《War And Peace》　Book15 　CHAPTER VI
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

THE 5TH of November was the first day of the so-called battle of
Krasnoe.

Many had been the blunders and disputes among the generals, who had not
reached their proper places, many the contradictory orders carried to them by
adjutants, but towards evening it was clear that the enemy were everywhere in
flight, and that there would not and could not be a battle. In the evening
Kutuzov set out from Krasnoe towards Dobroe, to which place the headquarters had
that day been removed.

It had been a clear, frosty day. Kutuzov, mounted on his fat, white little
horse, was riding towards Dobroe, followed by an immense suite of generals,
whispering their dissatisfaction behind his back. Seven thousand French
prisoners had been taken that day, and all along the road they met parties of
them, crowding to warm themselves round the camp-fires. Not far from Dobroe they
heard a loud hum of talk from an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, bandaged
and wrapped up in rags of all sorts, standing in the road near a long row of
unharnessed French cannons. At the approach of the commander-in-chief the buzz
of talk died away, and all eyes were fixed upon Kutuzov, who moved slowly along
the road, wearing a white cap with a red band, and a wadded overcoat, that set
in a hunch on his round shoulders. One of the generals began explaining to
Kutuzov where the prisoners and the guns had been taken.

Kutuzov seemed absorbed in anxious thought, and did not hear the general's
words. He screwed up his eyes with an air of displeasure, and gazed intently at
the figures of the prisoners, who presented a particularly pitiable appearance.
The majority of the French soldiers were disfigured by frost-bitten cheeks and
noses, and almost all of them had red, swollen, and streaming eyes.

One group of Frenchmen was standing close by the road, and two soldiers, one
with his face covered with sores, were tearing at a piece of raw meat with their
hands. There was something bestial and horrible in the cursory glance they cast
on the approaching generals, and the frenzied expression with which the soldier
with the sore face, after a glance at Kutuzov, turned away and went on with what
he was doing.

Kutuzov looked a long while intently at these two soldiers; frowning more
than before, he half-closed his eyelids, and shook his head thoughtfully.
Further on, he noticed a Russian soldier, who was saying something friendly to a
French prisoner, laughing and clapping him on the shoulder. Kutuzov shook his
head again with the same expression.

"What do you say?" he asked the general, who was trying to draw the
commander-in-chief's attention to the French flags, that were set up in front of
the Preobrazhensky regiment.

"Ah, the flags!" said Kutuzov, rousing himself with evident difficulty from
the subject absorbing his thoughts. He looked about him absently. Thousands of
eyes were gazing at him from all sides, waiting for his words.

He came to a standstill before the Preobrazhensky regiment, sighed heavily
and closed his eyes. One of the suite beckoned to the soldiers holding the flags
to come up and set up the flagstaffs around the commander-in-chief. Kutuzov was
silent for a few seconds. Then with obvious reluctance, yielding to the
obligations of his position, he raised his head and began to speak. Crowds of
officers gathered round him. He scanned the circle of officers with an attentive
eye, recognising some of them.

"I thank you all!" he said, addressing the soldiers, and then again turning
to the officers. In the deep stillness that prevailed all round him, his slowly
articulated words were distinctly audible: "I thank you all for your hard and
faithful service. The victory is complete, and Russia will not forget you. Your
glory will be for ever!" He paused, looking about him.

"Lower; bow his head lower," he said to the soldier, who was holding the
French eagle, and had accidentally lowered it before the Preobrazhensky
standard.

"Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah, lads!" he said, his chin moving quickly as
he turned to the soldiers.

"Hurrah-rah-rah!" thousands of voices roared.

While the soldiers were shouting, Kutuzov, bending forward in his saddle,
bowed his head, and his eyes gleamed with a mild and, as it were, ironical
light.

"And now, brothers ..." he said, when the shouts had died away.

And all at once his face and expression changed: it was not the
commander-in-chief speaking now, but a simple, aged man, who plainly wanted to
say something most important now to his comrades.

"And now, brothers. I know it's hard for you, but there's no help for it!
Have a little patience; it won't last much longer. We will see our visitors off,
and then we will rest. The Tsar won't forget your services. It's hard for you,
but still you are at home; while they-you see what they have come to," he said,
pointing to the prisoners. "Worse than the lowest beggars. While they were
strong, we did not spare ourselves, but now we can even spare them. They too are
men. Eh, lads?"

He looked about him. And in the unflinching, respectfully wondering eyes
staring persistently at him, he read sympathy with his words. His face grew
brighter and brighter with the gentle smile of old age, that brought clusters of
wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and his eyes. He paused and dropped his
head, as though in doubt.

"But after all is said and done, who asked them to come here? It serves them
right, the b- b-" he said suddenly, lifting his head. And swinging his
riding-whip, he rode off at a gallop, accompanied for the first time during the
whole campaign by gleeful guffaws and roars of hurrah from the men as they moved
out of rank.

The words uttered by Kutuzov were hardly understood by the soldiers. No one
could have repeated the field-marshal's speech at first of such solemnity, and
towards the end of such homelysimplicity. But the meaning at the bottom of his
words, they understood very well, and the same feeling of solemn triumph in
their victory, together with pity for the enemy and the sense of the justice of
their cause-expressed, too, with precisely the same homely coarseness-lay at the
bottom of every soldier's heart, and found a vent in delighted shouts, that did
not cease for a long while. When one of the generals addressed the
commander-in-chief after this, asking whether he desired his carriage, Kutuzov
broke into a sudden sob in replying. He was evidently deeply moved.