Chương Chương 221 · 第221章

Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was galloping

turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him, galloped

in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He tried to pass

either in front of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers

everywhere, all with the same preoccupied expression and busy with

some unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same

dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white hat,

who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under his horse’s

hoofs.

“Why ride into the middle of the battalion?” one of them shouted at him.

Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre,

bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying horse,

galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space.

There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood firing.

Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had come to the

bridge across the Kolochá between Górki and Borodinó, which the French

(having occupied Borodinó) were attacking in the first phase of the

battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front of him and that

soldiers were doing something on both sides of it and in the meadow,

among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken no notice of amid the

smoke of the campfires the day before; but despite the incessant firing

going on there he had no idea that this was the field of battle. He did

not notice the sound of the bullets whistling from every side, or the

projectiles that flew over him, did not see the enemy on the other side

of the river, and for a long time did not notice the killed and wounded,

though many fell near him. He looked about him with a smile which did

not leave his face.

“Why’s that fellow in front of the line?” shouted somebody at him again.

“To the left!... Keep to the right!” the men shouted to him.

Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of Raévski’s

adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at him, evidently

also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing him he nodded.

“How have you got here?” he said, and galloped on.

Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid of

getting in someone’s way again, galloped after the adjutant.

“What’s happening here? May I come with you?” he asked.

“One moment, one moment!” replied the adjutant, and riding up to a stout

colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message and

then addressed Pierre.

“Why have you come here, Count?” he asked with a smile. “Still

inquisitive?”

“Yes, yes,” assented Pierre.

But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.

“Here it’s tolerable,” said he, “but with Bagratión on the left flank

they’re getting it frightfully hot.”

“Really?” said Pierre. “Where is that?”

“Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and in

our battery it is still bearable,” said the adjutant. “Will you come?”

“Yes, I’ll come with you,” replied Pierre, looking round for his groom.

It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering along or being

carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over the day

before, a soldier was lying athwart the rows of scented hay, with his

head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.

“Why haven’t they carried him away?” Pierre was about to ask, but seeing

the stern expression of the adjutant who was also looking that way, he

checked himself.

Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the

adjutant to Raévski’s Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the adjutant’s

and jolted him at every step.

“You don’t seem to be used to riding, Count?” remarked the adjutant.

“No it’s not that, but her action seems so jerky,” said Pierre in a

puzzled tone.

“Why... she’s wounded!” said the adjutant. “In the off foreleg above the

knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your baptism of

fire!”

Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the artillery

which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening them with the

noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was cool and quiet,

with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant dismounted and walked up

the hill on foot.

“Is the general here?” asked the adjutant on reaching the knoll.

“He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way,” someone told him,

pointing to the right.

The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do with him now.

“Don’t trouble about me,” said Pierre. “I’ll go up onto the knoll if I

may?”

“Yes, do. You’ll see everything from there and it’s less dangerous, and

I’ll come for you.”

Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not meet

again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm that

day.

The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards known

to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raévski’s Redoubt, and to the

French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du centre,

around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French regarded as

the key to the whole position.

This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which trenches had

been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that were being fired

through openings in the earthwork.

In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also fired

incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When ascending

that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which small trenches

had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was the most

important point of the battle.

On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought it one

of the least significant parts of the field.

Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end of a trench

surrounding the battery and gazed at what was going on around him with

an unconsciously happy smile. Occasionally he rose and walked about the

battery still with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the soldiers

who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running past

him with bags and charges. The guns of that battery were being fired

continually one after another with a deafening roar, enveloping the

whole neighborhood in powder smoke.

In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in support,

here in the battery where a small number of men busy at their work were

separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced a common and

as it were family feeling of animation.

The intrusion of Pierre’s nonmilitary figure in a white hat made an

unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at him with

surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior artillery

officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over to Pierre as if

to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at him with curiosity.

A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only just

out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two guns

entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.

“Sir,” he said, “permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not be

here.”

The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre.

But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the white hat

was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench

with a shy smile or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced up

and down the battery under fire as calmly as if he were on a boulevard,

their feeling of hostile distrust gradually began to change into a

kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers feel for their dogs,

cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that live with the

regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their family, adopted him,

gave him a nickname (“our gentleman”), and made kindly fun of him among

themselves.

A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around

with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown up.

“And how’s it you’re not afraid, sir, really now?” a red-faced,

broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a set

of sound, white teeth.

“Are you afraid, then?” said Pierre.

“What else do you expect?” answered the soldier. “She has no mercy, you

know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards. One can’t

help being afraid,” he said laughing.

Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.

They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and the

discovery that he did so delighted them.

