‘I’m waiting to see, your Majesty,’ repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrey noticed that Kutuzov’s upper lip had a strange twitch as he announced that he was waiting.) ‘Not all the columns are in place yet, your Majesty.’ The Tsar heard what he said but didn’t seem to like the answer. He shrugged his hunched shoulders and glanced across at Novosiltsev, who was not far away, with a look that seemed to censure Kutuzov.
‘You do realize this is not the Tsaritsyn Parade Ground, Mikhail Larionovich? We can begin without the last regiment,’ said the Tsar, glancing round again at the Emperor Francis as though inviting him to listen to what he was saying even if he didn’t want to get involved. But Emperor Francis, whose eyes were elsewhere, was not listening.
‘That’s why I’m holding back, sire,’ said Kutuzov, raising his voice as if speaking to someone who might not be able to hear properly, and again his face was twitching. ‘I’m holding back, sire, precisely because we are not on parade and this is not the Tsaritsyn Ground,’ he spelled out most distinctly.
All the members of the entourage exchanged rapid glances, every face dark with accusation and reproach. ‘It doesn’t matter how old he is, he ought not to speak like that, ever,’ the faces seemed to say.
The Tsar continued to look steadily at Kutuzov, wondering whether he had anything more to say. But all Kutuzov did was to bow his head respectfully, as if he was waiting too. The silence lasted almost a minute.
‘However, if that’s an order, your Majesty . . .’ said Kutuzov, looking up again and resuming his earlier way of speaking like an obtuse, unquestioning and thoroughly obedient general. He moved his horse away, beckoned to Miloradovich, the column commander, and ordered him to advance.
The ranks stirred into movement, and two battalions of the Novgorod regiment and a battalion of the Apsheron marched past the Tsar.
While the Apsheron battalion was going by, the florid-faced Miloradovich, without his greatcoat, his uniform covered with medals, and a well-plumed hat turned-up and tilted, rode forward, high-stepping his horse while saluting in the grand manner, and then reined in before the Tsar.
‘God be with you, General,’ said the Tsar.
‘I give you my word, sire, whatever it is in our power to do, we shall do it,’ he answered brightly in bad French, much to the amusement of the gentlemen in the Tsar’s entourage.
Miloradovich wheeled his horse round sharply and took up a position just behind the Tsar. The Apsheron infantrymen, much inspired by the presence of the Sovereign, stepped out in grand style as they marched past the Emperors and their suites.
‘Listen, men!’ shouted Miloradovich in his loud, cheery, confident voice, so worked up by the gunfire, the smell of battle and the sight of Apsheron comrades known to him since Suvorov’s day that he seemed to have forgotten the Tsar was there. ‘Go on men! You’ve taken villages before today!’ he roared.
‘We’re ready!’ the soldiers roared back. The Tsar’s horse was startled by the sudden shout. This horse, who had carried the Tsar at reviews in Russia, now bore her rider on the field of Austerlitz, putting up with thoughtless spurring from the royal left boot, pricking up her ears at real gunfire as she used to do on the Field of Mars parade ground, and making nothing of it all – the gunshots, the proximity of Emperor Francis’s black stallion, and all that was being said or experienced by the man on her back, or what was passing through his mind.
The Tsar turned to one member of his entourage, pointed with a smile to the gallant boys of the Apsheron regiment and said something to him.
CHAPTER 16
Kutuzov, accompanied by his adjutants, rode on at walking pace following the carabineers.
After covering half a mile or so at the rear of the column, he stopped at a solitary, deserted house (probably once an inn), by a fork in the road. Two ways led downhill and the troops were marching down both of them.
The fog was beginning to thin, and not much more than a mile away enemy troops could be seen, albeit not too clearly, high on the opposite hillside. Down below on the left the gunfire was getting louder. Kutuzov stood talking to an Austrian general. Watching them all the time from a few feet away, Prince Andrey turned to an adjutant, anxious to borrow his telescope.
‘Look! Look!’ this adjutant said, looking not at the troops a long way away, but just down the hill. ‘It’s the French!’
The two generals and the adjutant began fighting over the telescope, grabbing it one after the other. Their faces had fallen, all of them horror-stricken. The French ought to have been more than a mile away, but suddenly here they were right in front of us.
‘Is that the enemy? . . . Can’t be . . . It is, you know . . . Dead certain . . . What’s happened?’ voices could be heard saying.
