War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

  At the top of the steps up on to the mound Pierre took one look ahead and was transfixed by the sheer splendour of the view. It was the same place, the same vista that he had enjoyed yesterday, but now the entire landscape was covered with troops and gunsmoke, and in the clear morning air, as the bright sun came up over Pierre's left shoulder, it bathed the whole scene with slanting rays of piercing light, touching everything with gold and pink, and leaving long, dark shadows. Far away along the curving edge of the horizon the scene was bounded by stretches of woodland that might have been carved out of some yellowy-green precious stone, and up over Valuyevo they were broken by the Smolensk high road, swarming with troops. Down below, fields dotted with copses glittering with gold. And everywhere, right, left and centre, there were soldiers. It was a vibrant scene, astonishing in its splendour, but what struck Pierre most forcibly was the battlefield itself, Borodino, and the hollow winding its way along both sides of the Kolocha.

  The ground above the Kolocha, in Borodino itself, and out on both sides but especially over on the left where the Voyna empties itself through marshy ground into the Kolocha, was overhung by the kind of mist that seeps down and thins out to let the bright sun come shimmering through, revealing the landscape and painting it in magical colours. Gunsmoke wreathed its way in, and the intermingling smoke and mist was everywhere shot through with lightning-flashes of early-morning sunlight glinting on water, dew and bayonets in the hands of soldiers swarming along the river banks and through Borodino. Through the mist you could make things out: a white church here, there the roofs of shacks in Borodino, with fitful glimpses of great masses of men, the odd green-coloured ammunition-box, an occasional cannon. And the whole scene was writhing, or it looked as if it was, because of the mist and smoke drifting across the entire landscape. All across the misty hollows close to Borodino, and outside the village on higher ground, especially to the left down the line, from copse and meadow puffs of smoke curled up out of thin air, either singly or in clusters, sporadically or in big, rapid bursts, weaving together on high then swelling, billowing out, seeping away and merging together in all over the landscape. Curiously enough, it was this swirling gunsmoke, with the ensuing bangs, that gave the whole spectacle its special beauty.

  'Pooff!' Suddenly a thick, round ball of smoke rose up, shot through with flashes of purple, grey and a milky-white hue, followed a second later by the inevitable 'boom!'

  'Pooff-pooff!' Two clouds of smoke this time, jostling and merging in mid-air.

  'Boom-boom!' came an echo confirming what the eye had seen.

  Pierre took a long look at the first puff of smoke, watching it grow rapidly from a thick, round ball into bigger round palls of smoke drifting off to one side, and pooff . . . (then a pause) pooff-pooff . . . then three more, and another four all at once, each puff of smoke followed, after the same time-lapse, by another boom . . . boom-boom-boom , each sound beautiful, strong and true. Sometimes the smoke-clouds seemed to be scudding across the plain, sometimes they seemed to stand still and let everything fly by - copses, fields and glinting bayonets. These big palls of smoke rose up in an unceasing stream from the left, soaring over fields and bushes, each one followed by a triumphant boom. Much nearer, over the low ground and woodland, tiny puffs of smoke floated up from the musket-fire, hardly enough to form into balls of smoke, though each had its tiny after-echo too. 'Tra-ta-ta-ta!' came the persistent crackle of the muskets, but they sounded thin and sporadic compared with the steady booming of the cannons.

  Pierre felt a sudden longing to be down there amidst all the smoke, the glinting bayonets, the movement and the din. He looked round at Kutuzov and his entourage to measure his own impressions against theirs. Like him they were all looking ahead, staring down at the battlefield, and they seemed to share his feelings. Every face glowed with that sensation of latent heat that Pierre had noticed the day before, and fully understood after his talk with Prince Andrey.

  'Go on, my dear fellow, off you go, and God go with you!' Kutuzov was saying to a general at his side, though his eyes never left the battlefield. The general in question heard the order and walked past Pierre towards the downward steps.

  'Down to the crossing,' said the general with icy severity when one of the staff-officers asked where he was going.

  'Oh yes, me too,' thought Pierre, and he set off in the same direction.

