War and Peace

part in this unhappy war into which we have been drawn, 
God knows how or why. Not only where you areat the heart 
of affairs and of the worldis the talk all of war, even here 
amid fieldwork and the calm of naturewhich townsfolk con-
sider characteristic of the countryrumors of war are heard 
and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches 
and countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; 
and the day before yesterday during my daily walk through 
the village I witnessed a heartrending scene.... It was a con-
voy of conscripts enrolled from our people and starting to 
join the army. You should have seen the state of the moth-
ers, wives, and children of the men who were going and 
should have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind 
has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached 
love and forgiveness of injuriesand that men attribute the 
greatest merit to skill in killing one another.
Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and 
His most Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-pow-

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erful care!
MARY
‘Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already 
dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother,’ said 
the smiling Mademoiselle Bourienne rapidly, in her pleas-
ant mellow tones and with guttural r’s. She brought into 
Princess Mary’s strenuous, mournful, and gloomy world a 
quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and self-
satisfied.
‘Princess, I must warn you,’ she added, lowering her 
voice and evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and 
speaking with exaggerated grasseyement, ‘the prince has 
been scolding Michael Ivanovich. He is in a very bad hu-
mor, very morose. Be prepared.’
‘Ah, dear friend,’ replied Princess Mary, ‘I have asked you 
never to warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not al-
low myself to judge him and would not have others do so.’
The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she 
was five minutes late in starting her practice on the clav-
ichord, went into the sitting room with a look of alarm. 
Between twelve and two o’clock, as the day was mapped out, 
the prince rested and the princess played the clavichord.

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Chapter XXVI
The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to 
the snoring of the prince, who was in his large study. From 
the far side of the house through the closed doors came the 
sound of difficult passagestwenty times repeatedof a sonata 
by Dussek.
Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood 
drove up to the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the car-
riage, helped his little wife to alight, and let her pass into the 
house before him. Old Tikhon, wearing a wig, put his head 
out of the door of the antechamber, reported in a whisper 
that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed the door. 
Tikhon knew that neither the son’s arrival nor any other 
unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed or-
der of the day. Prince Andrew apparently knew this as well 
as Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to ascertain whether 
his father’s habits had changed since he was at home last, 
and, having assured himself that they had not, he turned 
to his wife.
‘He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to 
Mary’s room,’ he said.
The little princess had grown stouter during this time, 
but her eyes and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when 
she began to speak just as merrily and prettily as ever.
‘Why, this is a palace!’ she said to her husband, looking 

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around with the expression with which people compliment 
their host at a ball. ‘Let’s come, quick, quick!’ And with a 
glance round, she smiled at Tikhon, at her husband, and at 
the footman who accompanied them.
‘Is that Mary practicing? Let’s go quietly and take her by 
surprise.’
Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad ex-
pression.
‘You’ve grown older, Tikhon,’ he said in passing to the 
old man, who kissed his hand.
Before they reached the room from which the sounds of 
the clavichord came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, 
Mademoiselle Bourienne, rushed out apparently beside her-
self with delight.
‘Ah! what joy for the princess!’ exclaimed she: ‘At last! I 
must let her know.’
‘No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne,’ 
said the little princess, kissing her. ‘I know you already 
through my sister-in-law’s friendship for you. She was not 
expecting us?’
They went up to the door of the sitting room from which 
came the sound of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. 
Prince Andrew stopped and made a grimace, as if expecting 
something unpleasant.
The little princess entered the room. The passage broke 
off in the middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary’s 
heavy tread and the sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew 
went in the two princesses, who had only met once before 
for a short time at his wedding, were in each other’s arms 

