War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [528]
“Yes, here he is, my hero,” said Kutuzov to the stout, handsome, black-haired general who was coming up onto the barrow at that moment. This was Raevsky, who had spent the whole day at the main point of the field of Borodino.
Raevsky reported that the troops had stood their ground firmly, and that the French no longer dared to attack.
Having heard him out, Kutuzov said in French:
“Vous ne pensez donc pas comme les autres que nous sommes obligés de nous retirer?”‡503
“Au contraire, votre altesse, dans les affaires indécises c’est toujours le plus opiniâtre qui reste victorieux,” replied Raevsky, “et mon opinion…”*504
“Kaisarov!” Kutuzov called his adjutant. “Sit down and write the order for tomorrow. And you,” he turned to another, “ride to the line and announce that tomorrow we attack.”
While the conversation with Raevsky was going on and the order was being dictated, Wolzogen came back from Barclay and reported that General Barclay de Tolly would like to have written confirmation of the order given by the field marshal.
Kutuzov, without glancing at Wolzogen, ordered the order to be written, which, on very good grounds, to avoid personal responsibility, the former commander in chief wished to have.
And by some indefinable, mysterious connection, which maintains the same mood through an entire army, which is known as the spirit of the army, and constitutes the central nerve of war, Kutuzov’s words, his order to fight the next day, were conveyed simultaneously to all ends of the army.
It was far from the same words, the same order that passed through the last links of that chain. There was even no resemblance between the stories that were passed on from man to man at different ends of the army and what Kutuzov had said; but the sense of his words communicated itself everywhere, because what Kutuzov had said came not from clever considerations, but from the feeling that was in the soul of the commander in chief, just as it was in the soul of every Russian man.
And, learning that we would attack the enemy the next day, hearing from the high spheres of the army the confirmation of what they wanted to believe, the exhausted, vacillating men were comforted and reassured.
XXXVI
Prince Andrei’s regiment was in the reserves, which till past one o’clock were stationed behind Semyonovskoe, inactive, under heavy artillery fire. Towards two o’clock the regiment, having lost over two hundred men already, was moved forward, onto a trampled oat field, to the space between Semyonovskoe and the battery of the barrow where thousands of men were killed that day, and at which, between one and two o’clock, the intensely concentrated fire of several hundred enemy guns was directed.
Without leaving the spot or firing a single shot, the regiment here lost another third of its men. In front and especially to the right, in the never-dispersing smoke, cannon boomed, and out of the mysterious zone of smoke that lay over the whole terrain ahead, without ceasing, flew cannonballs with a hissing, rapid whistle, and slowly whistling shells. Sometimes, as if granting a respite, there would be a quarter of an hour when all the cannonballs and shells overshot, but sometimes several men were taken out of the regiment in the space of a single minute, and the dead and wounded were constantly being carried off.
With each new blow, the chances of survival for those who had not yet been killed grew less and less. The regiment stood by battalions in columns three hundred paces apart, but, despite that, the men of the regiment were all under the sway of the same mood. The men of the regiment were all equally silent and gloomy. Talk was heard rarely among the ranks, but that talk would fall silent each time they heard a shot strike home and the cry “Stretcher!” Most of the time the men of the regiment, on orders from their superiors, sat on the ground. One, taking off his shako, carefully undid and redid the gathers; another,