ET: Almanac

Prince Andrey mounted his horse but lingered at the battery, looking at the smoke of the cannon from which the ball had frown. His eyes moved rapidly over the white plain. He only saw that the previously immobile masses of the French were heaving to and fro, and that it really was a battery on the left. The smoke still clung about it. Two Frenchmen on horseback, doubtless adjutants, were galloping on the hill. A small column of the enemy, distinctly visible, were moving downhill, probably to strengthen the line. The smoke of the first shot had not cleared away, when there was a fresh puff of smoke and another shot. The battle was beginning. Prince Andrey turned his horse and galloped back to Grunte to look for Prince Bagration. Behind him he heard the cannonade becoming louder and more frequent. Our men were evidently beginning to reply. Musket shots could be heard below at the spot where the lines were closest. Lemarrois had only just galloped to Murat with Napoleon's menacing letter, and Murat, abashed and anxious to efface his error, at once moved his forces to the centre and towards both flanks, hoping before evening and the arrival of the Emperor to destroy the insignificant detachment before him.

'It has begun! Here it comes!' thought Prince Andrey, feeling the blood rush to his heart. 'But where? What form is my Toulon to take?' he wondered.

Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere nothing but the same rapid movements of soldiers forming in ranks and getting their guns, and on every face he saw the same eagerness that he felt in his heart. 'It has begun! Here it comes! Terrible and delightful!' said the face of every private and officer. Before he reached the earthworks that were being thrown up, he saw the evening light of the dull autumn cloak and an Astrachan cap, was riding on a white horse. It was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrey stopped and waited for him to come up. Prince Bagration stopped his horse, and recognizing Prince Andrey nodded to him. He still gazed on ahead while Prince Andrey told him what he had been seeing.

The expression; 'It has begun! it is coming!' was discernible even on Prince Bagration's strong, brown face, with his half-closed, lusterless, sleepy-looking eyes. Prince Andrey glanced with uneasy curiosity at that impassive face, and he longed to know: Was that man thinking and feeling, and what was he thinking and feeling at the moment? 'Is there anything at all there behind that impassive face?' Prince Andrey wondered, looking at him. Prince Bagration nodded in token of his assent to Prince Andrey's words, and said: 'Very good,' with an expression that seemed to signify that all that happened, and all that was told him, as exactly what he had foreseen. Prince Andrey, panting from his rapid ride, spoke quickly. Prince Bagration uttered his words in his Oriental accent with peculiar deliberation, as though impressing upon him that there was no need of hurry. He did, however, spur his horse into a gallop n the direction of Tushin's battery. Prince Andrey rode after him with his suite. The party consisted of an officer of the suite, Bagration's auditor, who had asked to be present from curiosity to see the battle. The auditor, a plump man with a plump face, looked about him with a naive smile of amusement, swaying about on his horse, and cutting a queer figure on his cloak on his saddle among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants.

'This gentleman wants to see a battle,' said Zherkov to Bolkonsky, indicating the auditor, 'but has begun to feel queer already.'

'Come, leave off,' said the auditor, with a beaming smile at once naive and cunning, as though he were flattered at being the object of Zherkov's jests, and was purposely trying to seem stupider than he was in reality.

'It's very curious, mon Monsieur Prince, said the staff-officer on duty. (He vaguely remembered that the title prince was translated in some peculiar way in French, but could not get it quite right.) By this time they were all riding up to Tushin's battery, and a ball struck the ground before them.

'What was that falling?' asked the auditor, smiling naïvely.

'A French pancake,' said Zherkov.

'That's what they hit you with, then?' asked the auditor. 'How awful!' And he seemed to expand all over with enjoyment. He had hardly uttered the words when again there was a sudden terrible whiz, which ended abruptly in a thud into something soft, and flop--a Cossack, riding a little behind and to the right of the auditor, dropped from his horse to the ground. Zherkov and the staff-officer bent forward over their saddles and turned their horses away. The auditor stopped facing the Cossack, and looking with curiosity at him. The Cossack was dead, the horse was still struggling.

