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- Author: graf Leo Tolstoy
Book online «War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (nice books to read .txt) 📖». Author graf Leo Tolstoy
Recent as that mental picture was, RostopchĂn already felt that it had cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he felt clearly that the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with time, but that the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell in his heart ever more cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He seemed still to hear the sound of his own words: “Cut him down! I command it....”
“Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said them.... I need not have said them,” he thought. “And then nothing would have happened.” He saw the frightened and then infuriated face of the dragoon who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid reproach that boy in the fur-lined coat had turned upon him. “But I did not do it for my own sake. I was bound to act that way.... The mob, the traitor... the public welfare,” thought he.
Troops were still crowding at the YaĂşza bridge. It was hot. KutĂşzov, dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his whip in the sand when a calèche dashed up noisily. A man in a general’s uniform with plumes in his hat went up to KutĂşzov and said something in French. It was Count RostopchĂn. He told KutĂşzov that he had come because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army remained.
“Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not told me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle; all this would not have happened,” he said.
KutĂşzov looked at RostopchĂn as if, not grasping what was said to him, he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment on the face of the man addressing him. RostopchĂn grew confused and became silent. KutĂşzov slightly shook his head and not taking his penetrating gaze from RostopchĂn’s face muttered softly:
“No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!”
Whether KutĂşzov was thinking of something entirely different when he spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be meaningless, at any rate RostopchĂn made no reply and hastily left him. And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count RostopchĂn, took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he began with shouts to drive on the carts that blocked the way.
Toward four o’clock in the afternoon Murat’s troops were entering Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Württemberg hussars and behind them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.
About the middle of the Arbát Street, near the Church of the Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the advanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found the citadel, le Kremlin.
Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow. They all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired commander dressed up in feathers and gold.
“Is that their Tsar himself? He’s not bad!” low voices could be heard saying.
An interpreter rode up to the group.
“Take off your cap... your caps!” These words went from one to another in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and asked if it was far to the Krémlin. The porter, listening in perplexity to the unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that the interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what was being said to him and slipped behind the others.
Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the Russian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and that there was probably an ambuscade there.
“Good!” said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his suite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the gates.
The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and advanced up the Arbát. When they reached the end of the VozdvĂzhenka Street they halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers superintended the placing of the guns and looked at the KrĂ©mlin through field glasses.
The bells in the Krémlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few infantrymen ran to the Kutáfyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had been put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as soon as an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was standing by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and the latter ran back again with his men.
The sound of three more shots came from the gate.
One shot struck a French soldier’s foot, and from behind the screens came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a word of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the VozdvĂzhenka, Mokhaváya, or Kutáfyev Street, nor the TrĂłitsa Gate (places familiar in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove sanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the gates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash off their linstocks, and an officer gave the word “Fire!” This was followed by two whistling sounds of canister shot, one after another. The shot rattled against the stone of the gate and upon the wooden beams and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over the Square.
A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the stone-built Krémlin had died away the French heard a strange sound above their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and circled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings. Together with that sound came a solitary human cry from the gateway and amid the smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a peasant’s coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the French. “Fire!” repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musket and of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously. The gate was again hidden by smoke.
Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry soldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three wounded and four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot of the wall, toward the Známenka.
“Clear that away!” said the officer, pointing to the beams and the corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw the corpses over the parapet.
Who these men were nobody knew. “Clear that away!” was all that was said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed later on that they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few eloquent lines to their memory: “These wretches had occupied the sacred citadel, having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal, and fired” (the
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