“It is a disgrace for a soldier to steal, a soldier should be honest, noble, and brave; and if one steals from his comrade, there is no honor in him, he is a scoundrel. More, more!”
Again there came the supple strokes and a desperate but feigned cry.
“More, more,” repeated the major.
A young officer, with an expression of perplexity and suffering on his face, walked away from the punished man, looking questioningly at the passing adjutant.
Prince Andrei, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our line and the enemy’s stood far from each other on the left and right flanks, but in the center, where the envoys had passed that morning, the lines came so close that the men could see each other’s faces and talk to each other. Besides the soldiers who occupied the line at that place, many of the curious stood on both sides and gazed, laughing, at their strange and foreign-looking enemies.
Since early morning, though it was forbidden to go near the line, the officers had been unable to ward off the curious. The soldiers stationed on the line, like people displaying something rare, no longer looked at the French, but made their observations to those who came and, languishing, waited to be relieved. Prince Andrei stopped to examine the French.
“Look, look,” one soldier said to his comrade, pointing to a Russian musketeer who had gone up to the line along with an officer and was speaking rapidly and heatedly with a French grenadier. “See how clever he patters away. Even the Khrenchman can’t keep up with him. Now you, Sidorov…”
“Wait, listen. That’s really clever!” replied Sidorov, who was considered an expert at speaking French.
The soldier at whom the laughing men were pointing was Dolokhov. Prince Andrei recognized him and listened to what he was saying. Dolokhov and his company commander had come to the line from the left flank, where their regiment was stationed.
“Go on, more, more!” the company commander egged him on, leaning forward and trying not to miss a single incomprehensible word. “Thicker and faster! What’s he saying?”
Dolokhov did not answer his company commander; he was involved in a heated argument with the French grenadier. They were talking, as they could only have been, about the campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the Russians, insisted that the Russians had surrendered and fled all the way from Ulm. Dolokhov insisted that the Russians had not surrendered, but had beaten the French.
“We have orders to drive you away, and that’s what we’re going to do,” said Dolokhov.
“Only try hard not to get captured with all your Cossacks,” said the French grenadier.
The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
“We’ll make you dance, as you danced for Suvorov” (on vous fera danser), said Dolokhov.
“Qu’est-ce qu’il chante?”*219 said one Frenchman.
“De l’histoire ancienne,” said a third, realizing that the talk was about former wars. “L’Empereur va lui faire voir à votre Souvara, comme les autres…”†220
“Bonaparte…” Dolokhov began, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
“There is no Bonaparte. There is the Emperor! Sacré nom…”‡221 he cried angrily.
“Devil take your emperor!”
And Dolokhov produced a rude soldier’s curse and, shouldering his gun, walked off.
“Come on, Ivan Lukich,” he said to the company commander.
“That’s the Khrench for you,” the soldiers started talking in the line. “Now you, Sidorov!”
Sidorov winked and, turning to the French, began pouring out a thick patter of incomprehensible words:
“Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, kaskà,” he pattered, trying to give his voice expressive intonations.
“Ho, ho, ho! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Hoo, hoo!” Peals of such healthy and merry guffawing came from among the soldiers that it crossed the line and involuntarily infected the French, after which it seemed they ought quickly to unload their guns, blow up their munitions, and all quickly go back home.
But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in the houses and fortifications looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon remained turned against each other just as before.
XVI
Having ridden all along the line of troops from the right flank to the left, Prince Andrei went up to the battery, from which, according to the staff officer’s words, one could see the whole field. Here he got off his horse and stopped by the last of the four unlimbered cannon. In front of the cannon paced an artillery sentry, who snapped to attention before the officer, but at a sign from him renewed his measured, tedious pacing. Behind the cannon stood their limbers, further behind a hitching rail and the campfires of the artillerists. To the left, not far from the last cannon, there was a newly plaited lean-to from which came the animated voices of the officers.
Indeed, from the battery a view opened out of almost the entire disposition of the Russian troops and the greater part of the enemy’s. Directly facing the battery, on the crest of the knoll opposite, one could see the village of Schöngraben; to left and right it was possible to make out in three places amidst the smoke of their campfires the masses of the French troops, of whom the greater part were evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left of the village, in the smoke, appeared something resembling a battery, but it was impossible to see it well with the naked eye. Our right flank was disposed on a rather steep elevation, which dominated the positions of the French. On it our infantry was disposed, and at the very end one could see the dragoons. In the center, where Tushin’s battery stood, from where Prince Andrei was surveying the position, there was a gently sloping and direct descent and ascent to the stream that separated us from Schöngraben. To the left our troops adjoined a woods, where smoked the campfires of our infantry, who were cutting firewood. The French line was wider than ours, and it was obvious that the French could easily encircle us from both sides. Behind our position was a steep and deep ravine, through which it would be hard for artillery and cavalry to retreat. Prince Andrei, leaning his elbow on the cannon and taking out his notebook, drew a plan of the disposition of the troops for himself. In two places he penciled some notes, intending to tell Bagration about them. He proposed, first, to concentrate all the artillery in the center; second, to transfer the cavalry back to the other side of the ravine. Prince Andrei had been constantly at the commander in chief’s side, had followed the movements of masses and the general orders, and had constantly been taken up with historical descriptions of battles, and in this forthcoming action involuntarily considered the future course of the military operations only in general terms. He pictured only major occurrences of the following kind: “If the enemy mounts an attack on the right flank,” he said to himself, “the Kievsky grenadiers and the Podolsky chasseurs will have to hold their positions until reserves from the center reach them. In that case, the dragoons can strike at the flank and overthrow them. In case of an attack on the center, we can deploy the central battery on this elevation, and under its cover pull back the left flank and retreat into the ravine by echelons,” he reasoned to himself…