Princess Marya tried to persuade her brother to stay on for one more day, telling him she knew how miserable her father would be if Andrey went away without patching things up. But Prince Andrey said it probably wouldn’t be all that long before he came back again from the army, and he would be sure to write to his father, and if he stayed on now their quarrel would only be more embittered.
‘Goodbye, Andrey! Remember – sorrows come from God, and men are never to blame.’ These were the last words he heard from his sister as they said their goodbyes.
‘That’s how it has to be!’ thought Prince Andrey as he drove down the avenue leaving Bald Hills behind. ‘Poor innocent creature, she has to stay there at the mercy of an old man who has outlived his wits. The old man can tell he’s in the wrong, but he can’t help it. My boy is growing up and enjoying life, but life will let him down, and he’ll let other people down just like everybody else. And I’m off to the army. But why? I don’t know, but here I am longing to catch up with a man I despise, to give him a chance to kill me and sneer at me!’ He had known circumstances like these before, but then they had been all intertwined, and now they were all unravelled, a series of disparate and senseless eventualities coming upon him one after another.
CHAPTER 9
Prince Andrey reached General Headquarters at the end of June. The first army, with the Tsar attached to it, was encamped at Drissa behind fortifications. The second army was in retreat, attempting to rejoin the first army, from which, according to reports, it had been cut off by huge numbers of French troops. Everyone was dissatisfied with the way things were going in the Russian army, but no one even dreamt that the Russian provinces were in danger of being invaded, or imagined the war might be carried beyond the frontiers of the Polish provinces in the western region.
Prince Andrey caught up with Barclay de Tolly, to whom he was being sent, on the bank of the Drissa. Since there was no large village or settlement anywhere near the camp, the vast numbers of generals and courtiers attached to the army were billeted over a wide area in the best houses of villages scattered along several miles on both sides of the river. Barclay de Tolly’s quarters were a couple of miles from the Tsar. His welcoming words were curt and frigid, but he did say in his German accent that he would mention Bolkonsky’s name to the Tsar so that he could be given a specific appointment, and meanwhile he was to stay on as a member of his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince Andrey had hoped to find here, had gone. He was in Petersburg, and Bolkonsky was pleased to hear it. Thoroughly absorbed in being at the centre of a huge, burgeoning war, he was glad to enjoy a brief respite from the vexation caused by the very thought of Kuragin. For four days no demands were made on him so he spent his time riding right around the entire fortified camp, gathering intelligence and talking to people in the know so that he could form a sound overall impression of things. But he couldn’t decide whether a camp like this was of any use or not. If he had learnt one lesson from his military experience it was that in matters of war the most carefully considered plans count for nothing (as he had seen at Austerlitz); everything depends on how you react to unexpected and unpredictable enemy action; everything depends on who takes charge, and how. In order to clarify this last question in his own mind Prince Andrey used his rank and his contacts to penetrate the character of army control and any people and parties who had a hand in it. His overall conclusion about how things stood ran as follows.
Before the Tsar had left Vilna the troops had been divided into three armies, one under the command of Barclay de Tolly, a second under Bagration, and a third under Tormasov. The Tsar was with the first army but not as commander-in-chief. In the official announcement there was no mention of his taking command; it was simply stated that the Tsar would remain with the army. Besides that, he was attended not by the staff of a commander-in-chief, but by men of the imperial headquarters.
