Book Ten: 1812 - Chapter XXXIV

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Napoleon's generals- Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near thatregion of fire and sometimes even entered it- repeatedly led into ithuge masses of well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had alwayshappened in their former battles, instead of the news they expected ofthe enemy's flight, these orderly masses returned thence asdisorganized and terrified mobs. The generals re-formed them, buttheir numbers constantly decreased. In the middle of the day Muratsent his adjutant to Napoleon to demand reinforcements.

　　Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, whenMurat's adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians wouldbe routed if His Majesty would let him have another division.

　　"Reinforcements?" said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, lookingat the adjutant- a handsome lad with long black curls arranged likeMurat's own- as though he did not understand his words.

　　"Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon to himself. "How can they needreinforcements when they already have half the army directed against aweak, unentrenched Russian wing?"

　　"Tell the King of Naples," said he sternly, "that it is not noonyet, and I don't yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!..."

　　The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply withoutremoving his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men werebeing slaughtered.

　　Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier begantalking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.

　　In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to interestNapoleon, Berthier's eyes turned to look at a general with a suite,who was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering horse. It wasBelliard. Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor with rapidstrides and in a loud voice began boldly demonstrating the necessityof sending reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russianswere lost if the Emperor would give another division.

　　Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and downwithout replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to thegenerals of the suite around him.

　　"You are very fiery, Belliard," said Napoleon, when he again came upto the general. "In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake.Go and have another look and then come back to me."

　　Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part ofthe battlefield galloped up.

　　"Now then, what do you want?" asked Napoleon in the tone of a manirritated at being continually disturbed.

　　"Sire, the prince..." began the adjutant.

　　"Asks for reinforcements?" said Napoleon with an angry gesture.

　　The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, butthe Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped, cameback, and called Berthier.

　　"We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms slightly apart."Who do you think should be sent there?" he asked of Berthier (whom hesubsequently termed "that gosling I have made an eagle").

　　"Send Claparede's division, sire," replied Berthier, who knew allthe divisions regiments, and battalions by heart.

　　Napoleon nodded assent.

　　The adjutant galloped to Claparede's division and a few minuteslater the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward.Napoleon gazed silently in that direction.

　　"No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can't send Claparede. SendFriant's division."

　　Though there was no advantage in sending Friant's division insteadof Claparede's, and even in obvious inconvenience and delay instopping Claparede and sending Friant now, the order was carried outexactly. Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he wasplaying the part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines- a role heso justly understood and condemned.

　　Friant's division disappeared as the others had done into thesmoke of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arriveat a gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They allasked for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holdingtheir positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which theFrench army was melting away.

　　Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.

　　M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted sincemorning, came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggestlunch to His Majesty.

　　"I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he.

　　Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming thenegation to refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M. deBeausset ventured with respectful jocularity to remark that there isno reason for not having lunch when one can get it.

　　"Go away..." exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely, and turnedaside.

　　A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed on M.de Beausset's face and he glided away to the other generals.

　　Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of anever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about andalways winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chancesof the game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surelyhe loses.

　　His troops were the same, his generals the same, the samepreparations had been made, the same dispositions, and the sameproclamation courte et energique, he himself was still the same: heknew that and knew that he was now even more experienced andskillful than before. Even the enemy was the same as at Austerlitz andFriedland- yet the terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturallybecome impotent.

　　All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned withsuccess: the concentration of batteries on one point, an attack byreserves to break the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by "the menof iron," all these methods had already been employed, yet not onlywas there no victory, but from all sides came the same news ofgenerals killed and wounded, of reinforcements needed, of theimpossibility of driving back the Russians, and of disorganizationamong his own troops.

　　Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a fewphrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up withcongratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, thecorps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannonand stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry togather in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola,Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange washappening to his troops.

　　Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that thiswas not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in hisformer battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all themen about him experienced in the art of war. All their faces lookeddejected, and they all shunned one another's eyes- only a deBeausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was happening.

　　But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaningof a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after allefforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle andthat the least accident might now- with the fight balanced on such astrained center- destroy him and his army.

　　When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaignin which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, orcannon, or army corps had been captured in two months, when helooked at the concealed depression on the faces around him and heardreports of the Russians still holding their ground- a terrible feelinglike a nightmare took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidentsthat might destroy him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fallon his left wing, might break through his center, he himself mightbe killed by a stray cannon ball. All this was possible. In formerbattles he had only considered the possibilities of success, but nowinnumerable unlucky chances presented themselves, and he expected themall. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian iscoming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian aterrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feelsthat his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror ofunavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness.

　　The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of theFrench army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently on acampstool below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on his knees.Berthier approached and suggested that they should ride along the lineto ascertain the position of affairs.

　　"What? What do you say?" asked Napoleon. "Yes, tell them to bring memy horse."

　　He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.

　　Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole spacethrough which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools ofblood, singly or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generalshad ever before seen such horrors or so many slain in such a smallarea. The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied theear and gave a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music doesto tableaux vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at Semenovsk,and through the smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a colorunfamiliar to him. They were Russians.

　　The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk village and itsknoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line and sentforth clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it was acontinuous slaughter which could be of no avail either to the Frenchor the Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into thereverie from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop whatwas going on before him and around him and was supposed to be directedby him and to depend on him, and from its lack of success this affair,for the first time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.

　　One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer tolead the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing nearNapoleon, exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at thisgeneral's senseless offer.

　　Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time.

　　"At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have my Guarddestroyed!" he said, and turning his horse rode back to Shevardino.