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AT DAWN on the 16th, Denisov's squadron, in which Nikolay Rostov was serving,
and which formed part of Prince Bagration's detachment, moved on from its
halting place for the night—to advance into action, as was said. After about a
mile's march, in the rear of other columns, it was brought to a standstill on
the high-road. Rostov saw the Cossacks, the first and second squadrons of
hussars, and the infantry battalions with the artillery pass him and march on
ahead; he also saw the Generals Bagration and Dolgorukov ride by with their
adjutants. All the panic he had felt, as before, at the prospect of battle, all
the inner conflict by means of which he had overcome that panic, all his dreams
of distinguishing himself in true hussar style in this battle—all were for
nothing. His squadron was held back in reserve, and Nikolay Rostov spent a
tedious and wretched day. About nine o'clock in the morning he heard firing
ahead of him, and shouts of hurrah, saw the wounded being brought back (there
were not many of them), and finally saw a whole detachment of French cavalry
being brought away in the midst of a company of Cossacks. Obviously the action
was over, and the action had, obviously, been a small one, but successful. The
soldiers and officers as they came back were talking of a brilliant victory, of
the taking of the town of Vishau, and a whole French squadron taken prisoners.
The day was bright and sunny after a sharp frost at night, and the cheerful
brightness of the autumn day was in keeping with the news of victory, which was
told not only by the accounts of those who had taken part in it, but by the
joyful expression of soldiers, officers, generals, and adjutants, who rode to
and fro by Rostov. All the greater was the pang in Nikolay's heart that he
should have suffered the dread that goes before the battle for nothing, and have
spent that happy day in inactivity.
“Rostov, come here, let's drink ‘begone, dull care!' ” shouted Denisov,
sitting at the roadside before a bottle and some edibles. The officers gathered
in a ring, eating and talking, round Denisov's wine-case.
“Here they're bringing another!” said one of the officers, pointing to a
French prisoner, a dragoon, who was being led on foot by two Cossacks. One of
them was leading by the bridle the prisoner's horse, a tall and beautiful French
beast.
“Sell the horse?” Denisov called to the Cossacks.
“If you will, your honour.”
The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and the prisoner. The French
dragoon was a young fellow, an Alsatian who spoke French with a German accent.
He was breathless with excitement, his face was red, and hearing French spoken
he began quickly speaking to the officers, turning from one to another. He said
that they wouldn't have taken him, that it wasn't his fault he was taken, but
the fault of the corporal, who had sent him to get the horsecloths, that he had
told him the Russians were there. And at every word he added: “But don't let
anybody hurt my little horse,” and stroked his horse. It was evident that he did
not quite grasp where he was. At one moment he was excusing himself for having
been taken prisoner, at the next, imagining himself before his superior
officers, he was trying to prove his soldierly discipline and zeal for the
service. He brought with him in all its freshness into our rearguard the
atmosphere of the French army, so alien to us.
The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being the
richest of the officers since he had received money from home, bought it.
“Be good to the little horse!” the Alsatian said with simple-hearted
good-nature to Rostov, when the horse was handed to the hussar.
Rostov smiling, soothed the dragoon, and gave him money.
“Alley! Alley!” said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to make him go
on.
“The Emperor! the Emperor!” was suddenly heard among the hussars. Everything
was bustle and hurry, and Rostov saw behind them on the road several horsemen
riding up with white plumes in their hats. In a single moment all were in their
places and eagerly expectant.
Rostov had no memory and no consciousness of how he ran to his post and got
on his horse. Instantly his regret at not taking part in the battle, his humdrum
mood among the men he saw every day—all was gone; instantly all thought of self
had vanished. He was entirely absorbed in the feeling of happiness at the Tsar's
being near. His nearness alone made up to him by itself, he felt, for the loss
of the whole day. He was happy, as a lover is happy when the moment of the
longed-for meeting has come. Not daring to look round from the front line, by an
ecstatic instinct without looking round, he felt his approach. And he felt it
not only from the sound of the tramping hoofs of the approaching cavalcade, he
felt it because as the Tsar came nearer everything grew brighter, more joyful
and significant, and more festive. Nearer and nearer moved this sun, as he
seemed to Rostov, shedding around him rays of mild and majestic light, and now
he felt himself enfolded in that radiance, he heard his voice—that voice
caressing, calm, majestic, and yet so simple. A deathlike silence had come—as
seemed to Rostov fitting—and in that silence he heard the sound of the Tsar's
voice.
“The Pavlograd hussars?” he was saying interrogatively
“The reserve, sire,” replied a voice—such a human voice, after the superhuman
voice that had said: “Les hussards de Pavlograd?”