  The general was mounting a horse brought up by his Cossack. Pierre went over to his own groom, who was standing there holding his horses. Asking for the easiest mount, Pierre got on, grabbed the horse by its mane, turned out his toes, dug his heels into the animal's belly, and trotted off after the general with a desperate feeling that his spectacles were slipping down and he daren't let go of the mane or the reins, much to the amusement of the staff-officers watching him from the mound.

  CHAPTER 31

  The general who was leading the way galloped downhill and turned sharp left at the bottom. Pierre lost sight of him and careered straight into the ranks of some infantrymen marching just ahead. He turned left and right in an attempt to extricate himself, but there were soldiers everywhere, and they all had worried faces as they went forward on some unseen business that was obviously no laughing matter. They all looked puzzled and annoyed to see this fat man in a white hat who was trampling them under his horse's hooves for no apparent reason.

  'What's 'e think 'e's doin' in the middle of a battalion?' one man shouted for his benefit. Another gave his horse a good shove with his gun-butt, and Pierre, leaning forward in the saddle with his plunging steed almost out of control, managed to gallop through a space and out in front of the soldiers.

  Ahead lay a bridge, and by the bridge there were some more soldiers, firing away. Pierre rode towards them. Without knowing it, he had hit upon the one bridge over the Kolocha, on the road from Gorki to Borodino, which had come under French attack in one of the first advances after they had taken the village itself. Pierre could see there was a bridge in front of him, and the soldiers were doing something in the smoke on both sides of the bridge, and also out in the meadow among the rows of new-mown hay he had noticed the day before. But despite the incessant hail of fire it never occurred to him that this was it, the actual battlefield. He didn't hear the bullets whizzing past on all sides, or the shells flying overhead; he didn't see the enemy on the other side of the river, and it was quite some time before he saw any men killed or wounded, though they were dropping all round him. He was taking a careful look around, and the smile never left his face.

  'What's 'e doin' out in front?' came another call intended for his benefit.

  'Turn left!', 'Go right!' came the various voices. Pierre did turn right, and happened upon one of General Rayevsky's adjutants, a man he knew. The adjutant fixed him with a furious glare, and by all appearances he was about to yell at him too, but then he recognized him, and nodded in acknowledgement.

  'What are you doing down here?' he said, and galloped on. Pierre, feeling out of his depth, quite useless, and worried about getting in the way again, galloped after him.

  'What's happening here? Can I go with you?' he asked.

  'Hang on a minute,' answered the adjutant. He galloped over to a portly colonel waiting in the meadow, handed something to him, and only then spoke to Pierre. 'What brings you here, Count?' he asked with a smile. 'Still curious about things?'

  'Yes, yes,' said Pierre. But the adjutant had turned his horse and was riding on.

  'Things are not too bad over here, thank God,' said the adjutant, 'but it's pretty hot out there on the left flank with Bagration.'

  'Is it?' said Pierre. 'Where's that, then?'

  'Come up on the mound with me. We can see a lot from up there. And our battery's not doing too badly,' said the adjutant. 'Are you coming?'

  'Oh yes, I'll come with you,' said Pierre, looking round on all sides in search of his groom. Now for the first time Pierre began to see wounded men, some staggering about, others being carried away on stretchers. And out there
in the meadow with the rows of sweet-smelling hay that he had ridden through the day before there was one soldier who was lying crosswise, perfectly still, with his shako off and his head awkwardly thrown back. 'Why haven't they taken him?' Pierre was on the point of asking, until he saw the adjutant looking grimly in the same direction, and this made him swallow his words.

  Without finding his groom Pierre rode with the adjutant up a hollow towards the Rayevsky redoubt. His horse lagged behind, and kept bumping into the adjutant's horse at every step.

  'I can see you don't do much riding, Count,' said the adjutant.

  'No, but I'm all right. Her action is a bit awkward, though,' said Pierre, rather bemused.

  'I'm not surprised . . . Look, she's wounded!' said the adjutant. 'Right fore-leg, just above the knee. Must have been a bullet. Congratulations, Count,' he said. 'Your baptism of fire.'

