Book Fourteen: 1812 - Chapter XII

by Leo Tolstoy

　　During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had beenissued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisonersamong whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that partywas no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which ithad left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveledthe first stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the otherhalf had gone on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who hadmarched in front of the prisoners was left; they had alldisappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of themduring the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot's enormousbaggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came acavalry baggage train.

　　From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved inthree columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorderthat Pierre had noticed at their first halting place after leavingMoscow had now reached the utmost limit.

　　The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by deadhorses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regimentscontinually changed about, now joining the moving column, now againlagging behind it.

　　Several times during the march false alarms had been given and thesoldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and runheadlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled andabused each other for their causeless panic.

　　These three groups traveling together- the cavalry stores, theconvoy of prisoners, and Junot's baggage train- still constituted aseparate and united whole, though each of the groups was rapidlymelting away.

　　Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundredand twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had beencaptured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also had been capturedor abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglersfrom Davout's corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learnedthat a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than tothe prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, hadbeen shot by the marshal's own order because a silver spoonbelonging to the marshal had been found in his possession.

　　The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the threehundred and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than ahundred now remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escortthan even the cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage. They understood thatthe saddles and Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that coldand hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally cold andhungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on the road (in which casethe order was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible butrevolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous conditionthey themselves were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for theprisoners and so rendering their own plight still worse, treatedthem with particular moroseness and severity.

　　At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking theprisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores,several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away,but were recaptured by the French and shot.

　　The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officerprisoners should be kept separate from the rest, had long since beenabandoned. All who could walk went together, and after the third stagePierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog thathad chosen Karataev for its master.

　　On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell ill withthe fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as hegrew gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not knowwhy, but since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him aneffort to go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaningwith which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and whenhe smelled the odor emanating from him which was now stronger thanbefore, Pierre moved farther away and did not think about him.

　　While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with hisintellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man iscreated for happiness, that happiness is within him, in thesatisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arisesnot from privation but from superfluity. And now during these lastthree weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatorytruth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned thatas there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirelyfree, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lackfreedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits andthat those limits are very near together; that the person in a bedof roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now,sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled whilethe other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoeshe had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feetthat were covered with sores- his footgear having long since fallen topieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife- of his ownfree will as it had seemed to him- he had been no more free than nowwhen they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himselfsubsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time hescarcely felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, andscab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing,the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder they used instead of salt waseven pleasant; there was no great cold, it was always warm walkingin the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice thatdevoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at first hard tobear was his feet.

　　After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by thecampfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but wheneverybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were moreterrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,but thought of other things.

　　Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and thesaving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing toanother, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allowssuperfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certainlimit.

　　He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners wholagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He didnot think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently wouldsoon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think abouthimself. The harder his position became and the more terrible thefuture, the more independent of that position in which he foundhimself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, andimaginings that came to him.