Prince Bagration dropped his eyelids, looked round, and seeing the cause of the delay, turned away indifferently, seeming to ask, 'Why notice these trivial details?' With the ease of a first-rate horseman he stopped his horse, bent over a little and disengaged his saber, which had caught under his cloak. The saber was an old-fashioned one, unlike what are worn now. Prince Andrey remembered the story that Suvorov had given his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the recollection was particularly pleasant to him at that moment. They had ridden up to the very battery from which Prince Andrey had surveyed the field of battle.

'Whose company?' Prince Bagration asked of the artilleryman standing at the ammunition boxes.

He asked in words: 'Whose company?' but what he was really asking was, 'You're not in a panic here?' And the artilleryman understood that, man sang out in a cheerful voice, as he ducked forward.

'To be sure, to be sure,' said Bagration, pondering something, and he rode by the platforms up to the end cannon. Just as he reached it, a shot boomed from the cannon, deafening him and his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly enveloped the cannon the artillerymen could be seen hauling at the cannon, dragging and rolling it back to its former position. A broad-shouldered, gigantic soldier, gunner number one, with a mop, darted up to the wheel and planted himself, his legs wide apart; while number two, with a shaking hand, put the charge into the cannon's mouth; a small man with stooping shoulders, the officer Tushin, stumping against the cannon, dashed forward, not noticing the general, and looked out, shading his eyes with his little hand.

'Another two points higher, and it will be just right,' he shouted in a shrill voice, to which he tried to give a swaggering note utterly out of keeping with his figure. 'Two!' he piped. 'Smash away, Medvyedev!'

Bagration called to the officer, and Tushin went up to the general, putting three fingers to the peak of his cap with a timid and awkward gesture, more like a priest blessing some one than a soldier saluting. Though Tushin's guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was throwing shells over the village of Schöngraben, in part of which immense masses of French soldiers were moving out.

No one had given Tushin instructions at what or with what to fire, and after consulting his sergeant, Zahrchenko, for whom he had a great respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the village. 'Very good!' Bagration said, on the officer's submitting that he had done so, and he began scrutinizing the whole field of battle that lay unfolded before him. He seemed to be considering something. The French had advanced nearest on the right side. In the hollow where the steam flowed, below the eminence on which the Kiev regiment was stationed, could be heard a continual roll and crash of guns, the din of which was overwhelming. And much further to the right, behind the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to Bagration a column of the copse close by. Prince Bagration gave orders for two battalions from the centre to go to the right to reinforce the flank. The officer of the suite ventured to observe to the prince that the removal of these battalions would leave the cannon unprotected. Prince Bagration turned to the officer of the suite and stared at him with his lusterless eyes in silence. Prince Andrey thought that the officer's observation was a very just one, and that really there was nothing to be said in reply. But at that instant an adjutant galloped up with a message from the colonel of the regiment in the hollow that immense masses of the French were coming down upon them, that his men were in disorder and retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagration nodded to signify his assent and approval. He rode at a walking pace to the right, and set an adjutant to the dragoons with orders to attack the French. But the adjutant returned half an hour later with the news that the colonel of the dragoons had already retired beyond the ravine, as a destructive fire had been opened upon him, and he was losing his men for nothing, and so he had concentrated his men in the wood.

'Very good!' said Bagration.

Just as he was leaving the battery, shots had been heard in the wood on the left too; and as it was too far to the left flank for him to go himself, Prince Bagration despatched Zherkov to tell the senior general--the general whose regiment had been inspected by Kutusov at Braunau--to retreat as rapidly as possible beyond the ravine, as the right flank would probably not long be able to detain his battery, was forgotten. Prince Andrey listened carefully to Prince Bagration's colloquies with the commanding officers, and to the orders he gave them, and noticed, to his astonishment, that no orders were really given by him at all, but that Prince Bagration confined himself to trying to appear as though everything that ws being done of necessity, by chance, or at the will of individual officers, was all done, if not by his orders, at least in accordance with his intentions. Prince Andrey observed, however, that, thanks to the tact shown by Prince Bagration, notwithstanding that what was done was due to chance, and not dependent on the commander's will, his presence was of the greatest value. Commanding officers, who rode up to Bagration looking distraught, regained their composure; soldiers and officers greeted him cheerfully, recovered their spirits in his presence, and were unmistakably anxious to display their pluck before him.

Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace