The generals seemed less than keen to listen to such a demanding account of the disposition of the troops. The tall, fair-haired General Buxhöwden leant against the wall and stared at a burning candle, apparently not listening and not even wanting people to think that he was. Directly opposite Weierother, fixing him with gleaming, wide-open eyes, sat the red-faced Miloradovich, whiskers combed up and shoulders high, striking a military attitude with his hands on his knees and his elbows bent outwards. He sat there in grim-faced silence, staring straight at Weierother and looking away only when the Austrian commander stopped speaking. Then Miloradovich looked round knowingly at the other generals. But the knowing glance didn’t make it clear whether he agreed or disagreed, was pleased or not pleased with the troop disposition. Right next to Weierother sat Count Langeron, with a subtle smile that never left his typically southern French face throughout the reading as he looked down at his delicate fingers and played with the corners of a golden snuff-box with a portrait on the lid, twirling it round and round. In the middle of a particularly turgid paragraph he stopped twirling the snuff box, looked up and with fulsome courtesy lingering at the corners of his thin-lipped mouth he broke in and was about to speak. But the Austrian general wouldn’t stop. He flapped his elbows as if to say, ‘Later, you can tell me what you think later, but now be so good as to look at the map and listen.’ Langeron rolled his eyes upwards with a bemused look and glanced round at Miloradovich as though seeking enlightenment, only to encounter a knowing look from Miloradovich, who actually knew nothing, so he looked down again sadly and went back to twirling his snuff-box.
‘A geography lesson,’ he mumbled, ostensibly under his breath but loud enough for all to hear.
Przebyszewski’s display of dignified courtesy was more genuine; he cupped one ear towards Weierother and had every appearance of close concentration. The diminutive Dokhturov sat across from Weierother, self-effacing and eager to please, and bent over the outspread map, conscientiously poring over the disposition of the troops and the unfamiliar territory. Several times he asked Weierother to repeat certain words and difficult names of villages that he hadn’t quite caught. Weierother obliged and Dokhturov wrote it all down.
The reading went on for more than an hour and when it was over Langeron stopped twirling his box and spoke out, without looking at Weierother or anyone in particular. His point was that such a disposition might be difficult because it assumed knowledge of the enemy’s situation, but such knowledge was doubtful with the enemy on the move. For all the substance in these objections it was clear that the main purpose in presenting them was to get at Weierother, who had been so patronizing, as if he was reading his plans to a lot of school-boys, and make him realize that he wasn’t dealing with fools but with men who could teach him a thing or two about military matters.
The moment Weierother’s voice stopped droning Kutuzov opened his eye, like a miller waking up at the slightest hiccup in the sleepy rumbling of his mill-wheels, listened to Langeron and then as if to say, ‘Huh, still the same old rubbish!’ snapped his eye tight shut and allowed his head to slump down even lower.
Langeron, weighing into Weierother with the sharpest sarcasm for his pompous attitude as a military leader and planner, pointed out that Napoleon might well go on the offensive instead of waiting to be attacked, and that would render all this disposition business utterly futile. Weierother countered every misgiving with a confident smile and a sneer, obviously well prepared for objections and for anything that might be said.
‘If he’d been able to attack us, he would have done it today,’ he said.
‘So you think he’s helpless, then?’ said Langeron.
‘I doubt he has more than forty thousand men,’ answered Weierother, smiling like a doctor approached by a junior nurse with her own diagnosis.
‘In which case he’s asking for trouble if he sits there waiting for us to attack,’ said Langeron with his subtly sarcastic smile, looking to Miloradovich for support. But Miloradovich’s mind was on anything but this row between generals.
‘God save us,’ he said, ‘tomorrow all will become clear on the battlefield.’
Weierother smiled again, and his smile implied that he of all people found it odd and amusing to encounter objections from Russian generals and to have to explain for their benefit something that he knew to be a certainty, and so did the royal Emperors.
