Chapter Chapter 285 · 第285章

Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the evening

and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with dark purple

clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops

advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery

could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk out loud, to

smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried to prevent their

horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm

and they marched gaily. Some columns, supposing they had reached their

destination, halted, piled arms, and settled down on the cold ground,

but the majority marched all night and arrived at places where they

evidently should not have been.

Only Count Orlóv-Denísov with his Cossacks (the least important

detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time. This

detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path leading from

the village of Stromílova to Dmítrovsk.

Toward dawn, Count Orlóv-Denísov, who had dozed off, was awakened by a

deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a Polish

sergeant of Poniatowski’s corps, who explained in Polish that he had

come over because he had been slighted in the service: that he ought

long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver than any of

them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them out. He said that

Murat was spending the night less than a mile from where they were,

and that if they would let him have a convoy of a hundred men he would

capture him alive. Count Orlóv-Denísov consulted his fellow officers.

The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go and

everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and arguing,

Major-General Grékov with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the

Polish sergeant.

“Now, remember,” said Count Orlóv-Denísov to the sergeant at parting,

“if you have been lying I’ll have you hanged like a dog; but if it’s

true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!”

Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and rode

away with Grékov whose men had quickly assembled. They disappeared into

the forest, and Count Orlóv-Denísov, having seen Grékov off, returned,

shivering from the freshness of the early dawn and excited by what he

had undertaken on his own responsibility, and began looking at the enemy

camp, now just visible in the deceptive light of dawn and the dying

campfires. Our columns ought to have begun to appear on an open

declivity to his right. He looked in that direction, but though the

columns would have been visible quite far off, they were not to be seen.

It seemed to the count that things were beginning to stir in the French

camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.

“Oh, it is really too late,” said Count Orlóv, looking at the camp.

As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before

our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the

sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian

attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which

he would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a

commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!

“I am sure that rascal was lying,” said the count.

“They can still be called back,” said one of his suite, who like Count

Orlóv felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the enemy’s

camp.

“Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?”

“Will you have them fetched back?”

“Fetch them back, fetch them back!” said Count Orlóv with sudden

determination, looking at his watch. “It will be too late. It is quite

light.”

And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grékov. When Grékov

returned, Count Orlóv-Denísov, excited both by the abandoned attempt and

by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not appear, as

well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. All his men

felt the same excitement.

“Mount!” he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and

crossed themselves.... “Forward, with God’s aid!”

“Hurrah-ah-ah!” reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies,

trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if poured out

of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.

One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw the

Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just waking

up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.

Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind and

around them, they would have captured Murat and everything there.

That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to make the

Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners. None of them

listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and thirty-eight guns were

taken on the spot, besides standards and (what seemed most important to

the Cossacks) horses, saddles, horsecloths, and the like. All this had

to be dealt with, the prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided—not

without some shouting and even a little fighting among themselves—and it

was on this that the Cossacks all busied themselves.

The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover themselves: they

formed into detachments and began firing. Orlóv-Denísov, still waiting

for the other columns to arrive, advanced no further.

Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that “the First

Column will march” and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,

commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due order

and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their appointed

places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully, began to halt;

murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and finally a

backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about, shouted, grew

angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and were late, gave

vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and went forward,

simply to get somewhere. “We shall get somewhere or other!” And they did

indeed get somewhere, though not to their right places; a few eventually

even got to their right place, but too late to be of any use and only

in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this battle played the part of

Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped assiduously from place to place,

finding everything upside down everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovút’s

corps in a wood when it was already broad daylight, though the corps

should long before have joined Orlóv-Denísov. Excited and vexed by the

failure and supposing that someone must be responsible for it, Toll

galloped up to the commander of the corps and began upbraiding him

severely, saying that he ought to be shot. General Bagovút, a fighting

old soldier of placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay,

confusion, and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody’s surprise

and quite contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things

to Toll.

“I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men as

well as anybody,” he said, and advanced with a single division.

Coming out onto a field under the enemy’s fire, this brave general went

straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering in his

agitation whether going into action now, with a single division, would

be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets were just what he

needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets killed him, and other

bullets killed many of his men. And his division remained under fire for

some time quite uselessly.