War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy [interesting novels to read .TXT] 📗

Kutúzov but the expression of the commander in chief’s one sound eye showed him to be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant’s face without recognizing him.

“Well, have you finished?” said he to Kozlóvski.

“One moment, your excellency.”

Bagratión, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm, impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in chief.

“I have the honor to present myself,” repeated Prince Andréy rather loudly, handing Kutúzov an envelope.

“Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!”

Kutúzov went out into the porch with Bagratión.

“Well, goodbye, Prince,” said he to Bagratión. “My blessing, and may Christ be with you in your great endeavor!”

His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his left hand he drew Bagratión toward him, and with his right, on which he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagratión kissed him on the neck instead.

“Christ be with you!” Kutúzov repeated and went toward his carriage. “Get in with me,” said he to Bolkónski.

“Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain with Prince Bagratión’s detachment.”

“Get in,” said Kutúzov, and noticing that Bolkónski still delayed, he added: “I need good officers myself, need them myself!”

They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.

“There is still much, much before us,” he said, as if with an old man’s penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkónski’s mind. “If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,” he added as if speaking to himself.

Prince Andréy glanced at Kutúzov’s face only a foot distant from him and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty eye socket. “Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men’s death,” thought Bolkónski.

“That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,” he said.

Kutúzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince Andréy. There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he questioned Prince Andréy about the details of his interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew.

XIV

On November 1 Kutúzov had received, through a spy, news that the army he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported that the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in immense force upon Kutúzov’s line of communication with the troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutúzov decided to remain at Krems, Napoleon’s army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty thousand, and he would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutúzov decided to abandon the road connecting him with the troops arriving from Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown parts of the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against superior forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of a junction with Buxhöwden. If Kutúzov decided to retreat along the road from Krems to Olmütz, to unite with the troops arriving from Russia, he risked being forestalled on that road by the French who had crossed the Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and transport, having to accept battle on the march against an enemy three times as strong, who would hem him in from two sides.

Kutúzov chose this latter course.

The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles off on the line of Kutúzov’s retreat. If he reached Znaim before the French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army to a disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to forestall the French with his whole army was impossible. The road for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim.

The night he received the news, Kutúzov sent Bagratión’s vanguard, four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the Krems-Znaim to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagratión was to make this march without resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and if he succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as long as possible. Kutúzov himself with all his transport took the road to Znaim.

Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills, with his hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as stragglers by the way, Bagratión came out on the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrünn a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching Hollabrünn from Vienna. Kutúzov with his transport had still to march for some days before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagratión with his four thousand hungry, exhausted men would have to detain for days the whole enemy army that came upon him at Hollabrünn, which was clearly impossible. But a freak of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the trick that had placed the Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without a fight led Murat to try to deceive Kutúzov in a similar way. Meeting Bagratión’s weak detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be Kutúzov’s whole army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the arrival of the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna, and with this object offered a three days’ truce on condition that both armies should remain in position