  They rode through the smoke of Sixth Corps territory right behind the artillery, which had been moved forward and was keeping up a deafening bombardment, and out into a small copse. Here under the trees it was cool and quiet, with a smell of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant got down from their horses and proceeded uphill on foot.

  'Is the general here?' asked the adjutant when they got to the redoubt.

  'No, you've just missed him. He went that way,' someone answered, pointing off to the right.

  The adjutant glanced round at Pierre as if he wasn't sure what to do with him.

  'Oh, please don't bother about me,' said Pierre. 'I'll go up on the mound, if I may.'

  'Yes, do. You can see everything from up there, and it's not too dangerous. I'll come and get you later.'

  Pierre went up to the battery, and the adjutant rode away. They never saw each other again, and only much later on did Pierre learn that the adjutant had lost an arm that day.

  The mound on which Pierre now stood - afterwards known to the Russians as the mound battery, or the Rayevsky redoubt, and to the French as the great redoubt, fatal redoubt or centre redoubt - was the famous place that the French looked on as the key position, where tens of thousands fell.

  It consisted of a mound with trenches dug outwards on three sides. In the entrenchments there were ten cannons that fired out through gaps.

  There was a line of further cannons on either side of the redoubt, and they also kept up a constant barrage. The infantrymen were stationed just behind this line. When Pierre got to the top of the mound he hadn't the slightest idea that this place with its little trenches and one or two cannons firing away was the very heart of the battle. Quite the reverse: he assumed (by the very fact that he happened to be there) that it was one of the least important locations on the battlefield.

  Pierre sat down at one end of the earthwork that enclosed the battery and watched what was going on with an instinctively happy smile. He got up from time to time and strolled about the battery with the same smile on his face, trying not to get in the way of the soldiers forever running past with pouches and ammunition, or loading the cannons and hauling them into position. The cannons never stopped firing, one after another, with a thunderous, deafening roar, and they smothered the surrounding countryside in blankets of powder-smoke.

  Among the infantrymen providing cover for the battery fear was rampant and it showed, but here inside, by contrast, where only a small number of men toiled away together in seclusion, cut off from the rest of the trench, there was a shared camaraderie that could be sensed all round, a kind of family feeling.

  At first the sudden appearance of Pierre's unmilitary figure in a white hat made a bad impression on this little group. As they ran by the soldiers were surprised, even shocked, by the sight of him and he attracted many a sidelong glance. The senior artillery officer, a tall, lanky man with a pock-marked face, came right up to Pierre on the pretext of checking the action of the end cannon, and took a close look at him.

  A boyish officer with a little round face, still wet behind the ears and obviously just out of cadet school, feeling very protective towards the two cannons they had given him charge of, spoke sharply to Pierre.

  'I'm sorry, sir, I'll have to ask you to move,' he said. 'You can't stay here.'

  The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre. But once they were satisfied that the man in the white hat wasn't doing any harm, as he either sat quietly on a slope, or politely got out of the soldiers' way with a shy smile on his face as he walked about the battery, under full fire, like someone calmly strolling down a boulevard, suspicion and resentment gradually gave way to the kindly spirit of friendly banter that soldiers tend to reserve for their animals: the dogs, cockerels, goats and other creatures who happen to share the fortunes of the regiment. The soldiers soon made the mental adjustment and accepted Pierre into their family, calling him one of their own, and they gave him a special name. 'Our gent', as they called him, caused many a good-humoured laugh among them.

  A cannonball ploughed the earth up a couple of paces from Pierre, spattering him with dirt. He looked round with a smile as he brushed it off his clothes.

  'How come you ain't scared, sir?' said a broad, red-faced soldier with a strong, white, toothy grin.

  'Are you, then?' asked Pierre.

  'You bet I am!' answered the soldier. 'She don't show no mercy. Bang, guts everywhere. You got to be scared, sir,' he said with a laugh.

  One or two soldiers had stopped beside Pierre looking all amused and friendly. It was as if they hadn't expected him to talk like other people, and when he did they were delighted.

  'Yes, but this is our job. We're soldiers. You're a gentleman. Takes the biscuit that does, you bein' a gentleman an' all that!'

