Since early morning, although the line was officially out of bounds, the commanding officers had not been able to keep the curious onlookers away. The soldiers who made up the line were now carrying on like showmen with some novelty to offer. They had stopped looking at the French and were wholly absorbed by the men who had come up to have a look – anything to distract them from boredom as they waited to be relieved. Prince Andrey stopped and took his measure of the French.
‘Hey, mate, look at them two,’ said one soldier to his pal, pointing to a Russian musketeer who had gone up to the very front with an officer and was repeatedly bellowing something across to a French grenadier. ‘ ’E can go on a bit, can’t ’e? Old froggy can’t get a word in. ’Ow about that, Sidorov?’
‘’Ang on, let’s listen. Dead right, ’e knows ’is stuff,’ replied Sidorov, who fancied himself as a bit of a French expert.
The soldier they were pointing to and laughing at was Dolokhov. Prince Andrey recognized him and listened to what he was saying. Dolokhov had come over with his captain from the left flank, where his regiment was stationed.
‘Go on, ask him again!’ the captain urged, straining forward in an attempt to catch every word, even though he didn’t understand them. ‘Please keep it going. What’s he trying to say?’
Dolokhov didn’t answer the captain, having been drawn into a fierce argument with the French grenadier. They were talking, inevitably, about the campaign. The Frenchman had got the Austrians and the Russians mixed up, and he was claiming that the Russians had surrendered and had been on the run all the way from Ulm. Dolokhov was telling him that the Russians had never surrendered – no, they had beaten the French.
‘Our orders are to drive you out of here, and that’s what we’re going to do,’ said Dolokhov.
‘Make sure you don’t get captured, you and your Cossacks,’ said the French grenadier to a roar of laughter from everyone watching and listening on the French side.
‘Remember Suvorov? He made you dance and we’ll have you dancing again!’ said Dolokhov.
‘What’s he on about?’ asked a Frenchman.
‘Ancient history,’ said another, guessing that it had something to do with previous wars. ‘Our Emperor will give you a dose of Suvara, same as he did with all the others . . .’
‘Bonaparte . . .’ Dolokhov began, only to be interrupted by the Frenchman.
‘Don’t you say Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! His name is sacred!’ came the angry shout.
‘Damn and sod your Emperor!’ And Dolokhov cursed like a soldier in his vilest Russian, before shouldering his gun and walking away.
‘Come on, Ivan Lukich,’ he said to his captain, ‘let’s go.’
‘Bit of good froggy French there,’ said the soldiers down the line. ‘Come on, Sidorov, your turn!’ Sidorov winked at them, turned to face the French and began to gabble strange words as fast as he could. ‘Kari mala tafa safi muter kaska!’ he rattled out, trying to embellish his message with the most expressive intonation he could manage.
The Russian soldiers burst into a great roar of happy, hearty laughter, and the French line took it up so spontaneously that you would have thought the only thing to do now was to unload the guns, blow up the ammunition and get back home as soon as possible. But the muskets remained loaded, the marksmen’s slits in buildings and earthworks stared out as ominously as ever, and the big guns still stood ready, ranged against each other.
CHAPTER 16
After doubling around the whole front line from right flank to left, Prince Andrey rode uphill to the battery which the staff officer had described as offering a good view of the whole field. Here he dismounted and stood by the farthest cannon in a line of four, prepared for firing. An artilleryman on sentry duty in front of the big guns looked ready to come to attention at the approach of an officer, but at a signal he resumed the steady, tedious pace of his patrol. Behind the cannon stood the front sections of their carriages, and behind them were the tethered horses and campfires of the artillerymen. To the left, not far from the farthest cannon, the sounds of officers’ voices in lively conversation emerged from a little, new wattle hut.