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warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they happened 
to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them press-
ing her hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously 
equally ready to cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged 
his shoulders and frowned, as lovers of music do when they 
hear a false note. The two women let go of one another, and 
then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each other’s hands, 
kissing them and pulling them away, and again began kiss-
ing each other on the face, and then to Prince Andrew’s 
surprise both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle 
Bourienne also began to cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt 
ill at ease, but to the two women it seemed quite natural that 
they should cry, and apparently it never entered their heads 
that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.
‘Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!’ they suddenly exclaimed, 
and then laughed. ‘I dreamed last night...’‘You were not ex-
pecting us?...’‘Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?...’ ‘And you 
have grown stouter!..’
‘I knew the princess at once,’ put in Mademoiselle Bouri-
enne.
‘And I had no idea!...’ exclaimed Princess Mary. ‘Ah, An-
drew, I did not see you.’
Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one 
another, and he told her she was still the same crybaby as 
ever. Princess Mary had turned toward her brother, and 
through her tears the loving, warm, gentle look of her large 
luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment, rested on 
Prince Andrew’s face.
The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy 

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upper lip continually and rapidly touching her rosy neth-
er lip when necessary and drawing up again next moment 
when her face broke into a smile of glittering teeth and 
sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had had on the 
Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in her 
condition, and immediately after that informed them that 
she had left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven 
knew what she would have to dress in here; and that Andrew 
had quite changed, and that Kitty Odyntsova had married 
an old man, and that there was a suitor for Mary, a real one, 
but that they would talk of that later. Princess Mary was still 
looking silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were 
full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following 
a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law’s words. 
In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fete she 
addressed her brother:
‘So you are really going to the war, Andrew?’ she said 
sighing.
Lise sighed too.
‘Yes, and even tomorrow,’ replied her brother.
‘He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might 
have had promotion..’
Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing 
her train of thought turned to her sister-in-law with a ten-
der glance at her figure.
‘Is it certain?’ she said.
The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and 
said: ‘Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..’
Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sis-

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ter-in-law’s and unexpectedly again began to cry.
‘She needs rest,’ said Prince Andrew with a frown. ‘Don’t 
you, Lise? Take her to your room and I’ll go to Father. How 
is he? Just the same?’
‘Yes, just the same. Though I don’t know what your opin-
ion will be,’ answered the princess joyfully.
‘And are the hours the same? And the walks in the av-
enues? And the lathe?’ asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely 
perceptible smile which showed that, in spite of all his love 
and respect for his father, he was aware of his weaknesses.
‘The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the 
mathematics and my geometry lessons,’ said Princess Mary 
gleefully, as if her lessons in geometry were among the 
greatest delights of her life.
When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had 
come for the old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the 
young prince to his father. The old man made a departure 
from his usual routine in honor of his son’s arrival: he gave 
orders to admit him to his apartments while he dressed 
for dinner. The old prince always dressed in old-fashioned 
style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when 
Prince Andrew entered his father’s dressing room (not with 
the contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing 
rooms, but with the animated face with which he talked to 
Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large leather-covered 
chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head 
to Tikhon.
‘Ah! here’s the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?’ 
said the old man, shaking his powdered head as much as the 

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tail, which Tikhon was holding fast to plait, would allow.
‘You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes 
on like this he’ll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are 
you?’ And he held out his cheek.
The old man was in a good temper after his nap before 
dinner. (He used to say that a nap ‘after dinner was silver-
before dinner, golden.’) He cast happy, sidelong glances at 
his son from under his thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince An-
drew went up and kissed his father on the spot indicated to 
him. He made no reply on his father’s favorite topicmaking 
fun of the military men of the day, and more particularly of 
Bonaparte.
‘Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my 
wife who is pregnant,’ said Prince Andrew, following every 
movement of his father’s face with an eager and respectful 
look. ‘How is your health?’
‘Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am 
busy from morning till night and abstemious, so of course 
I am well.’
‘Thank God,’ said his son smiling.
‘God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on,’ he contin-
ued, returning to his hobby; ‘tell me how the Germans have 
taught you to fight Bonaparte by this new science you call 
‘strategy.’’
Prince Andrew smiled.
‘Give me time to collect my wits, Father,’ said he, with a 
smile that showed that his father’s foibles did not prevent his 
son from loving and honoring him. ‘Why, I have not yet had 
time to settle down!’