“It’s the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it’s wonderful!

There’s a gentleman for you!”

“To your places!” cried the young officer to the men gathered round

Pierre.

The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the first or

second time and therefore treated both his superiors and the men with

great precision and formality.

The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing more

intense over the whole field, especially to the left where Bagratión’s

flèches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing made it

almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole

attention was engrossed by watching the family circle—separated from all

else—formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious feeling of

joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the battlefield

was now replaced by another, especially since he had seen that soldier

lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the slope of the trench, he

observed the faces of those around him.

By ten o’clock some twenty men had already been carried away from the

battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more

frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled around.

But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and merry voices

and jokes were heard on all sides.

“A live one!” shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.

“Not this way! To the infantry!” added another with loud laughter,

seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports.

“Are you bowing to a friend, eh?” remarked another, chaffing a peasant

who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.

Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out to see

what was happening in front.

“They’ve withdrawn the front line, it has retired,” said they, pointing

over the earthwork.

“Mind your own business,” an old sergeant shouted at them. “If they’ve

retired it’s because there’s work for them to do farther back.”

And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a

shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter.

“To the fifth gun, wheel it up!” came shouts from one side.

“Now then, all together, like bargees!” rose the merry voices of those

who were moving the gun.

“Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman’s hat off!” cried the red-faced

humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre. “Awkward baggage!” he added

reproachfully to a cannon ball that struck a cannon wheel and a man’s

leg.

“Now then, you foxes!” said another, laughing at some militiamen who,

stooping low, entered the battery to carry away the wounded man.

“So this gruel isn’t to your taste? Oh, you crows! You’re scared!” they

shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man whose leg

had been torn off.

“There, lads... oh, oh!” they mimicked the peasants, “they don’t like it

at all!”

Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt, and after

every loss, the liveliness increased more and more.

As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly and

rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in opposition to

what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire growing more and

more intense glowed in the faces of these men.

Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned to know

what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching this fire

which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was flaming up in the

same way in his own soul.

At ten o’clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in front of

the battery and along the Kámenka streamlet retreated. From the battery

they could be seen running back past it carrying their wounded on

their muskets. A general with his suite came to the battery, and after

speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look and went away again

having ordered the infantry supports behind the battery to lie down,

so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from amid the ranks of

infantry to the right of the battery came the sound of a drum and shouts

of command, and from the battery one saw how those ranks of infantry

moved forward.

Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly struck

by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was walking

backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.

The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their

long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few

minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back from

that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently in the

battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed. Around

the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No one any

longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted at for being

in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid strides from one

gun to another with a frowning face. The young officer, with his face

still more flushed, commanded the men more scrupulously than ever. The

soldiers handed up the charges, turned, loaded, and did their business

with strained smartness. They gave little jumps as they walked, as

though they were on springs.

The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire which

Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly. Pierre standing beside the

commanding officer. The young officer, his hand to his shako, ran up to

his superior.

“I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left. Are

we to continue firing?” he asked.

“Grapeshot!” the senior shouted, without answering the question, looking

over the wall of the trench.

Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a gasp and bending

double sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing. Everything

became strange, confused, and misty in Pierre’s eyes.

One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck the earthwork, a

soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these sounds before,

now heard nothing else. On the right of the battery soldiers shouting

“Hurrah!” were running not forwards but backwards, it seemed to Pierre.

A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by which he was

standing, crumbling down the earth; a black ball flashed before his eyes

and at the same instant plumped into something. Some militiamen who were

entering the battery ran back.

“All with grapeshot!” shouted the officer.

The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened whisper informed

him (as a butler at dinner informs his master that there is no more of

some wine asked for) that there were no more charges.

“The scoundrels! What are they doing?” shouted the officer, turning to

Pierre.

The officer’s face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered under

his frowning brow.

“Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!” he yelled,

angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and speaking to his men.

“I’ll go,” said Pierre.

The officer, without answering him, strode across to the opposite side.

“Don’t fire.... Wait!” he shouted.

The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition stumbled against

Pierre.

“Eh, sir, this is no place for you,” said he, and ran down the slope.

Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young officer was

sitting.

One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him, falling in front,

beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down the slope. “Where am I going?”

he suddenly asked himself when he was already near the green ammunition

wagons. He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to return or go on.

Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to the ground. At the

same instant he was dazzled by a great flash of flame, and immediately a

deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made his ears tingle.

When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground leaning on his

hands; the ammunition wagons he had been approaching no longer existed,

only charred green boards and rags littered the scorched grass, and a

horse, dangling fragments of its shaft behind it, galloped past, while

another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, uttering prolonged and

piercing cries.