Despite the reported capture of the flèches Napoleon could see that things were definitely not working out as they had done in previous battles. He could see that his own feelings were shared by all the men around him, battle-hardened as they were. Faces were gloomy; eyes were shifty. De Bausset was the only one with no grip on what was happening. With his long experience of war, of course, Napoleon knew full well what it meant for the attacking side not to smell victory after eight hours slogging it out on the field. He knew this was virtually a defeat, and the slightest mischance might now, with the outcome of the battle on a knife-edge, finish him off and his troops with him.
When he let his mind run over the whole of this strange Russian campaign, which hadn’t seen a single victory, or a single flag, cannon or corps taken in two solid months, when he looked at the disguised misery on the faces around him, and listened to reports that the Russians were still standing their ground – a kind of nightmare feeling came over him, and his head was filled with all the nasty eventualities that might bring him down. The Russians might attack his left wing, or break through in the centre; he could be killed by a stray cannonball. Anything was possible. In previous battles he had only ever dwelt on successful eventualities; now a vast number of nasty eventualities loomed before him, and he expected them all to happen. Yes, it was just like a nightmare in which a man dreams he is being attacked and in his sleep he lashes out with one arm and hits his assailant with the kind of force he knows is bound to flatten him, only to feel his arm go dead and flop down as limp as a rag, leaving him helpless before the inexorable, horrible hand of death.
The news that the Russians were indeed attacking the left flank of the French army gave Napoleon a taste of that very horror. He sat there on his camp-stool at the bottom of the mound, elbows on knees, with his head in his hands, saying nothing. Berthier came over and proposed a ride down the line to take stock of the position.
‘What’s that? What did you say?’ said Napoleon. ‘Yes, tell them to bring my horse.’ He mounted the horse and rode off in the direction of Semyonovsk.
In the slowly thinning powder-smoke which hung over all the terrain that Napoleon was now riding through, horses and men, singly and in heaps, were lying around in pools of blood. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals had ever seen horror on this scale, so many men killed in such a small space. The roar of the big guns that had not stopped for ten hours was so excruciating it gave a new meaning to the whole spectacle (like the music that accompanies
The Russians stood in serried ranks just beyond Semyonovsk village and the redoubt, and all down their lines their guns thundered and smoked without end. It was not a battle now; it was just a long-drawn-out massacre, of no conceivable benefit to either side. Napoleon reined in his horse, and sank back into the pensive mood that Berthier had just shaken him out of. He had no power to stop this thing that was being enacted before his eyes and on every side, even though he was supposed to be in charge of it and it was supposed to depend on him, and now for the first time, following the experience of failure, it all seemed so futile and horrible.
A general rode up and took the liberty of making a suggestion: Napoleon should send in the old guard. Ney and Berthier were standing close by, and they looked at each other with withering smiles to hear such a reckless suggestion coming from a general.
Napoleon looked down, and sat there for some time without saying a word.
‘Here we are eight hundred leagues from France, and I’m not having my guard torn to pieces,’ he said at last, wheeling his horse round, and he set off back to Shevardino.
CHAPTER 35
Kutuzov sat on the same rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him that morning, with his grey head slumped on his chest and his big heavy body sprawling. He was not giving any orders; all he did was say yes or no to suggestions.