The Tsar was on a level with Rostov, and he stood still there. Alexander's
face was even handsomer than it had been at the review three days before. It
beamed with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youthfulness, that suggested
the playfulness of a boy of fourteen, and yet it was still the face of the
majestic Emperor. Glancing casually along the squadron, the Tsar's eyes met the
eyes of Rostov, and for not more than two seconds rested on them. Whether it was
that the Tsar saw what was passing in Rostov's soul (it seemed to Rostov that he
saw everything), any way he looked for two seconds with his blue eyes into
Rostov's face. (A soft, mild radiance beamed from them.) Then all at once he
raised his eyebrows, struck his left foot sharply against his horse, and
galloped on.
The young Emperor could not restrain his desire to be present at the battle,
and in spite of the expostulations of his courtiers, at twelve o'clock, escaping
from the third column which he had been following, he galloped to the vanguard.
Before he reached the hussars, several adjutants met him with news of the
successful issue of the engagement.
The action, which had simply consisted in the capture of a squadron of the
French, was magnified into a brilliant victory over the enemy, and so the Tsar
and the whole army believed, especially while the smoke still hung over the
field of battle, that the French had been defeated, and had been forced to
retreat against their will. A few minutes after the Tsar had galloped on, the
division of the Pavlograd hussars received orders to move forward. In Vishau
itself, a little German town, Rostov saw the Tsar once more. In the market-place
of the town where there had been rather a heavy firing before the Tsar's
arrival, lay several dead and wounded soldiers, whom there had not been time to
pick up. The Tsar, surrounded by his suite of officers and courtiers, was
mounted on a different horse from the one he had ridden at the review, a
chestnut English thoroughbred. Bending on one side with a graceful gesture,
holding a gold field-glass to his eyes, he was looking at a soldier lying on his
face with a blood-stained and uncovered head. The wounded soldier was an object
so impure, so grim, and so revolting, that Rostov was shocked at his being near
the Emperor. Rostov saw how the Tsar's stooping shoulders shuddered, as though a
cold shiver had passed over them, how his left foot convulsively pressed the
spur into the horse's side, and how the trained horse looked round indifferently
and did not stir. An adjutant dismounting lifted the soldier up under his arms,
and began laying him on a stretcher that came up. The soldier groaned.
“Gently, gently, can't you do it more gently?” said the Tsar, apparently
suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
Rostov saw the tears in the Tsar's eyes, and heard him say in French to
Tchartorizhsky, as he rode off: “What an awful thing war is, what an awful
thing!”
The forces of the vanguard were posted before Vishau in sight of the enemy's
line, which had been all day retreating before us at the slightest exchange of
shots. The Tsar's thanks were conveyed to the vanguard, rewards were promised,
and a double allowance of vodka was served out to the men. Even more gaily than
on the previous night the bivouac fires crackled, and the soldiers sang their
songs. Denisov on that night celebrated his promotion to major, and, towards the
end of the carousal, after a good deal of drinking, Rostov proposed a toast to
the health of the Emperor, but “not our Sovereign the Emperor, as they say at
official dinners,” said he, “but to the health of the Emperor, the good,
enchanting, great man, let us drink to his health, and to a decisive victory
over the French!”
“If we fought before,” said he, “and would not yield an inch before the
French, as at Schöngraben, what will it be now when he is at our head? We will
all die, we will gladly die for him. Eh, gentlemen? Perhaps I'm not saying it
right. I've drunk a good deal, but that's how I feel, and you do too. To the
health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!”
“Hurrah!” rang out the cheery voices of the officers. And the old captain
Kirsten shouted no less heartily and sincerely than Rostov, the boy of
twenty.
When the officers had drunk the toast and smashed their glasses, Kirsten
filled some fresh ones, and in his shirt-sleeves and riding-breeches went out to
the soldiers' camp-fires, glass in hand, and waving his hand in the air stood in
a majestic pose, with his long grey whiskers and his white chest visible through
the open shirt in the light of the camp-fire.
“Lads, to the health of our Sovereign the Emperor, to victory over our
enemies, hurrah!” he roared in his stalwart old soldier's baritone. The hussars
thronged about him and responded by a loud shout in unison.
Late at night, when they had all separated, Denisov clapped his short hand on
the shoulder of his favourite Rostov. “To be sure he'd no one to fall in love
with in the field, so he's fallen in love with the Tsar,” he said.
“Denisov, don't joke about that,” cried Rostov, “it's such a lofty, such a
sublime feeling, so…”
“I believe you, I believe you, my dear, and I share the feeling and
approve…”
“No, you don't understand!” And Rostov got up and went out to wander about
among the camp-fires, dreaming of what happiness it would be to die—not saving
the Emperor's life—(of that he did not even dare to dream), but simply to die
before the Emperor's eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of
the Russian arms and the hope of coming victory. And he was not the only man who
felt thus in those memorable days that preceded the battle of Austerlitz:
nine-tenths of the men in the Russian army were at that moment in love, though
less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms.
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