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THE NOTE submitted by Bennigsen, and the report sent in by the Cossacks of
the enemy's left flank being unguarded, were simply the last straws that showed
the inevitability of giving the signal for advance, and it was arranged to
advance to attack on the 5th of October.
On the morning of the 4th, Kutuzov signed the disposition of the forces. Toll
read it to Yermolov, proposing that he should superintend the further
instructions for carrying it out.
“Very good, very good, I haven't time just now,” said Yermolov, and he
hurried out of the cottage. The arrangement of the troops as drawn up by Toll
was an excellent one. The disposition had been written out, as at Austerlitz,
though not in German:
“The First Column marches here and there, the Second Column occupies this
place,” and so on.
On paper all these columns were in their proper place at a fixed time and
annihilated the enemy. Everything had been, as in all such cases, carefully
thought of, and as in all such cases not a single column did reach its right
place at the right time. When a sufficient number of copies of the disposition
were ready, an officer was summoned and sent off to give them to Yermolov, that
he might see that instructions were given in accordance with them. A young
officer of the horseguards, in waiting on Kutuzov, set off for Yermolov's
quarters, delighted at the importance of the commission with which he was
intrusted.
“Not at home,” Yermolov's servant told him. The officer of the horseguards
set off to the quarters of the general, with whom Yermolov was often to be
found.
“Not here, nor the general either,” he was told.
The officer mounted his horse again and rode off to another general's.
“No, not at home.”
“If only I don't get into trouble for the delay! How annoying!” thought the
officer.
He rode all over the camp. One man told him he had seen Yermolov riding away
in company with some other generals; another said he was sure to be at home
again by now. The officer was hunting him till six o'clock in the evening
without stopping for dinner. Yermolov was nowhere to be found, and no one knew
where he was. The officer took a hasty meal at a comrade's, and trotted back to
the advance guard to see Miloradovitch. Miloradovitch, too, was not at home, but
there he was told that he was at a ball at General Kikin's and that, most
likely, Yermolov was there too.
“But where is that?”
“At Etchkino, that way,” said an officer of the Cossacks, pointing out to him
a country house in the far distance.
“Out there! beyond our lines!”
“Two regiments of our fellows have been sent out to the outposts, and there
is a spree going on there now, fine doings! Two bands, three choruses of
singers.”
The officer rode out beyond our lines to Etchkino. While yet a long way off,
he heard the gay sounds of a soldier's dance tune sung in chorus.
“In the meadows … in the meadows,” he heard with a whistle and string music,
drowned from time to time in a roar of voices. The officer's spirits, too, rose
at these sounds, but at the same time he was in terror lest he should be held
responsible for having so long delayed giving the important message intrusted to
him. It was by now nearly nine o'clock. He dismounted and walked up to the
entrance of a big manor-house that had been left uninjured between the French
and the Russian lines. Footmen were bustling about with wines and edibles in the
vestibule and the buffet. Choruses were standing under the windows. The officer
was led up to a door, and he saw all at once all the most important generals in
the army, among them the big, impressive figure of Yermolov. All the generals
were standing in a semicircle, laughing loudly, their uniforms unbuttoned, and
their faces flushed and animated. In the middle of the room a handsome, short
general with a red face, was smartly and jauntily executing the steps of the
trepak.
“Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nikolay Ivanovitch! ha, ha! …”
The officer felt doubly guilty in breaking in at such a moment with important
business, and he would have waited; but one of the generals caught sight of him,
and hearing what he had come for, told Yermolov. The latter, with a frowning
face, came out to the officer, and hearing his story, took the papers from him
without a word.
“Do you suppose it was by chance that he was not at home?” said a comrade of
the officer's who was on the staff, speaking of Yermolov that evening. “That's
all stuff and nonsense; it was all done on purpose. To play a trick on
Konovnitsyn. You see, there'll be a pretty kettle of fish to-morrow!”
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