The engagement, such as it was, had resulted in the capture of a French squadron and this had been built up into a brilliant victory over the enemy. With the smoke still hanging over the battlefield the Tsar and the entire army believed that the French had been routed and forced to retreat. A few minutes after the Tsar had gone by, the Pavlograd hussar division was called forward. In Wischau itself, a little German town, Rostov caught another glimpse of the Tsar. In the marketplace, which had seen a sharp exchange of fire just before the Tsar’s arrival, lay several dead and wounded soldiers who had not yet been picked up. Surrounded by his officers and courtiers, the Tsar was mounted on another bobtailed chestnut mare, not the one he had ridden to inspect the troops. Bending to one side with a graceful gesture and holding a gold lorgnette to his eyes, he was staring at a soldier lying face-down with blood all over his uncovered head. The wounded man looked so filthy, disgusting and ghastly that Rostov was deeply offended by his closeness to the Emperor. Rostov saw the Tsar’s stooping shoulders shudder, as if from an icy tremor, at which his left foot jerked spasmodically, driving its spur into the horse’s side, but the well-trained animal just looked around indifferently without moving an inch. Adjutants dismounted and went to lift the soldier under the arms to lay him on a stretcher that had suddenly appeared. The soldier gave a groan.
‘Steady, steady! Can’t you do it more gently?’ said the Tsar, who seemed to be suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
Rostov had seen tears in the Tsar’s eyes and he heard him say to Czartoryski in French as he rode off, ‘What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing!’
The advance troops were positioned outside Wischau in sight of the enemy line, which had spent the whole day retreating before us at the slightest sign of firing. The Tsar’s thanks were conveyed to the vanguard, rewards were promised and a double ration of vodka was issued to the men. The campfires crackled even more merrily than the previous night, and everywhere soldiers were singing. Tonight Denisov was celebrating his promotion to major, and as the party drew on, a less than sober Nikolay Rostov proposed a toast to the Emperor. ‘Not just “to our Sovereign the Emperor”, as they say at official dinners,’ he said, ‘but to our Emperor, a good man, a charming man, a great man. Here’s to him, and certain defeat for the French!’
‘If we fought before,’ he said, ‘and wouldn’t give them an inch, as we did at Schöngrabern, what will happen now with him at our head? We’ll die, gladly die for him, every last one of us. What do you say, gentlemen? Perhaps I’m not saying it right – I’ve drunk quite a bit – but anyway that’s how I feel, and so do you. I give you Alexander the First! Hurrah!’
His cheer was echoed by a fervent roar from the officers. And old Captain Kirsten roared as wildly and sincerely as the twenty-year-old Rostov.
When the officers had drunk the toast and smashed their glasses, Kirsten poured out some more, and then went off in his shirt sleeves and riding breeches, stopping at the soldiers’ campfires and standing there with his long grey whiskers, glass in hand, waving his arm in a majestic stance, his chest gleaming white in the firelight through his open shirt.
‘Here you are, boys, I give you our Sovereign the Emperor and victory over the enemy! Hurrah!’ he roared in his old hussar’s baritone.
The hussars crowded around, responding warmly with a great roar of their own.
Late that night, when they had all gone off, Denisov clapped his young favourite, Rostov, on the shoulder with his little hand. ‘There we have it. No one to fall in love with in the field, so Wostov falls in love with the Tsar,’ he said.
‘Denisov, don’t joke about it,’ cried Rostov, ‘it’s such a noble and wonderful feeling, it’s . . .’
‘Quite wight, quite wight, my dear fellow, I agwee, I appwove . . .’
‘No, you just don’t understand!’ And Rostov got up and walked off to wander among the campfires, dreaming of how blissful it would be to die – not saving the Emperor’s life, which he wouldn’t dare to dream of – but just to die, there, before the Emperor’s eyes.
He had, of course, fallen in love with the Tsar and Russian military honour and the hope of future glory. And he was not alone in these sentiments during those memorable days in the run up to the battle of Austerlitz. At that moment nine-tenths of all the men in the Russian army were in love, albeit less ecstatically, with their Tsar and Russian military honour.
CHAPTER 11
