War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [649]
“Ah, it really is late,” said Count Orlov, glancing at the camp. As often happens once the person we have believed is no longer before our eyes, it suddenly became perfectly clear and obvious to him that this sergeant was a fraud, that he had lied to them, and would only spoil the whole business of the attack by the absence of those two regiments, which he would lead God knows where. How could anyone snatch a commander in chief out of such a mass of troops?
“He really lied, the rogue,” said the count.
“They can be called back,” said someone from his suite, who, like Count Orlov-Denisov, felt mistrustful of the undertaking, when he looked at the camp.
“Ah? Really?…What do you think, shall we leave it as is? Or not?”
“Do you order them called back?”
“Call them back, call them back!” Count Orlov suddenly said resolutely, looking at his watch. “It will be too late, it’s quite light.”
And an adjutant galloped into the forest after Grekov. When Grekov came back, Count Orlov-Denisov, upset by this cancelled attempt, and by the vain wait for the infantry columns, which were not yet in sight, and by the proximity of the enemy (all the men of his detachment experienced the same thing), decided to attack.
He whispered the command: “Mount!” They formed up; they crossed themselves…
“God be with you!”
“Hur-r-rah!” rang out through the forest, and, one by one, as if pouring from a sack, hundreds of Cossacks, their lances atilt, flew merrily across the brook towards the camp.
One desperate, frightened cry of the first Frenchman to see the Cossacks—and all who were in the camp, undressed, half-awake, abandoned cannon, muskets, horses, and ran off wherever they could.
If the Cossacks had pursued the French, paying no attention to what was behind and around them, they would have taken both Murat and everything that was there. The officers wanted that. But once the Cossacks got hold of the booty and the prisoners, they would not budge. No one obeyed orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners, thirty-eight cannon, standards, and, what was most important for the Cossacks, horses, saddles, blankets, and various objects were taken on the spot. All that had to be managed, the prisoners and cannon had to be taken in hand, the booty divided, with shouting and even fighting among themselves: the Cossacks were taken up with all that.
The French, no longer pursued, gradually began to recover, formed units, and started shooting. Orlov-Denisov waited for the rest of the columns and did not advance further.
Meanwhile, according to the disposition—“die erste Kolonne marschiert” and so on—the infantry of the belated columns, commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, started out properly and, as always happens, got somewhere, but not where they were supposed to go. As always happens, the men, who had started out cheerfully, began to halt; displeasure was voiced, confusion was sensed, they began moving back somewhere. Adjutants and generals galloped about, shouted, became angry, quarreled, said they had come to the wrong place and were late, denounced somebody, and so on; and finally they all waved their hands and went on, only so as to go somewhere. “We’ll get somewhere!” And indeed they did, but not to the right place, though some also got to the right place, but so late that they were of no use and only got themselves shot at. Toll, who in this battle played the role of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped assiduously from place to place, and everywhere found things the wrong way round. Thus he ran into Bagovut’s corps in the forest when it was already quite light and that corps was supposed to have long been with Orlov-Denisov. Agitated, upset by the failure, and supposing that someone was to blame for it, Toll rode up to the commander of the corps and began to upbraid him sternly, saying he ought to be shot for it. Bagovut, an