With the naked eye Prince Andrey saw to the right, below them, a dense column of French soldiers coming up towards the Apsheron regiment, not over five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing.
‘Here it is, it is coming, the decisive moment! My moment has come,’ thought Prince Andrey, and slashing his horse, he rode up to Kutuzov.
‘We must stop the Apsheron regiment.,’ he shouted, ‘your most high excellency.’
But at that instant everything was lost in a cloud of smoke, there was a sound of firing close by, and a voice in naive terror cried not two paces from Prince Andrey: ‘Hey, mates, it’s all up! ’ And this voice was like a command. At that voice there was a general rush, crowds, growing larger every moment, ran back in confusion to the spot where five minutes before they had marched by the Emperors. It was not simply difficult to check this rushing crowd, it was impossible not to be carried back with the stream oneself. Bolkonsky tried only not to be left behind
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by it, and looked about him in bewilderment, unable to grasp what was taking place. Nesvitsky, with an exasperated, crimson face, utterly unlike himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he didn’t get away at once he’d be taken prisoner to a certainty. Kutuzov was standing in the same place: he was taking out his handkerchief, and did not answer. The blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrey forced his way up to him.
‘You are wounded?’ he asked, hardly able to control the quivering of his lower jaw.
‘The wound’s not here, but there, see!’ said Kutuzov, pressing the handkerchief to his wounded cheek, and pointing to the running soldiers.
‘Stop them!’ he shouted, and at the same time convinced that it was impossible to stop them, he lashed his horse and rode to the right. A fresh rush of flying crowds caught him up with it and carried him back.
The troops were running in such a dense multitude, that once getting into the midst of the crowd, it was a hard matter to get out of it. One was shouting: ‘Get on! what are you lagging for?’ Another was turning round to fire in the air; another striking the very horse on which Kutuzov was mounted. Getting out with an immense effort from the stream on the left, Kutuzov, with his suite diminished to a half, rode towards the sounds of cannon close by. Prince Andrey, trying not to be left behind by Kutuzov, saw, as he got out of the racing multitude, a Russian battery still firing in the smoke on the hillside and the French running towards it. A little higher up stood Russian infantry, neither moving forward to the support of the battery, nor back in the same direction as the runaways. A general on horseback detached himself from the infantry and rode towards Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov’s suite only four men were left. They were all pale and looking at one another dumbly.
. ‘Stop those wretches! ’ Kutuzov gasped to the officer in command of the regiment, pointing to the flying soldiers. But at the same instant, as though in revenge for the words, the bullets came whizzing over the regiment' and Kutuzov’s suite like a flock of birds. The French were attacking the battery, and catching sight of Kutuzov, they were shooting at him. With this volley the general clutched at his leg; several soldiers fell, and the second lieutenant standing with the flag let it drop out of his hands. The flag tottered and was caught on the guns of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers had begun firing without orders.
‘Ooogh!’ Kutuzov growled with an expression of despair, and he dooked round him. ‘Bolkonsky,’ he whispered in a voice shaking with the consciousness of his old age and helplessness. ‘Bolkonsky,’ he whispered, pointing to the routed battalion and the enemy, ‘what’s this?’
But before he had uttered the words, Prince Andrey, feeling the tears of shame and mortification rising in his throat, was jumping off his horse and running to the flag.
‘Lads, forward!’ he shrieked in a voice of childish shrillness. ‘Here, it is come!’ Prince Andrey thought, seizing the staff of the flag, and
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hearing with relief the whiz of bullets, unmistakably aimed at him.
Several soldiers dropped. ,