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‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ cried the old man, shaking his 
pigtail to see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping 
his by the hand. ‘The house for your wife is ready. Princess 
Mary will take her there and show her over, and they’ll talk 
nineteen to the dozen. That’s their woman’s way! I am glad 
to have her. Sit down and talk. About Mikhelson’s army I 
understandTolstoy’s too... a simultaneous expedition.... But 
what’s the southern army to do? Prussia is neutral... I know 
that. What about Austria?’ said he, rising from his chair and 
pacing up and down the room followed by Tikhon, who ran 
after him, handing him different articles of clothing. ‘What 
of Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?’
Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, beganat 
first reluctantly, but gradually with more and more anima-
tion, and from habit changing unconsciously from Russian 
to French as he went onto explain the plan of operation for 
the coming campaign. He explained how an army, ninety 
thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as to bring her 
out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part of 
that army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how 
two hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hun-
dred thousand Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the 
Rhine; how fifty thousand Russians and as many English 
were to land at Naples, and how a total force of five hundred 
thousand men was to attack the French from different sides. 
The old prince did not evince the least interest during this 
explanation, but as if he were not listening to it continued 
to dress while walking about, and three times unexpectedly 
interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: ‘The white one, 

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the white one!’
This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waist-
coat he wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying:
‘And will she soon be confined?’ and shaking his head 
reproachfully said: ‘That’s bad! Go on, go on.’
The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was 
finishing his description. The old man began to sing, in the 
cracked voice of old age: ‘Malbrook s’en va-t-en guerre. Dieu 
sait quand reviendra.’*
*”Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when 
he’ll return.’
His son only smiled.
‘I don’t say it’s a plan I approve of,’ said the son; ‘I am 
only telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his 
plan by now, not worse than this one.’
‘Well, you’ve told me nothing new,’ and the old man re-
peated, meditatively and rapidly:
‘Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room.’

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Chapter XXVII
At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, 
entered the dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess 
Mary, and Mademoiselle Bourienne were already awaiting 
him together with his architect, who by a strange caprice 
of his employer’s was admitted to table though the position 
of that insignificant individual was such as could certainly 
not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who 
generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely 
admitted even important government officials to his table, 
had unexpectedly selected Michael Ivanovich (who always 
went into a corner to blow his nose on his checked handker-
chief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals, and 
had more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael 
Ivanovich was ‘not a whit worse than you or I.’ At dinner the 
prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael Ivanovich more 
often than to anyone else.
In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house 
was exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the 
footmenone behind each chairstood waiting for the prince to 
enter. The head butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the set-
ting of the table, making signs to the footmen, and anxiously 
glancing from the clock to the door by which the prince was 
to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at a large gilt frame, 
new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the Princes 

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Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a 
badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist be-
longing to the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crownan alleged 
descendant of Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince 
Andrew, looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his 
head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at a portrait so 
characteristic of the original as to be amusing.
‘How thoroughly like him that is!’ he said to Princess 
Mary, who had come up to him.
Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did 
not understand what he was laughing at. Everything her 
father did inspired her with reverence and was beyond ques-
tion.
‘Everyone has his Achilles’ heel,’ continued Prince An-
drew. ‘Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such 
nonsense!’
Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her 
brother’s criticism and was about to reply, when the expect-
ed footsteps were heard coming from the study. The prince 
walked in quickly and jauntily as was his wont, as if inten-
tionally contrasting the briskness of his manners with the 
strict formality of his house. At that moment the great clock 
struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from the 
drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes 
from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all 
present and rested on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers 
do when the Tsar enters, the sensation of fear and respect 
which the old man inspired in all around him. He stroked 
her hair and then patted her awkwardly on the back of her 

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neck.
‘I’m glad, glad, to see you,’ he said, looking attentively into 
her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. 
‘Sit down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!’
He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A 
footman moved the chair for her.
‘Ho, ho!’ said the old man, casting his eyes on her round-
ed figure. ‘You’ve been in a hurry. That’s bad!’
He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with 
his lips only and not with his eyes.
‘You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as 
possible,’ he said.
The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his 
words. She was silent and seemed confused. The prince 
asked her about her father, and she began to smile and talk. 
He asked about mutual acquaintances, and she became still 
more animated and chattered away giving him greetings 
from various people and retailing the town gossip.
‘Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband 
and she has cried her eyes out,’ she said, growing more and 
more lively.
As she became animated the prince looked at her more 
and more sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her suf-
ficiently and had formed a definite idea of her, he turned 
away and addressed Michael Ivanovich.
‘Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having 
a bad time of it. Prince Andrew’ (he always spoke thus of 
his son) ‘has been telling me what forces are being collected 
against him! While you and I never thought much of him.’

