War And Peace

‘Come on, damn you, get going! Move, you devils, all thirty thousand of you!’ They could hear the escort swearing, and the French soldiers flailed the flat of their swords with a new viciousness to disperse the prisoners who had stopped to stare at the dead man.

CHAPTER 14

The prisoners and their guards were on their own as they marched through the back-streets of Khamovniki, with the soldiers’ carts and wagons straggling on behind, but as they emerged near the provision shops they found themselves caught up in a huge, lumbering train of artillery intermingled with private vehicles.

At the bridge they ground to a halt, waiting for those in front to get across. Once on the bridge the prisoners got a good view of the endless trains of baggage-wagons stretching out in front and coming on behind. To their right, where the Kaluga road loops round by the Neskuchny gardens, endless lines of troops and wagons disappeared into the distance. These were the troops of Beauharnais’s corps, who had been the first to leave. Behind them came Marshal Ney’s troops and transport, stretching back down the embankment and right across the Stone Bridge.

Davout’s troops, which included the prisoners, were crossing by the Crimean Ford, and some of them were already out on the Kaluga road. But the baggage-trains straggled back so far that Ney’s leading troops came streaming out of Bolshaya Ordynka before the last carts of Beauharnais’s corps had got through to the Kaluga road on their way out of Moscow.

Once over the Crimean Ford the prisoners found themselves moving only a few steps at a time before they ground to a halt, and then they would move on again, while masses of vehicles and men thickened on all sides. It took them more than an hour to cover the few hundred yards that separate the bridge from the Kaluga road and when they got to the square where the outlying streets converge on the Kaluga road, the prisoners were squashed in and kept standing for several hours at the crossroads. On all sides there was a constant roar that sounded like the sea, coming from rumbling wheels and marching men, with angry voices calling out and plenty of swearing. Pierre stood there crushed against the wall of a charred house, listening to this noise as it blurred in his imagination with the roll of drums.

Some of the Russian officers scrambled up on to the wall of the burnt house where Pierre was standing so they could get a better view.

‘Hey, the crowds! Huge crowds everywhere! . . . They’ve even got stuff stacked up on the cannons! Look at them furs!’ came the voices. ‘Look what they’ve been pinching, the swine . . . See what he’s got on the back of that cart? . . . a mounting from an icon that is, by God! . . . They must be Germans. Hey, there’s one of our peasants! . . . Vile scum! Look at him. He can hardly move! My God, those little carriages, they’ve even got hold of them! . . . He’s all right, perched up there on those trunks. Good God, they’re at it hammer and tongs. It’s a fight! . . . Go on, give him one in his face! We’ll be here all night at this rate. Look at that lot! . . . Must be Napoleon’s! Can you see those horses! Monograms and a crown! It’s like a house on wheels. Hey look, he’s dropped a bag, and he hasn’t seen it. Another fight over there . . . Woman here with a baby. Not bad looking either! Go on, love, they’ll let you through like that! Goes on for ever, this does! Hey, there’s some Russian wenches! They are, you know. Nice and cosy in them carriages!’

And what had happened at the church in Khamovniki happened again: a wave of eager curiosity swept all the prisoners forward towards the road, and because of his height Pierre was able to peer across over the heads and see what the prisoners were so keen to look at. Three carriages had come to halt, stuck between some ammunition carts, and they were carrying a number of women who were heavily made up and decked out in garish colours, sitting there all squashed together, yelling something in shrill voices.

From the moment Pierre had recognized the return of that mysterious force nothing had seemed strange or terrible any more, not even a corpse with its face smeared with soot for a joke, or these women who seemed to be in such a hurry to get somewhere, or the burnt ruins of Moscow. Pierre was now impervious to virtually anything he saw. It was as if his spirit, girding itself up for a hard struggle, was refusing to take in any impressions that might sap its strength.

The carriages of women drove on. Then the rest trundled off, carts, soldiers, baggage-wagons, soldiers, carriages, soldiers, caissons, more soldiers and a few women here and there.

Pierre could not see these people as individuals; he saw them all together and in movement.