《War And Peace》　Book10 　CHAPTER XXI
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

PIERRE got out of his carriage, and passing by the toiling peasants,
clambered up the knoll from which the doctor had told him he could get a view of
the field of battle.

It was eleven o'clock in the morning. The sun was a little on the left, and
behind Pierre, and in the pure, clear air, the huge panorama that stretched in
an amphitheatre before him from the rising ground lay bathed in brilliant
sunshine.

The Smolensk high-road ran winding through that amphitheatre, intersecting it
towards the left at the top, and passing through a village with a white church,
which lay some five hundred paces before and below the knoll. This was Borodino.
The road passed below the village, crossed a bridge, and ran winding uphill and
downhill, mounting up and up to the hamlet of Valuev, visible six versts away,
where Napoleon now was. Behind Valuev the road disappeared into a copse turning
yellow on the horizon. In this copse of birch- and pine-trees, on the right of
the road, could be seen far away the shining cross and belfry of the Kolotsky
monastery. Here and there in the blue distance, to right and to left of the
copse and the road, could be seen smoking camp-fires and indistinct masses of
our troops and the enemy's. On the right, along the course of the rivers
Kolotcha and Moskva, the country was broken and hilly. Through the gaps between
the hills could be seen the villages of Bezzubovo and Zaharino. On the left the
ground was more level; there were fields of corn and a smoking village that had
been set on fire-Semyonovskoye.

Everything Pierre saw was so indefinite, that in no part of the scene before
him could he find anything fully corresponding to his preconceptions. There was
nowhere a field of battle such as he had expected to see, nothing but fields,
dells, troops, woods, camp-fires, villages, mounds, and streams. With all
Pierre's efforts, he could not discover in the living landscape a military
position. He could not even distinguish between our troops and the
enemy's.

"I must ask some one who understands it," he thought, and he addressed the
officer, who was looking with curiosity at his huge, unmilitary figure.

"Allow me to ask," Pierre said, "what village is that before us?"

"Burdino, isn't it called?" said the officer, turning inquiringly to his
comrade.

"Borodino," the other corrected.

The officer, obviously pleased at an opportunity for conversation, went
nearer to Pierre.

"Are these our men there?" asked Pierre.

"Yes, and away further, those are the French," said the officer. "There they
are, there you can see them."

"Where? where?" asked Pierre.

"One can see them with the naked eye. Look!" The officer pointed to smoke
rising on the left beyond the river, and the same stern and grave expression
came into his face that Pierre had noticed in many of the faces he had
met.

"Ah, that's the French! And there? ..." Pierre pointed to a knoll on the left
about which troops could be seen.

"Those are our men."

"Oh, indeed! And there? ..." Pierre pointed to another mound in the distance,
with a big tree on it, near a village that could be seen in a gap between the
hills, where there was a dark patch and the smoke of campfires.

"Ah! that's he again!" said the officer. (It was the redoubt of
Shevardino.) "Yesterday that was ours, but now it's his."

"So what is our position, then?"

"Our position?" said the officer, with a smile of satisfaction. "I can
describe it very clearly, because I have had to do with the making of almost all
our fortifications. There, our centre, do you see, is here at Borodino." He
pointed to the village with the white church, in front of them. "There's the
ford across the Kolotcha. Here, do you see, where the rows of mown hay are still
lying in the low ground, there's the bridge. That's our centre. Our right flank
is away yonder" (he pointed to the right, far away to the hollows among the
hills), "there is the river Moskva, and there we have thrown up three very
strong redoubts. The left flank ..." there the officer paused. "It's hard to
explain, you see. ... Yesterday our left flank was over there, at Shevardino, do
you see, where the oak is. But now we have drawn back our left wing, now it's
over there,-you see the village and the smoke-that's Semyonovskoye, and
here-look," he pointed to Raevsky's redoubt. "Only the battle won't be there,
most likely. He has moved his troops here, but that's a blind; he
will probably try to get round on the right. Well, but however it may be,
there'll be a lot of men missing at roll-call to-morrow!" said the
officer.

The old sergeant, who came up during the officer's speech, had waited in
silence for his superior officer to finish speaking. But at this point he
interrupted him in undisguised annoyance at his last words.

"We have to send for gabions," he said severely.

The officer seemed abashed, as though he were fully aware that though he
might think how many men would be missing next day, he ought not to talk about
it.

