War And Peace: Book 10 - CHAPTER XXXIV

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NAPOLEON'S GENERALS, Davoust, Ney, and Murat, who were close to that region

of fire, and sometimes even rode into it, several times led immense masses of

orderly troops into that region. But instead of what had invariably happened in

all their previous battles, instead of hearing that the enemy were in flight,

the disciplined masses of troops came back in undisciplined, panic-stricken

crowds. They formed them in good order again, but their number was steadily

dwindling. In the middle of the day Murat sent his adjutant to Napoleon with a

request for reinforcements.

Napoleon was sitting under the redoubt, drinking punch, when Murat's adjutant

galloped to him with the message that the Russians would be routed if his

majesty would let them have another division.

“Reinforcements?” said Napoleon, with stern astonishment, staring, as though

failing to comprehend his words, at the handsome, boyish adjutant, who wore his

black hair in floating curls, like Murat's own. “Reinforcements!” thought

Napoleon. “How can they want reinforcements when they have half the army

already, concentrated against one weak, unsupported flank of the

Russians?”

“Tell the King of Naples,” said Napoleon sternly, “that it is not midday, and

I don't yet see clearly over my chess-board. You can go.”

The handsome, boyish adjutant with the long curls heaved a deep sigh, and

still holding his hand to his hat, galloped back to the slaughter.

Napoleon got up, and summoning Caulaincourt and Berthier, began conversing

with them of matters not connected with the battle.

In the middle of the conversation, which began to interest Napoleon,

Berthier's eye was caught by a general, who was galloping on a steaming horse to

the redoubt, followed by his suite. It was Beliard. Dismounting from his horse,

he walked rapidly up to the Emperor, and, in a loud voice, began boldly

explaining the absolute necessity of reinforcements. He swore on his honour that

the Russians would be annihilated if the Emperor would let them have another

division.

Napoleon shrugged his shoulders, and continued walking up and down, without

answering. Beliard began loudly and eagerly talking with the generals of the

suite standing round him.

“You are very hasty, Beliard,” said Napoleon, going back again to him. “It is

easy to make a mistake in the heat of the fray. Go and look again and then come

to me.” Before Beliard was out of sight another messenger came galloping up from

another part of the battlefield.

“Well, what is it now?” said Napoleon, in the tone of a man irritated by

repeated interruptions.

“Sire, the prince …” began the adjutant.

“Asks for reinforcements?” said Napoleon, with a wrathful gesture. The

adjutant bent his head affirmatively and was proceeding to give his message, but

the Emperor turned and walked a couple of steps away, stopped, turned back, and

beckoned to Berthier. “We must send the reserves,” he said with a slight

gesticulation. “Whom shall we send there? what do you think?” he asked Berthier,

that “gosling I have made an eagle,” as he afterwards called him.

“Claparède's division, sire,” said Berthier, who knew all the divisions,

regiments, and battalions by heart.

Napoleon nodded his head in assent.

The adjutant galloped off to Claparède's division. And a few moments later

the Young Guards, stationed behind the redoubt, were moving out. Napoleon gazed

in that direction in silence.

“No,” he said suddenly to Berthier, “I can't send Claparède. Send Friant's

division.”

Though there was no advantage of any kind in sending Friant's division rather

than Claparède's, and there was obvious inconvenience and delay now in turning

back Claparède and despatching Friant, the order was carried out. Napoleon did

not see that in relation to his troops he played the part of the doctor, whose

action in hindering the course of nature with his nostrums he so truly gauged

and condemned.

Friant's division vanished like the rest into the smoke of the battlefield.

Adjutants still kept galloping up from every side, and all, as though in

collusion, said the same thing. All asked for reinforcements; all told of the

Russians standing firm and keeping up a hellish fire, under which the French

troops were melting away.

Napoleon sat on a camp-stool, plunged in thought. M. de Beausset, the reputed

lover of travel, had been fasting since early morning, and approaching the

Emperor, he ventured respectfully to suggest breakfast to his majesty.

“I hope that I can already congratulate your majesty on a victory,” he

said.

Napoleon shook his head. Supposing the negative to refer to the victory only

and not to the breakfast, M. de Beausset permitted himself with respectful

playfulness to observe that there was no reason in the world that could be

allowed to interfere with breakfast when breakfast was possible.

“Go to the…” Napoleon jerked out gloomily, and he turned his back on him. A

saintly smile of sympathy, regret, and ecstasy beamed on M. de Beausset's face

as he moved with his swinging step back to the other generals.

Napoleon was experiencing the bitter feeling of a lucky gambler, who, after

recklessly staking his money and always winning, suddenly finds, precisely when

he has carefully reckoned up all contingencies, that the more he considers his

course, the more certain he is of losing.

The soldiers were the same, the generals the same, there had been the same

preparations, the same disposition, the same proclamation, “court et

énergique.” He was himself the same,—he knew that; he knew that he was more

experienced and skilful indeed now than he had been of old. The enemy even was

the same as at Austerlitz and Friedland. But the irresistible wave of his hand

seemed robbed of its might by magic.

All the old man

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