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Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when ‘you and I’ 
had said such things about Bonaparte, but understanding 
that he was wanted as a peg on which to hang the prince’s 
favorite topic, he looked inquiringly at the young prince, 
wondering what would follow.
‘He is a great tactician!’ said the prince to his son, point-
ing to the architect.
And the conversation again turned on the war, on 
Bonaparte, and the generals and statesmen of the day. The 
old prince seemed convinced not only that all the men of the 
day were mere babies who did not know the A B C of war 
or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant little 
Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any 
Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also 
convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe 
and no real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the 
men of the day were playing, pretending to do something 
real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with his father’s ridicule of 
the new men, and drew him on and listened to him with evi-
dent pleasure.
‘The past always seems good,’ said he, ‘but did not Suvo-
rov himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which 
he did not know how to escape?’
‘Who told you that? Who?’ cried the prince. ‘Suvorov!’ 
And he jerked away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. 
‘Suvorov!... Consider, Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and 
Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would have been a prisoner if 
Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the Hofs-kriegs-
wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled 

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the devil himself! When you get there you’ll find out what 
those Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn’t man-
age them so what chance has Michael Kutuzov? No, my 
dear boy,’ he continued, ‘you and your generals won’t get on 
against Buonaparte; you’ll have to call in the French, so that 
birds of a feather may fight together. The German, Pahlen, 
has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the French-
man, Moreau,’ he said, alluding to the invitation made that 
year to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... ‘Wonder-
ful!... Were the Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? 
No, lad, either you fellows have all lost your wits, or I have 
outlived mine. May God help you, but we’ll see what will 
happen. Buonaparte has become a great commander among 
them! Hm!..’
‘I don’t at all say that all the plans are good,’ said Prince 
Andrew, ‘I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. 
You may laugh as much as you like, but all the same 
Bonaparte is a great generall.’
‘Michael Ivanovich!’ cried the old prince to the architect 
who, busy with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: 
‘Didn’t I tell you Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he 
says same thing.’
‘To be sure, your excellency.’ replied the architect.
The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.
‘Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. 
He has got splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking 
Germans. And only idlers have failed to beat the Germans. 
Since the world began everybody has beaten the Germans. 
They beat no oneexcept one another. He made his reputation 

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fighting them.’
And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, 
according to him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns 
and even in politics. His son made no rejoinder, but it was 
evident that whatever arguments were presented he was as 
little able as his father to change his opinion. He listened, re-
fraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how this 
old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could 
know and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent Eu-
ropean military and political events.
‘You think I’m an old man and don’t understand the pres-
ent state of affairs?’ concluded his father. ‘But it troubles me. 
I don’t sleep at night. Come now, where has this great com-
mander of yours shown his skill?’ he concluded.
‘That would take too long to tell,’ answered the son.
‘Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bouri-
enne, here’s another admirer of that powder-monkey 
emperor of yours,’ he exclaimed in excellent French.
‘You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!’
‘Dieu sait quand reviendra”... hummed the prince out of 
tune and, with a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.
The little princess during the whole discussion and the 
rest of the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look 
now at her father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When 
they left the table she took her sister-in-law’s arm and drew 
her into another room.
‘What a clever man your father is,’ said she; ‘perhaps that 
is why I am afraid of him.’
‘Oh, he is so kind!’ answered Princess Mary.

