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Volume I, Part Two, Chapter XIX

The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the wood ran out of it, and the different companies getting mixed, retreated in disorderly crowds. One soldier, in his fear, uttered the senseless and terrible word "cut off!" and that word, together with a feeling of panic, spread through the whole mass.

— Outflanked! Cut off! We're lost! — shouted the voices of the fugitives.

The regimental commander, the moment he heard the firing and the shout from behind, realized that something terrible had happened to his regiment, and the thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service who had never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters for negligence or imprudence, so staggered him that, forgetting the recalcitrant cavalry colonel and his own dignity as a general, and above all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for self-preservation, he clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring his horse, galloped to the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell around, but fortunately missed him. His one desire was to know what was happening and at any cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he had made one, so that he, an exemplary officer of twenty-two years' service, who had never been censured, should not be held to blame.

Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of soldiers attend to the voice of their commander, or would they, looking back at him, continue their flight? Despite his desperate shouts that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his furious, purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his former self, and the flourishing of his sword, the soldiers all continued to run, talking, firing into the air, and not listening to orders. The moral hesitation which decides the fate of battles was evidently culminating in a panic of fear.

The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the powder smoke, and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at that moment the French who were attacking us suddenly and without any apparent reason ran back and disappeared from the outskirt of the copse, and Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was Timokhin's company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood and, having lain in ambush in a ditch behind the copse, suddenly attacked the French. Timokhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the enemy with such a desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination that, taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their weapons and fled. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin, killed a Frenchman at close quarters and was the first to seize the surrendering French officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the battalions were formed up, and the French who had nearly cut our left flank in half were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to join up, and the flight was stopped. The regimental commander and Major Ekonomov had stopped by a bridge, letting the retreating companies pass by them, when a soldier came up to the commander and took hold of his stirrup, almost leaning against him. The soldier was wearing a bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or shako, his head was bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung. He held an officer's sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his blue eyes looked impudently into the commander's face, and his lips were smiling. Though the commander was busy giving instructions to Major Ekonomov, he could not help taking notice of this soldier.

— Your excellency, here are two trophies, — said Dolokhov, pointing to the French sword and pouch. — I have taken an officer prisoner. I stopped the company. — Dolokhov breathed heavily from fatigue and spoke in gasps. — The whole company can bear witness. I beg you will remember this, your excellency!

— All right, all right, — said the commander, and turned to Major Ekonomov.

But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around his head, pulled it off, and showed the blood clotted in his hair.

— A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your excellency! — — — —

Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of the action, continuing to hear the cannonade in the center, Prince Bagration sent a staff officer on duty, and later Prince Andrei, to order the battery to retire as quickly as possible. The covering party which had stood near Tushin's guns had left, by someone's order, in the middle of the action; but the battery had continued to fire and was only not taken by the French because the enemy could not surmise the audacity of firing from four completely undefended guns. On the contrary, the energetic action of that battery led the French to suppose that here, in the center, the main Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to attack this point, but on each occasion had been driven back by grapeshot from the four guns which stood alone on the hillock.

Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in setting fire to Schöngrabern.

— See them scurry! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine! Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke! — exclaimed the artillerymen, brightening up.

All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the direction of the fire. As if urging each other on, the soldiers cried at each shot: "Fine! That's the way! Look at it... Grand!" The fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French columns that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as if in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the right of the village and began firing them at Tushin's battery.

In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed this battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our guns, one knocking over two horses and another tearing off a munition-wagon driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were, however, not diminished, but only changed character. The horses were replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the wounded were carried away, and the four guns turned their fire against the ten-gun battery. Tushin's companion officer had been killed at the beginning of the engagement and within an hour seventeen of the forty men of the guns' crews had been disabled, but the artillerymen were still as merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed the French appearing below them at a short distance, and then they fired grapeshot at them.

Little Tushin, with his feeble, awkward movements, kept demanding from his orderly another pipe for this one, as he said, and then, scattering sparks from it, ran forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the French.

— Smash 'em, lads! — he kept saying, himself grasping the guns by the wheels and working the screws.

Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from gun to gun, now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and shouting in his feeble, thin, hesitating voice. His face grew more and more animated. Only when men were killed or wounded did he frown and, turning away from the sight, shout angrily at the men who, as is always the case, hesitated about lifting the injured or dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows and, as is always the case in an artillery company, a head and shoulders taller and twice as broad as their officer — all looked at their commander like children in an embarrassing situation, and the expression on his face was invariably reflected on theirs.

Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest qualm of fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded never occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more elated. It seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a day, since he had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and that the corner of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar ground. Though he remembered everything, considered everything, and did everything the best of officers could do in his position, he was in a state akin to feverish delirium or drunkenness.

From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle and thud of the enemy's shells, from the flushed and perspiring faces of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight of the blood of men and horses, from the little puffs of enemy smoke on the opposite side (after which a cannon ball always flew past and struck the earth, a man, a gun, or a horse) — from the sight of all these things a fantastic world of his own had taken possession of his brain and at that moment afforded him pleasure. The enemy's guns were in his fancy not guns but pipes from which occasional white wreaths of smoke were discharged by an invisible smoker.

— There... he's puffing again, — muttered Tushin to himself, as a small cloud of smoke rose from the hill and was blown aside in a streak to the left by the wind. — Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back.

— What do you order, your honor? — asked a gunner who stood near, hearing him muttering.

— Nothing... a shell... — he answered.

"Come along, our Matvévna," he said to himself. Matvévna was the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which was of an old pattern. The French swarming round their guns seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard Number One of the second gun's crew was uncle; Tushin looked at him more often than at anyone else and took delight in his every movement. The sound of musketry fire dying down and then springing up again at the foot of the hill seemed to him like someone breathing. He listened to the ebb and flow of these sounds.

"Ah, breathing again, breathing," he muttered to himself.

He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was throwing cannon balls at the French with both hands.

— Now then, Matvévna, dear old lady, don't let us down! — he was saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice called above his head:

— Captain Tushin! Captain!

Tushin turned around in alarm. It was the staff officer who had turned him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping voice:

— Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you...

"Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his superior.

— I... don't matter... — he muttered, holding two fingers to his peak. — I...

But the colonel did not finish all he wanted to say. A close-flying cannon ball forced him to duck and bend over his horse. He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another ball stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.

— Retire! All to retire! — he shouted from a distance.

The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the same order.

It was Prince Andrei. The first thing he saw on riding up to the space where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with a shattered leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed horses. Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the limbers lay several dead men. One cannon ball after another passed over as he rode up, and he felt a nervous shudder running down his spine. But the mere thought of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid," he thought, and dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the order and did not leave the battery. He decided to have the guns removed from their positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together with Tushin, stepping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from the French, he attended to the removal of the guns.

— A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off, — said a gunner to Prince Andrei. — Not like your honor.

Prince Andrei said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to seem not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two cannon that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down the hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind), Prince Andrei rode up to Tushin.

— Well, till we meet again, — he said, holding out his hand to Tushin.

— Good-by, my dear fellow, — said Tushin. — Dear soul! Farewell, my dear fellow, — said Tushin with tears which for some unknown reason suddenly sprang to his eyes.