War And Peace: Book 15 - CHAPTER VII

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IT was getting dusk on the 8th of November, the last day of the battle of

Krasnoe, when the soldiers reached their halting-place for the night. The whole

day had been still and frosty, with now and then a few light flakes of snow.

Towards evening the sky began to grow clearer. Through the snowflakes could be

seen a dark, purplish, starlit sky, and the frost was growing more

intense.

A regiment of musketeers, which had left Tarutino three thousand strong, but

had now dwindled to nine hundred, was among the first to reach the

halting-place, a village on the high road. The quartermasters, on meeting the

regiment, reported that all the cottages were full of sick and dead Frenchmen,

cavalrymen, and staff-officers. There was only one cottage left for the colonel

of the regiment.

The colonel went on to his cottage. The regiment passed through the village,

and stacked their guns up at the furthest cottages along the road.

Like a huge, many-legged monster, the regiment set to work preparing its food

and lodging for the night. One party of soldiers trudged off, knee-deep in the

snow, into the birch copse, on the right of the village, and the ring of axes

and cutlasses, the crash of breaking branches, and the sounds of merry voices

were immediately heard coming thence. Another group were busily at work all

round the regimental baggage-waggons, which were drawn up all together. Some fed

the horses, while others got out cooking-pots and biscuits. A third section

dispersed about the village, getting the cottages ready for the staff-officers,

carrying out the dead bodies of the French lying in the huts, and dragging away

boards, dry wood, and straw from the thatch roofs, to furnish fuel for their

fires and materials for the shelters they rigged up.

Behind the huts at the end of the village fifteen soldiers were trying with

merry shouts to pull down the high wattle wall of a barn from which they had

already removed the roof.

“Now then, a strong pull, all together!” shouted the voices; and in the dark

the huge, snow-sprinkled boards of the wall began to give. The lower stakes of

the wattle cracked more and more often, and at last the wattle wall heaved over,

together with the soldiers, who were hanging onto it. A loud shout and the roar

of coarse merriment followed.

“Work at it in twos! give us a lever here! that's it. Where are you coming

to?”

“Now, all together.… But wait, lads! … With a shout!” …

All were silent, and a low voice of velvety sweetness began singing a song.

At the end of the third verse, as the last note died away, twenty voices roared

out in chorus, “O-O-O-O-O! It's coming! Pull away! Heave away, lads! …” but in

spite of their united efforts the wall hardly moved, and in the silence that

followed the men could be heard panting for breath.

“Hi, you there, of the sixth company! You devils, you! Lend us a hand … We'll

do you a good turn one day!”

Twenty men of the sixth company, who were passing, joined them, and the

wattle wall, thirty-five feet in length, and seven feet in breadth, was dragged

along the village street, falling over, and cutting the shoulders of the panting

soldiers.

“Go on, do. … Heave away, you there.… What are you stopping for? Eh, there?”

…

The merry shouts of unseemly abuse never ceased.

“What are you about?” cried a peremptory voice, as a sergeant ran up to the

party. “There are gentry here; the general himself's in the hut here, and you

devils, you curs, you! I'll teach you!” shouted the sergeant, and sent a

swinging blow at the back of the first soldier he could come across. “Can't you

go quietly?”

The soldiers were quiet. The soldier who had received the blow began

grumbling, as he rubbed his bleeding face, which had been scratched by his being

knocked forward against the wattle.

“Ay, the devil; how he does hit a fellow! Why, he has set all my face

bleeding,” he said in a timid whisper, as the sergeant walked away. “And you

don't enjoy it, eh?” said a laughing voice; and the soldiers, moderating their

voices, moved on. As they got out of the village, they began talking as loudly

again, interspersing their talk with the same meaningless oaths.

In the hut by which the soldiers had passed there were assembled the chief

officers in command, and an eager conversation was going on over their tea about

that day's doings and the man

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1. Ebooks list page : 85
2. War And Peace: Book 4 - CHAPTER V
3. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER III
4. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER II
5. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER I
6. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER IV
7. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XIX
8. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XVI
9. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XV
10. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XIV
11. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER V
12. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER VI
13. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XIX
14. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XVI
15. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XIV
16. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XV