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Chapter XXVIII
Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, 
not altering his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The lit-
tle princess was in her sister-in-law’s room. Prince Andrew 
in a traveling coat without epaulettes had been packing 
with his valet in the rooms assigned to him. After inspect-
ing the carriage himself and seeing the trunks put in, he 
ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those things he 
always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a 
large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and 
a sabera present from his father who had brought it from 
the siege of Ochakov. All these traveling effects of Prince 
Andrew’s were in very good order: new, clean, and in cloth 
covers carefully tied with tapes.
When starting on a journey or changing their mode 
of life, men capable of reflection are generally in a seri-
ous frame of mind. At such moments one reviews the past 
and plans for the future. Prince Andrew’s face looked very 
thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind him he paced 
briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking straight 
before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear 
going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?perhaps 
both, but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood, 
for hearing footsteps in the passage he hurriedly unclasped 
his hands, stopped at a table as if tying the cover of the small 

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box, and assumed his usual tranquil and impenetrable ex-
pression. It was the heavy tread of Princess Mary that he 
heard.
‘I hear you have given orders to harness,’ she cried, pant-
ing (she had apparently been running), ‘and I did so wish to 
have another talk with you alone! God knows how long we 
may again be parted. You are not angry with me for com-
ing? You have changed so, Andrusha,’ she added, as if to 
explain such a question.
She smiled as she uttered his pet name, ‘Andrusha.’ It 
was obviously strange to her to think that this stern hand-
some man should be Andrushathe slender mischievous boy 
who had been her playfellow in childhood.
‘And where is Lise?’ he asked, answering her question 
only by a smile.
‘She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in 
my room. Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have,’ 
said she, sitting down on the sofa, facing her brother. ‘She 
is quite a child: such a dear, merry child. I have grown so 
fond of her.’
Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the 
ironical and contemptuous look that showed itself on his 
face.
‘One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free 
from them, Andrew? Don’t forget that she has grown up 
and been educated in society, and so her position now is not 
a rosy one. We should enter into everyone’s situation. Tout 
comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.* Think it must be for her, 
poor thing, after what she has been used to, to be parted 

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from her husband and be left alone the country, in her con-
dition! It’s very hard.’
*To understand all is to forgive all.
Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we 
smile at those we think we thoroughly understand.
‘You live in the country and don’t think the life terrible,’ 
he replied.
‘I... that’s different. Why speak of me? I don’t want any 
other life, and can’t, for I know no other. But think, An-
drew: for a young society woman to be buried in the country 
during the best years of her life, all alonefor Papa is always 
busy, and I... well, you know what poor resources I have for 
entertaining a woman used to the best society. There is only 
Mademoiselle Bourienne...’
‘I don’t like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all,’ said 
Prince Andrew.
‘No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she’s much 
to be pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don’t 
need her, and she’s even in my way. You know I always was 
a savage, and now am even more so. I like being alone.... Fa-
ther likes her very much. She and Michael Ivanovich are the 
two people to whom he is always gentle and kind, because 
he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says: ‘We 
don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as 
for the good we have done them.’ Father took her when she 
was homeless after losing her own father. She is very good-
natured, and my father likes her way of reading. She reads 
to him in the evenings and reads splendidly.’
‘To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father’s character 

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sometimes makes things trying for you, doesn’t it?’ Prince 
Andrew asked suddenly.
Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this 
question.
‘For me? For me?... Trying for me!...’ said she.
‘He always was rather harsh; and now I should think 
he’s getting very trying,’ said Prince Andrew, apparently 
speaking lightly of their father in order to puzzle or test his 
sister.
‘You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a 
kind of intellectual pride,’ said the princess, following the 
train of her own thoughts rather than the trend of the 
conversation‘and that’s a great sin. How can one judge Fa-
ther? But even if one might, what feeling except veneration 
could such a man as my father evoke? And I am so content-
ed and happy with him. I only wish you were all as happy 
as I am.’
Her brother shook his head incredulously.
‘The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the 
truth, Andrew... is Father’s way of treating religious subjects. 
I don’t understand how a man of his immense intellect can 
fail to see what is as clear as day, and can go so far astray. 
That is the only thing that makes me unhappy. But even in 
this I can see lately a shade of improvement. His satire has 
been less bitter of late, and there was a monk he received 
and had a long talk with.’
‘Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting 
your powder,’ said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.
‘Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear 