  'Back to your stations!' called the little boy officer to the soldiers who had gathered round Pierre. This boy could not have been doing more than his first or second turn of duty and he was taking things very seriously and being very officious towards the men and his senior officer.

  The constant thunder of the cannons and the rattle of musketry were getting louder all over the field, especially on the left in the region of Bagration's fleches, but from where Pierre was standing almost nothing could be seen because of the smoke. In any case, he was completely absorbed in observing this little family group up on their battery, cut off from the rest of the world. His first instinctive surge of excitement at the sights and sounds of the battlefield had given way to another feeling, especially since he had seen that soldier lying all alone in the hayfield. He now sat there on his slope and took stock of the figures moving about him.

  By ten o'clock a couple of dozen men had been stretchered away, two cannons had been put out of action, shells continued to rain down on the battery, and bullets came howling and whistling from afar. But nobody there seemed to notice; from every corner all you could hear was a stream of breezy repartee and jokes.

  'Here's a beauty!' yelled one of the soldiers as a grenade came whistling over.

  'Not down here! You want the infantry!' another added with a chuckle, watching the grenade soar across and land in the middle of the covering troops.

  'Bowing to a friend?' said another soldier, jeering at a peasant who had ducked down at the sight of a flying cannonball.

  One or two soldiers came together at the trench wall to have a look at what was going on out front.

  'The line's gone down there, look, they're coming back,' they said, pointing down.

  'None of your business,' the old sergeant yelled to them. 'If that's right, it means they're needed for a job at the back.' And the sergeant grabbed one soldier by the shoulder and kneed him in the thigh. They all laughed.

  'Forward number five!' came the call from one side.

  'Come on, boys, all together, heave!' came the happy voices of the men shoving the cannon forward.

  'Phew, almost had our gent's hat off!' said the red-faced joker with a laugh, showing his toothy grin. 'Ooh! Nasty bitch that one!' he added, cursing a cannonball as it smashed into a wheel and took a man's leg off.

 
''Ere comes the little foxes!' another soldier laughed as he saw the peasant militiamen who had come for the wounded crouching down and creeping along. 'Not your cup o' tea, is it? Look at 'em, gawping! That's stopped 'em!' they shouted at the militiamen, who had halted in their tracks at the sight of a soldier with his leg torn off. 'Diddums do it, sonny,' they cried, making fun of the peasants. 'Don't like it, do 'e?'

  Pierre noticed that with every ball that fell, with every loss, the level of excitement went up and up. The faces of these men blazed with fire from within, defiantly rejecting reality even as it happened, like lightning flashes licking round a stormcloud, faster and faster, brighter and brighter, as it continued to build up.

  Pierre wasn't looking ahead at the field of battle; he no longer had any interest in what was going on down there. He was completely absorbed in observing the build-up of that inner fire, and he could feel the same fire building up in his own soul too.

  By ten o'clock the infantry that had been out in front of the battery in the bushes and on the banks of the Kamenka were in retreat. From the battery they could see the men running back past them, using their guns to carry the wounded. A general with his entourage came up to the redoubt, exchanged a few words with the colonel, glared furiously at Pierre and rode off downhill again, having told the covering infantry behind the battery to lie down so as to be less exposed to fire. After that from the infantry ranks over on the right came the sound of a drum and shouts of command, and from inside the battery they could see the footsoldiers moving forward.

  Pierre looked over the top of the trench. One particular figure caught his eye - an officer with a pale young face who was walking backwards, holding his sword down and looking round uneasily.

  The ranks of infantrymen vanished into the smoke, but they could still be heard calling across to each other and firing continuously with their muskets. It took only a few minutes for hordes of wounded men and stretcher-bearers to start coming back. Shells rained down on the battery even more furiously. There were men lying around who were not being picked up. Round the cannons the toiling soldiers had redoubled their efforts. Pierre was now being ignored. Two or three times people yelled at him furiously for getting in the way. The senior officer strode rapidly from cannon to cannon with a dark scowl on his face. The boy officer, with even more red in his cheeks, issued his orders more conscientiously than ever. The straining soldiers did everything - passing on the charges, turning round, loading and all the rest - more urgently, with a new swagger and a new spring in their step.