Chapter 11
This chapter picks up right where the last one left off. The army is at Wischau, but, news, the Emperor Alexander has summoned his physician, and news spreads amongst the army that he is ill, because he's so sensitive and upset about the sight of the killed and wounded in this war he's decided to have.
A French officer turns up a few days later, waving a flag of truce -
- and demanding to speak to the Russian emperor. He's given a name - Savary - so I assume he'll show up a few more times in the remaining 306 chapters of this book. Prince Dolgorukov escorts him back to the nearest French outpost, which sparks some gossip. You may recall - I didn't - that Dolgorukov is the one who Andrew asked to find a job for Darling Bory. The army suspects that Savary came to request that Emperor Alexander meet with Emperor Napoleon and that Dolgorukov was sent to negotiate with Napoleon on Alexander's behalf.
More grist is added to the rumour mill when Dolgorukov comes back and remains with Emperor Alexander for some time. This is the 17th, and the next big event, the battle of Austerlitz, happens on the 20th (I have forgotten the month and year). The Russian army marches forwards two days, and manages to make the nearest French outposts retreat with only a few shots fired. A big bustle of activity starts up around the Emperor and high command on the 19th, spreading to the others by the evening. Eighty-thousand troops march, in a column six miles long, throughout the night, and the result of the battle is revealed in a rather lovely paragraph which I am going to quote in its entirety.
"Just as in the clock the result of the complex action of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely the slow and regular movement of the hand marking the time, so the result of all the complex human activities of these 160,000 Russian and French - of all their passions, hopes, regrets, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear and enthusiasm - was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the battle of the three Emperors, as it was called; that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history".
Before the battle, Prince Andrew has been running around and trying to figure out all the gossip. He has a bad feeling that people are upset with him, about something he's not been informed of. He finally gets the chance to ask Dolgorukov what Napoleon is like. Dolgorukov is convinced that Napoleon is quaking in his boots, and also manages to slip in another remark about how young men are much better at war than old generals because of their hot blood and 'instincts'.
Prince Andrew wholeheartedly agrees and is rather keen to explain his own plan of attack while critiquing the one that's been agreed on. Dolgorukov gets bored and says Andrew can explain it later, at Kutuzov's council of war. Bilibin - who made fun of Hippolyte Kuragin in a previous chapter, I just checked - laughs at them and points out that Kutuzov is the only Russian in charge of a column in the Russian army. Making fun of Hyppolyte now seems a bit mean. He's the least messed-up Kuragin. Dolgorukov contradicts him by naming three others, which still doesn't seem like much from 80,000 soldiers. Later, Andrew asks Kutuzov what he thinks about the battle, and Kutuzov is pretty sure they'll lose. He said as much to Count Tolstoy - another real person, later gaining the name Ostermann-Tolstoy - and asked him to tell the emperor, but the count said he was busy with his dinner and Kutuzov should deal with his own military matters.
I assumed the name 'Tolstoy' was a coincidence, but the Count is actually a relative of the authors. I also learned that Leo Tolstoy's ancestor was made a count by Peter the Great, and that one of the author's descendants is the current advisor of culture to the president of Russia. This may perhaps explain why the book is taught in schools today (that was a joke, it's a good book). There was another, related, Count Tolstoy alive and a soldier in 1805, but he wasn't at the Battle of Austerlitz.
No comments:
Post a Comment