‘So that’s what they fight with,’ observed the auditor. ‘That’s awful!’ But he seemed nevertheless to swell up with pleasure. Hardly were these words out of his mouth when suddenly there came another terrible whoosh ending in a thudding splash into something soft, and with a great squelch a Cossack riding just behind him to the right toppled to the ground from his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent over their saddles and turned their horses away. The auditor stopped a short distance from the Cossack and gave him close scrutiny. He was dead, but his horse still struggled.
Prince Bagration looked round squinting, noted what the delay was and casually turned back as if to say, ‘I can’t be bothered with silly details.’ He reined in with the skill of an expert horseman, leant slightly to one side and freed his sword which had snagged in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned sword, no longer worn by anyone. Prince Andrey recalled the story that Suvorov had given his sword to Bagration in Italy, and the memory of it gave him a particular thrill at that moment. By now they had reached the battery from which Prince Andrey had surveyed the battlefield.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ Prince Bagration asked an NCO gunner standing beside the ammunition boxes.
When he asked, ‘Who’s in charge here?’, he seemed to be saying, ‘Not gone soft, have you?’ and the gunner understood.
‘Captain Tushin, sir,’ came the breezy response from the red-haired, freckle-faced young man as he came to attention.
‘Good, good,’ said a deeply preoccupied Bagration and he rode past the gun-carriages towards the end cannon. Just before he got there a shot boomed out from it, deafening him and his suite, and through the smoke that suddenly enveloped the big gun they watched the gunners grab the cannon, strain against it and trundle it back into position. A huge burly soldier, the number one gunner holding the cleaning rod, sprang up to the wheel, his legs widely braced, while number two rammed the charge down the cannon’s mouth with a shaking hand. Captain Tushin, short and stooping, tripped over the gun-carriage as he dashed forward, without noticing the general, to stare into the distance, shading his eyes with a tiny hand.
‘Two points up. That’ll do,’ he shouted in a shrill voice, with attempted bravura which didn’t quite square with his small figure. ‘Fire number two!’ he piped. ‘Hammer them, Medvedev!’
Bagration called the officer over and Tushin went up to the general, raising three fingers to his cap with a timid and gawky movement, more like a priest blessing someone than a soldier saluting. Tushin’s guns had originally been intended to bombard the valley, but he was now lobbing incendiary bombs straight over at Schöngrabern village, where great masses of French soldiers could be seen advancing out and down.
Tushin had not been told what to fire at or what charges to use, so after consulting his sergeant, Zakharchenko, a man he greatly respected, he had decided it would be a good thing to set the village on fire. ‘Carry on!’ said Bagration when he heard what the officer had to say, and he began scrutinizing the entire battlefield that lay unfolded before him. He seemed to be working things out. The French had advanced furthest on the right side. From the hollow with the stream at the bottom, downhill from the Kiev regiment, came a continuous soul-stirring crackle of musket-fire. Much further away to the right, behind the dragoons, the officer of the suite showed Bagration where we were being outflanked by a French column. To the left the nearby woods rose to the skyline. Prince Bagration gave orders for two battalions from the centre to move to the right to reinforce that flank. The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that the transfer of these battalions would leave the big guns without cover. Prince Bagration turned and stared at him with lacklustre eyes, saying nothing. Prince Andrey thought the officer had a good point, and really nothing could be said against it. But just then an adjutant galloped up with a message from the regimental colonel down in the hollow that the French were coming down on them in huge numbers, and his men were retreating in disorder uphill towards the Kiev Grenadiers. Prince Bagration gave a nod of acknowledgement and approval. He then rode off to the right at walking pace, and dispatched an aide to the dragoons with orders to attack the French. But this man returned half an hour later with the news that the colonel of the dragoons had already retreated beyond the ravine in the face of overwhelming fire to avoid unnecessary further losses, and now had his marksmen dismounted in the wood.
‘Carry on!’ said Bagration.
