War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [648]
“Who is this other swine? Shoot the scoundrels!” he cried hoarsely, waving his arms and reeling. He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, his serenity, who was assured by everyone that no one in Russia had ever had such power as he, had been put in such a position—held up to mockery before the entire army. “I bothered praying like that for the coming day, I spent a sleepless night thinking it all over—for nothing!” he thought to himself. “When I was a young brat of an officer, nobody dared to laugh at me like this…But now!” He was suffering physically, as if from corporal punishment, and could not help expressing it with wrathful and painful cries; but his strength soon began to fail, and, looking around, feeling that he had said a lot of bad things, he got into his caleche and silently drove back again.
The wrath he had poured out did not return, and Kutuzov, blinking weakly, heard out the justifications and words of defense (Ermolov himself did not come to him until the next day), and the insistences of Bennigsen, Konovnitsyn, and Toll, that the same miscarried movement could be done the next day. And Kutuzov again had to agree.
VI
The next day the troops assembled in the appointed places in the evening and advanced during the night. It was an autumnal night, with purplish black clouds, but without rain. The ground was damp, but there was no mud, and the troops walked noiselessly, only occasionally the clank of artillery could be faintly heard. Loud talk, pipe smoking, and striking a fire were forbidden; the horses were kept from neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking increased its attractiveness. The men marched cheerfully. Some columns halted, stacked their muskets, and lay down on the cold ground, assuming they had gotten where they were supposed to go; some columns (the majority) marched all night and obviously did not get where they were supposed to go.
Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the most insignificant detachment of them all) was the only one who ended up in the right place and at the right time. This detachment halted at the edge of the forest, where a path led from the village of Stromilovo to Dmitrovskoe.
Before dawn the dozing Count Orlov was awakened. A deserter from the French camp was brought to him. He was a Polish sergeant from Poniatowski’s corps. The sergeant explained in Polish that he had deserted because he had been passed over in the service, that he should have been a commissioned officer long ago, that he was braver than all of them, and therefore he had left them and wanted to punish them. He said that Murat was spending the night a mile away, and that if they gave him a hundred-man escort, he would take him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov consulted with his comrades. The offer was too tempting to refuse. Everyone volunteered to go, everyone advised making the attempt. After much arguing and considering, Major General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the sergeant.
“But remember,” said Count Orlov-Denisov as he dismissed the sergeant, “if you’re lying, I’ll have you hung like a dog, but if it’s true, you’ll get a hundred gold pieces.”
Not replying to these words, the officer mounted his horse with a resolute air and rode off with the quickly prepared Grekov. They disappeared into the forest. Count Orlov, shivering from the chill of early dawn, excited by what he had undertaken on his own responsibility, having seen Grekov off, came out of the forest and began to study the enemy camp, which was now visible in the deceptive light of early morning and the dying campfires. Our columns were to appear to the right of Count Orlov-Denisov, on the open hillside. Count Orlov looked that