War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [190]
“Titus, hey, Titus!” said the groom.
“What?” the old man asked distractedly.
“Titus! Don’t bite us!”
“Eh, you fool! Pah!” the old man said and spat angrily. Some time passed in silent movement, and the same joke was repeated again.
By five o’clock in the afternoon, the battle had been lost at all points. More than a hundred cannon had already been captured by the French.
Przebyszewski and his corps laid down their arms. Other columns, having lost about half their men, were retreating in disorderly, confused crowds.
The remains of Langeron’s and Dokhturov’s troops, mixed together, crowded around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of Augesd.
After five o’clock it was only at the dam of Augesd that the hot cannon fire of the French alone could be heard, from numerous batteries lined up on the slopes of the Pratzen heights and firing at our retreating troops.
In the rear guard, Dokhturov and others, drawing up some battalions, fired back at the French cavalry who were pursuing our troops. It was beginning to get dark. On the narrow dam of Augesd, on which for so many years an old miller in a cap used to sit peacefully with his fishing rods, while his grandson, his shirtsleeves rolled up, fingered the silvery, trembling fish in the watering can; on this dam over which, for so many years, Moravians in shaggy hats and blue jackets had peacefully driven in their two-horse carts laden with wheat and had driven back over the same dam all dusty with flour, their carts white—now, on this narrow dam, between wagons and cannon, under horses and between wheels, crowded men disfigured by the fear of death, crushing each other, dying, stepping over the dying, and killing each other, only to go a few steps and be killed themselves just the same.
Every ten seconds, pushing through the air, a cannonball smacked or a shell exploded in the midst of this dense crowd, killing and spattering with blood those who stood near. Dolokhov, wounded in the arm, on foot, with a dozen soldiers of his company (he was already an officer), and his regimental commander, on horseback, represented the remainder of the entire regiment. Drawn by the crowd, they pressed into the entrance to the dam and, hemmed in on all sides, stopped, because ahead of them a horse had fallen under a cannon and the crowd was pulling it out. One cannonball killed someone behind them, another landed in front and spattered Dolokhov with blood. The crowd pushed on desperately, shrank back, went a few steps, and stopped again.
“Get through these hundred steps and I’m saved for sure; stand here another two minutes and I’m sure to be dead,” each man was thinking.
Dolokhov, who was standing in the middle of the crowd, tore his way to the edge of the dam, knocking two soldiers off their feet, and ran down onto the slippery ice that covered the pond.
“Turn off!” he cried, skipping over the ice, which cracked under him; “turn off!” he cried to the ordnance. “It holds!…”
The ice held him, but it sagged and cracked, and it was obvious that it would give way, not only under a cannon or a crowd, but under him alone. People looked at him and pressed to the bank, not yet daring to step onto the ice. The regimental commander, standing on horseback at the entrance, raised his arm and opened his mouth, addressing Dolokhov. Suddenly one of the cannonballs came whistling so low over the crowd that everybody ducked. There was a wet smack, and the general and his horse fell in a pool of blood. No one looked at the general, still less thought of picking him up.
“Go onto the ice! Go onto the ice! Go! Turn off! Don’t you hear? Go!” cried countless voices after the cannonball hit the general, themselves not knowing what and why they were shouting.
One of the rearmost cannon going onto the dam turned off onto the ice. Crowds of soldiers started running down off the dam onto the frozen pond. The ice cracked under one of the foremost soldiers and one foot went into the water; he tried to right himself and fell through to the waist. The nearest soldiers