BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812
6. CHAPTER VI
(continued)
"Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's aid!"
"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack
companies, trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if
poured out of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.
One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw
the Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just
waking up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and
horses.
Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind
and around them, they would have captured Murat and everything
there. That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to
make the Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners.
None of them listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and
thirty-eight guns were taken on the spot, besides standards and
(what seemed most important to the Cossacks) horses, saddles,
horsecloths, and the like. All this had to be dealt with, the
prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided- not without some
shouting and even a little themselves- and it was on this that the
Cossacks all busied themselves.
The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover
themselves: they formed into detachments and began firing.
Orlov-Denisov, still waiting for the other columns to arrive, advanced
no further.
Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the First
Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,
commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due
order and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their
appointed places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully,
began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and
finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about,
shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and
were late, gave vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and
went forward, simply to get somewhere. "We shall get somewhere or
other!" And they did indeed get somewhere, though not to their right
places; a few eventually even got to their right place, but too late
to be of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this
battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped
assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside down
everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut's corps in a wood when it
was already broad daylight, though the corps should long before have
joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing
that someone must be responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the
commander of the corps and began upbraiding him severely, saying
that he ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of
placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay, confusion,
and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise and quite
contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things to Toll.
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