the sound of gunfire nearby, and a naïvely frightened voice two steps from Prince Andrei cried: “Well, brothers, that’s it for us!” And it was as if this voice was a command. At this voice everyone began to run.
Confused, ever increasing crowds came running back to the place where, five minutes before, the troops had marched past the emperors. Not only was it difficult to stop this crowd, but it was impossible not to yield and move back with it. Bolkonsky tried only not to be separated from Kutuzov and looked around in perplexity, unable to understand what was happening in front of him. Nesvitsky, looking angry, red, and not like himself, shouted to Kutuzov that if he did not leave at once, he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov stood in the same place and, without responding, took out his handkerchief. Blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrei forced his way to him.
“Are you wounded?” he asked, barely able to control the trembling of his lower jaw.
“The wound isn’t here, it’s there!” said Kutuzov, pressing the handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing men.
“Stop them!” he cried, and at the same time, probably realizing that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and rode to the right.
A fresh crowd of fleeing men streamed past, caught him up, and carried him backwards.
The troops were fleeing in such a dense crowd that, once one landed in the middle of it, it was difficult to get out. Someone shouted, “Keep going, don’t drag your feet!” Another, turning around, fired into the air; someone else struck the horse on which Kutuzov himself was riding. Extricating themselves with the greatest effort from the flow of the crowd to the left, Kutuzov and his suite, diminished by more than half, rode towards the sounds of nearby cannon fire. Extricating himself from the crowd of fleeing men, Prince Andrei, trying to keep up with Kutuzov, saw on the slope of the hill, amidst the smoke, a Russian battery still firing, and the French running up to it. Slightly higher stood Russian infantry, neither moving ahead to aid the battery, nor backwards in the direction of the fugitives. A general on horseback separated himself from the infantry and rode up to Kutuzov. There were only four men left in Kutuzov’s suite. They were all pale and exchanged glances silently.
“Stop those villains!” Kutuzov said breathlessly to the regimental commander, pointing to the fleeing men; but at the same moment, as if in punishment for those words, bullets, like a flock of birds, flew whistling at the regiment and Kutuzov’s suite.
The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were shooting at him. With this volley, the regimental commander seized his leg; several soldiers fell, and an ensign holding a standard let it drop from his hands; the standard wavered and fell, stopped momentarily by the bayonets of the soldiers around it. The soldiers began firing without any orders.
“Oooh!” Kutuzov moaned with an expression of despair and looked around. “Bolkonsky,” he whispered in a voice trembling with awareness of his old man’s strengthlessness. “Bolkonsky,” he whispered, pointing to the disordered battalion and the