Kabanata Kabanata 63 · 第63章

At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the

center, the reserves, and Bagratión’s right flank had not yet moved,

but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,

which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French

right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to plan,

were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into which they

were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes smart. It was cold

and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking tea and breakfasting, the

soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with their feet to

warm themselves, gathering round the fires throwing into the flames the

remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that they

did not want or could not carry away with them. Austrian column guides

were moving in and out among the Russian troops and served as heralds

of the advance. As soon as an Austrian officer showed himself near

a commanding officer’s quarters, the regiment began to move: the

soldiers ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into their boots, their

bags into the carts, got their muskets ready, and formed rank. The

officers buttoned up their coats, buckled on their swords and pouches,

and moved along the ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies

harnessed and packed the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and

battalion and regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave

final instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men

who remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet

resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and unable,

from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, to see

either the place they were leaving or that to which they were going.

A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his regiment as

much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has walked, whatever

strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches, just as a sailor is

always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and rigging of his ship, so

the soldier always has around him the same comrades, the same ranks, the

same sergeant major Iván Mítrich, the same company dog Jack, and the

same commanders. The sailor rarely cares to know the latitude in which

his ship is sailing, but on the day of battle—heaven knows how and

whence—a stern note of which all are conscious sounds in the moral

atmosphere of an army, announcing the approach of something decisive

and solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of

battle the soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their

regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning

what is going on around them.

The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they could

not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and level

ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one might

encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns advanced

for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and ascending hills,

avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and unknown ground, and

nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary, the soldiers became

aware that in front, behind, and on all sides, other Russian columns

were moving in the same direction. Every soldier felt glad to know that

to the unknown place where he was going, many more of our men were going

too.

“There now, the Kúrskies have also gone past,” was being said in

the ranks.

“It’s wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last

night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A regular

Moscow!”

Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or talked to

the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war, were out of

humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not exert themselves

to cheer the men but merely carried out the orders), yet the troops

marched gaily, as they always do when going into action, especially to

an attack. But when they had marched for about an hour in the dense fog,

the greater part of the men had to halt and an unpleasant consciousness

of some dislocation and blunder spread through the ranks. How such

a consciousness is communicated is very difficult to define, but it

certainly is communicated very surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly,

and irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been

alone without any allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before

this consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as

it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the stupid

Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had been

occasioned by the sausage eaters.

“Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up

against the French?”

“No, one can’t hear them. They’d be firing if we had.”

“They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in

the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It’s all those damned

Germans’ muddling! What stupid devils!”

“Yes, I’d send them on in front, but no fear, they’re crowding up

behind. And now here we stand hungry.”

“I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking the

way,” said an officer.

“Ah, those damned Germans! They don’t know their own country!”

said another.

“What division are you?” shouted an adjutant, riding up.

“The Eighteenth.”

“Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you

won’t get there till evening.”

“What stupid orders! They don’t themselves know what they are

doing!” said the officer and rode off.

Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.

“Tafa-lafa! But what he’s jabbering no one can make out,” said a

soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. “I’d shoot them,

the scoundrels!”

“We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven’t got

halfway. Fine orders!” was being repeated on different sides.

And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to

turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the

Germans.

The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was

moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center

was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all

ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in

front of the infantry, who had to wait.

At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a

Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry should be

halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher command, was to

blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and dispirited. After

an hour’s delay they at last moved on, descending the hill. The fog

that was dispersing on the hill lay still more densely below, where they

were descending. In front in the fog a shot was heard and then another,

at first irregularly at varying intervals—trata...tat—and then more

and more regularly and rapidly, and the action at the Goldbach Stream

began.

Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having

stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their

commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading through

the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front or around

them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the enemy

lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders from

the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in those unknown

surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this way the action

began for the first, second, and third columns, which had gone down into

the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutúzov was, stood on the

Pratzen Heights.

Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog; on the

higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of what was

going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we supposed,

six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea of mist, no one

knew till after eight o’clock.

It was nine o’clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a sea

down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon

stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above him was

a clear blue sky, and the sun’s vast orb quivered like a huge hollow,

crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist. The whole French

army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff, were not on the far side

of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and Schlappanitz beyond which we

intended to take up our position and begin the action, but were on this

side, so close to our own forces that Napoleon with the naked eye could

distinguish a mounted man from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak

which he had worn on his Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab

horse a little in front of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills

which seemed to rise out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian

troops were moving in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of

firing in the valley. Not a single muscle of his face—which in those

days was still thin—moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on

one spot. His predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian

force had already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes

and part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack

and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that in

a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian

columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one

direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into

the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from the

sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the night,

by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all

indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far away

in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen constituted

the center of the Russian army, and that that center was already

sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still he did not

begin the engagement.

Today was a great day for him—the anniversary of his coronation.

Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and

in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field

in that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything

succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above

the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident,

self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily

in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his

attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun floating

up out of the mist.

When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and mist were

aglow with dazzling light—as if he had only awaited this to begin the

action—he drew the glove from his shapely white hand, made a sign

with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to begin. The marshals,

accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in different directions, and

a few minutes later the chief forces of the French army moved rapidly

toward those Pratzen Heights which were being more and more denuded by

Russian troops moving down the valley to their left.