The next day the Emperor stopped at
Wischau, and Villier, his physician, was repeatedly
summoned to see him. At headquarters and among
the troops near by the news spread that the Emperor
was unwell. He ate nothing and had slept badly
that night, those around him reported. The cause
of this indisposition was the strong impression made
on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and
wounded.
At daybreak on the seventeenth, a
French officer who had come with a flag of truce,
demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer
was Savary. The Emperor had only just fallen
asleep and so Savary had to wait. At midday he
was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode
off with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of
the French army.
It was rumored that Savary had been
sent to propose to Alexander a meeting with Napoleon.
To the joy and pride of the whole army, a personal
interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign,
Prince Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent
with Savary to negotiate with Napoleon if, contrary
to expectations, these negotiations were actuated
by a real desire for peace.
Toward evening Dolgorukov came back,
went straight to the Tsar, and remained alone with
him for a long time.
On the eighteenth and nineteenth of
November, the army advanced two days’ march
and the enemy’s outposts after a brief interchange
of shots retreated. In the highest army circles
from midday on the nineteenth, a great, excitedly
bustling activity began which lasted till the morning
of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz
was fought.
Till midday on the nineteenth, the
activity the eager talk, running to and
fro, and dispatching of adjutants was confined
to the Emperor’s headquarters. But on the
afternoon of that day, this activity reached Kutuzov’s
headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns.
By evening, the adjutants had spread it to all ends
and parts of the army, and in the night from the nineteenth
to the twentieth, the whole eighty thousand allied
troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices,
and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass
six miles long.
The concentrated activity which had
begun at the Emperor’s headquarters in the morning
and had started the whole movement that followed was
like the first movement of the main wheel of a large
tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another
was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to
revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to
work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the
hands to advance with regular motion as a result of
all that activity.
Just as in the mechanism of a clock,
so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse
once given leads to the final result; and just as
indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion
is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism
which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels
creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another
and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity
of their movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet
and motionless as though it were prepared to remain
so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the
lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel
begins to creak and joins in the common motion the
result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
Just as in a clock, the result of
the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys
is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands
which show the time, so the result of all the complicated
human activities of 160,000 Russians and French all
their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings,
outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm was
only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called
battle of the three Emperors that is to
say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human
history.
Prince Andrew was on duty that day
and in constant attendance on the commander in chief.
At six in the evening, Kutuzov went
to the Emperor’s headquarters and after staying
but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.
Bolkonski took the opportunity to
go in to get some details of the coming action from
Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and
dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters
they were dissatisfied with him, and also that at
the Emperor’s headquarters everyone adopted
toward him the tone of men who know something others
do not know: he therefore wished to speak to
Dolgorukov.
“Well, how d’you do, my
dear fellow?” said Dolgorukov, who was sitting
at tea with Bilibin. “The fête is for tomorrow.
How is your old fellow? Out of sorts?”
“I won’t say he is out
of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be heard.”
“But they heard him at the council
of war and will hear him when he talks sense, but
to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte
fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible.”
“Yes, you have seen him?”
said Prince Andrew. “Well, what is Bonaparte
like? How did he impress you?”
“Yes, I saw him, and am convinced
that he fears nothing so much as a general engagement,”
repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this general
conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview
with Napoleon. “If he weren’t afraid
of a battle why did he ask for that interview?
Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to
retreat is so contrary to his method of conducting
war? Believe me, he is afraid, afraid of a general
battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!”
“But tell me, what is he like,
eh?” said Prince Andrew again.
“He is a man in a gray overcoat,
very anxious that I should call him ‘Your Majesty,’
but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me!
That’s the sort of man he is, and nothing more,”
replied Dolgorukov, looking round at Bilibin with
a smile.
“Despite my great respect for
old Kutuzov,” he continued, “we should
be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about
and so give him a chance to escape, or to trick us,
now that we certainly have him in our hands!
No, we mustn’t forget Suvorov and his rule not
to put yourself in a position to be attacked, but
yourself to attack. Believe me in war the energy
of young men often shows the way better than all the
experience of old Cunctators.”
“But in what position are we
going to attack him? I have been at the outposts
today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces
are situated,” said Prince Andrew.
He wished to explain to Dolgorukov
a plan of attack he had himself formed.
“Oh, that is all the same,”
Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting up he spread
a map on the table. “All eventualities have
been foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn...”
And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but
indistinctly explained Weyrother’s plan of a
flanking movement.
Prince Andrew began to reply and to
state his own plan, which might have been as good
as Weyrother’s, but for the disadvantage that
Weyrother’s had already been approved.
As soon as Prince Andrew began to demonstrate the
defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan,
Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed
absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew’s
face.
“There will be a council of
war at Kutuzov’s tonight, though; you can say
all this there,” remarked Dolgorukov.
“I will do so,” said Prince
Andrew, moving away from the map.
“Whatever are you bothering
about, gentlemen?” said Bilibin, who, till then,
had listened with an amused smile to their conversation
and now was evidently ready with a joke. “Whether
tomorrow brings victory or defeat, the glory of our
Russian arms is secure. Except your Kutuzov,
there is not a single Russian in command of a column!
The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, lé
Comte de Langeron, lé Prince de Lichtenstein,
lé Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish,
and so on like all those Polish names.”
“Be quiet, backbiter!”
said Dolgorukov. “It is not true; there
are now two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov,
and there would be a third, Count Arakcheev, if his
nerves were not too weak.”
“However, I think General Kutuzov
has come out,” said Prince Andrew. “I
wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!” he
added and went out after shaking hands with Dolgorukov
and Bilibin.
On the way home, Prince Andrew could
not refrain from asking Kutuzov, who was sitting silently
beside him, what he thought of tomorrow’s battle.
Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant
and, after a pause, replied: “I think the
battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy and
asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think
he replied? ’But, my dear general, I am
engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military
matters yourself!’ Yes... That was the
answer I got!”