"Well, send the third company again," he said hurriedly. "And who are you,
not one of the doctors?"

"No, I am nothing in particular," answered Pierre. And he went downhill
again, passing the peasant militiamen.

"Ah, the damned beasts!" said the officer, pinching his nose, and hurrying by
them with Pierre.

"Here they come! ... They are bringing her, they are coming. ... Here she is ...
they'll be here in a minute," cried voices suddenly, and officers, soldiers, and
peasants ran forward along the road.

A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodino. In front of it a
regiment of infantry marched smartly along the dusty road, with their shakoes
off and their muskets lowered. Behind the infantry came the sounds of church
singing.

Soldiers and peasants came running down bareheaded to meet it, overtaking
Pierre.

"They are bringing the Holy Mother! Our defender ... the Holy Mother of
Iversky! ..."

"The Holy Mother of Smolensk ..." another corrected.

The militiamen who had been in the village and those who had been working at
the battery, flinging down their spades, ran to meet the procession. The
battalion marching along the dusty road was followed by priests in church robes,
a little old man in a hood with attendant deacons and choristers. Behind them
came soldiers and officers bearing a huge holy picture, with tarnished face in a
setting of silver. This was the holy ikon that had been brought away from
Smolensk, and had accompanied the army ever since. Behind, before, and all
around it, walked or ran crowds of soldiers with bared heads, bowing to the
earth.

On the top of the hill the procession stopped; the men bearing the holy
picture on a linen cloth were relieved by others; the deacons relighted their
censers, and the service began. The burning rays of the sun beat vertically down
on the crowds; a faint, fresh breeze played with the hair of their bare heads,
and fluttered the ribbons with which the holy picture was decked; the singing
sounded subdued under the open sky. An immense crowd-officers, soldiers, and
militiamen-stood round, all with bare heads. In a space apart, behind the
priests and deacons, stood the persons of higher rank. A bald general, with the
order of St. George on his neck, stood directly behind the priest. He was
unmistakably a German, for he stood, not crossing himself, patiently waiting for
the end of the service, to which he thought it right to listen, probably as a
means of arousing the patriotism of the Russian peasantry; another general stood
in a martial pose and swung his arm before his chest, looking about him as he
made the sign of the cross. Pierre, standing among the peasants, recognised in
this group of higher rank several persons he knew. But he did not look at them;
his whole attention was engrossed by the serious expression of the faces in the
crowd, soldiers and peasants alike, all gazing with the same eagerness at the
holy picture. As soon as the weary choristers (it was their twentieth service)
began languidly singing their habitual chant, "O Mother of God, save Thy
servants from calamity," and priest and deacon chimed in, "For to Thee we all
fly as our invincible Bulwark and Protectress," there was a gleam on every face
of that sense of the solemnity of the coming moment, which he had seen on the
hill at Mozhaisk and by glimpses in so many of the faces meeting him that
morning. And heads were bowed lower, while locks of hair fluttered in the
breeze, and there was the sound of sighing and beating the breast as the
soldiers crossed themselves.

The crowd suddenly parted and pressed upon Pierre. Some one, probably a very
great person, judging by the promptitude with which they made way for him, was
approaching the holy picture.

It was Kutuzov, who had been making the round of the position. On his way
back to Tatarinovo, he joined the service. Pierre at once recognised him from
his peculiar figure, which marked him out at once.

In a long military coat, with his enormously stout figure and bent back, with
his white head uncovered, and his blind white eye, conspicuous in his puffy
face, Kutuzov walked with his waddling swaying gait into the ring and stood
behind the priest. He crossed himself with an habitual gesture, bent down, with
his hand touching the earth, and, sighing heavily, bowed his grey head. Kutuzov
was followed by Bennigsen and his suite. In spite of the presence of the
commander-in-chief, which drew the attention of all persons of higher rank, the
militiamen and soldiers went on praying without looking at him.

When the service was over, Kutuzov went up to the holy picture, dropped
heavily down on his knees, bowing to the earth, and for a long time he attempted
to get up, and was unable from his weakness and heavy weight. His grey head
twitched with the strain. At last he did get up, and putting out his lips in a
naïve, childlike way kissed the holy picture, and again bowed down, with one
hand touching the ground. The other generals followed his example; then the
officers, and after them the soldiers and militiamen ran up with excited faces,
pushing each other, and shoving breathlessly forward.