Meanwhile, in accordance with the disposition —-die erste Colonne marschirt,’ and so on—the infantry regiments of the belated columns, under the command of Bennigsen and the direction of Toll, had started off in due course, and had, in the usual way, arrived somewhere, but not where they were intended to arrive. In the usual way too, the soldiers, who had set off gaily, began to halt; there were murmurs of dissatisfaction and a sense of muddle, and they were marched back to some point. Adjutants and generals galloped to and fro, shouting angrily, quarrelling, declaring they had come utterly wrong and were too late, upbraiding some one, and so on; and finally, all washed their hands of the business in despair, and marched on simply in order to get somewhere. ‘We must arrive somewhere sooner or later!’ And so they did, in fact, arrive somewhere, but not where they were wanted. And some did even reach their destination, but reached it so late that their doing so was of no use at all, and only resulted in their being fired at for nothing. Toll, who in this battle played the part of Weierother in the battle of Austerlitz, galloped with unilagging energy from one part of the field to another, and found everything at sixes and sevens everywhere. So, for instance, he found Bagovut’s corps in the wood, when it was broad daylight, though the corps ought to have been there long before, and to have gone to support Orlov-Denisov. Disappointed and excited at the failure, and supposing some one must be to blame for it, Toll galloped up to the general in command of the corps, and began sternly reprimanding him, declaring that he deserved to be shot. Bagovut, a sturdy old general of placid disposition, had been worried too by all the delays, the muddles, and the contradictory orders, and, to the amazement of everybody, he flew into a violent rage, quite out of keeping with his character, and said some very nasty things to Toll.
‘I am not going to be taught my duty by anybody, but I can face death with my men as well as any one,’ he said, and he marched forward with one division. The valiant Bagovut, not considering in his excitement whether his advance into action now with a single division was likely to be of use or not, marched his men straight forward into the enemy’s fire. Danger, shells, and bullets were just what he wanted in his fury. One of the first bullets killed him, the other bullets killed many of his men. And his division remained for some time under fire for no object whatever.
VII
Meanwhile another column was to have fallen upon the French in the centre, but of this column Kutuzov was in command. He knew very well that nothing but muddle would come of this battle, begun against his
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will, and, as far as it was in his power, he held his forces back. He did not move.
Kutuzov rode mutely about on his grey horse, making languid replies to the suggestions for an attack.
‘You can all talk about attacking, but you don’t see that we don’t know how to execute complicated manoeuvres,’ he said to Miloradovitch, who was begging to be allowed to advance.
‘We couldn’t take Murat alive in the morning, nor be in our places in time; now there’s nothing to be done! ’ he said to another.
When it was reported to Kutuzov that there were now two battalions of Poles in the rear of the French, where according to the earlier reports of the Cossacks there had been none, he took a sidelong glance behind him at Yermolov, to whom he had not spoken since the previous day.
‘Here they are begging to advance, proposing projects of all sorts, and as soon as you get to work, there’s nothing ready, and the enemy, forewarned, takes his measures.’
Yermolov half closed his eyelids, and faintly smiled, as he heard those words. He knew that the storm had blown over him, and that Kutuzov would not go beyond that hint.
‘That’s his little joke at my expense,’ said Yermolov softly, poking Raevsky, near him, with his knee.
Soon after that, Yermolov moved forward to Kutuzov and respectfully submitted:
‘The time has not passed, your highness; the enemy has not gone away. If you were to command an advance? Or else the guards won’t have a sight of smoke.’
Kutuzov said nothing, but when news was brought him that Murat’s troops were in retreat, he gave orders for an advance; but every hundred paces he halted for three-quarters of an hour.
The whole battle was confined to what had been done by the Cossacks of Orlov-Denisov; the rest of the troops simply lost a few hundreds of men for nothing.
In consequence of this battle, Kutuzov received a diamond decoration; Bennigsen, too, was rewarded with diamonds and a hundred thousand roubles; and the other generals, too, received agreeable recognition according to their rank, and more changes were made on the staff.
