War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [688]
Having parleyed with the senior French officer, who came out to him from behind the house with a handkerchief on his sword and announced that they would surrender, Dolokhov got off his horse and went over to Petya, who lay motionless with outstretched arms.
“Finished,” he said, frowning, and walked out of the gates to meet Denisov, who was riding towards him.
“Killed?!” cried Denisov, seeing from far off the familiar, undoubtedly lifeless, position in which Petya’s body lay.
“Finished,” Dolokhov repeated, as if uttering this word gave him pleasure, and walked quickly to the prisoners surrounded by dismounted Cossacks. “We won’t take any!” he cried to Denisov.
Denisov did not reply. He rode up to Petya, got off his horse, and with trembling hands turned Petya’s face towards him. It was stained with blood and mud and already turning pale.
“I’m used to something sweet. Excellent raisins, take them all,” he recalled. And the Cossacks glanced around in surprise at the sounds, similar to a dog’s barking, with which Denisov quickly turned away, went to the wattle fence, and caught hold of it.
Among the Russian prisoners retaken by Denisov and Dolokhov was Pierre Bezukhov.
XII
During the whole time of its movement from Moscow, there had been no new instructions from the French authorities about the party of prisoners that Pierre was in. On the twenty-second of October, that party was no longer with the same troops and trains with which it had left Moscow. Half of the train with biscuits, which had followed them during the first marches, had been taken by the Cossacks, the other half had gone further ahead. Not one of the dismounted cavalrymen who had marched before them was left; they had all disappeared. The artillery, which during the first marches could be seen ahead, had now been replaced by the huge train of Marshal Junot, escorted by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came the train of cavalry supplies.
From Vyazma the French troops, formerly moving in three columns, now went in a single crowd. The signs of disorder, which Pierre had noticed at the first halt after Moscow, had now reached the final degree.
The road they followed was strewn on both sides with dead horses; the ragged men who fell behind various units changed constantly, now rejoining, then again falling behind the moving column.
Several times during the march there were false alarms, and the soldiers of the convoy raised their muskets, fired, and ran headlong, trampling each other, but then gathered again and denounced each other for needless fear.
These three assemblies moving together—the cavalry depot, the depot of prisoners, and Junot’s train—still constituted separate entities, though the first, the second, and the third were quickly melting away.
In the first depot, in which there had been one hundred and twenty wagons to begin with, there now remained no more than sixty; the rest had been captured or abandoned. Of Junot’s train, several wagons had also been abandoned or captured. Three wagons had been looted in a raid by straggling soldiers from Davout’s corps. From the conversation of the Germans, Pierre heard that more guards had been placed on this train than on the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had been shot on orders from the marshal himself, because a silver spoon belonging to the marshal had been found among the soldier’s possessions.
Of these three assemblies, the depot of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three hundred and thirty men who had set out from Moscow, there now remained less than a hundred. The prisoners were a still greater burden to the soldiers of