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me. Andrew...’ she said timidly after a moment’s silence, ‘I 
have a great favor to ask of you.’
‘What is it, dear?’
‘Nopromise that you will not refuse! It will give you no 
trouble and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort 
me. Promise, Andrusha!...’ said she, putting her hand in her 
reticule but not yet taking out what she was holding inside 
it, as if what she held were the subject of her request and 
must not be shown before the request was granted.
She looked timidly at her brother.
‘Even if it were a great deal of trouble...’ answered Prince 
Andrew, as if guessing what it was about.
‘Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. 
Think as you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Fa-
ther’s father, our grandfather, wore it in all his wars.’ (She 
still did not take out what she was holding in her reticule.) 
‘So you promise?’
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise 
me you will never take it off. Do you promise?’
‘If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won’t break 
my neck... To please you...’ said Prince Andrew. But imme-
diately, noticing the pained expression his joke had brought 
to his sister’s face, he repented and added: ‘I am glad; really, 
dear, I am very glad.’
‘Against your will He will save and have mercy on you 
and bring you to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and 
peace,’ said she in a voice trembling with emotion, solemnly 
holding up in both hands before her brother a small, oval, 

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antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour in a gold setting, on 
a finely wrought silver chain.
She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to An-
drew.
‘Please, Andrew, for my sake!..’
Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. 
Those eyes lit up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made 
it beautiful. Her brother would have taken the icon, but she 
stopped him. Andrew understood, crossed himself and 
kissed the icon. There was a look of tenderness, for he was 
touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.
‘Thank you, my dear.’ She kissed him on the forehead and 
sat down again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.
‘As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as 
you always used to be. Don’t judge Lise harshly,’ she began. 
‘She is so sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a 
very hard one.’
‘I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, 
Masha, or blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?’
Red patches appeared on Princess Mary’s face and she 
was silent as if she felt guilty.
‘I have said nothing to you, but you have already been 
talked to. And I am sorry for that,’ he went on.
The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and 
cheeks. She tried to say something but could not. Her broth-
er had guessed right: the little princess had been crying 
after dinner and had spoken of her forebodings about her 
confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had complained 
of her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After cry-

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ing she had fallen asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his 
sister.
‘Know this, Masha: I can’t reproach, have not reproached, 
and never shall reproach my wife with anything, and I can-
not reproach myself with anything in regard to her; and 
that always will be so in whatever circumstances I may be 
placed. But if you want to know the truth... if you want to 
know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! But why 
this is so I don’t know..’
As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, 
kissed her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, 
kindly, and unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking 
not at his sister but over her head toward the darkness of 
the open doorway.
‘Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Orgo and wake and 
I’ll come in a moment. Petrushka!’ he called to his valet: 
‘Come here, take these away. Put this on the seat and this 
to the right.’
Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped 
and said: ‘Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned 
to God and asked Him to give you the love you do not feel, 
and your prayer would have been answered.’
‘Well, may be!’ said Prince Andrew. ‘Go, Masha; I’ll 
come immediately.’
On the way to his sister’s room, in the passage which 
connected one wing with the other, Prince Andrew met 
Mademoiselle Bourienne smiling sweetly. It was the third 
time that day that, with an ecstatic and artless smile, she 
had met him in secluded passages.

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‘Oh! I thought you were in your room,’ she said, for some 
reason blushing and dropping her eyes.
Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression 
of anger suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to her 
but looked at her forehead and hair, without looking at her 
eyes, with such contempt that the Frenchwoman blushed 
and went away without a word. When he reached his sister’s 
room his wife was already awake and her merry voice, hur-
rying one word after another, came through the open door. 
She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long self-
restraint she wished to make up for lost time.
‘No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false 
curls and her mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying 
to cheat old age.... Ha, ha, ha! Mary!’
This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same 
laugh Prince Andrew had already heard from his wife in 
the presence of others some five times. He entered the room 
softly. The little princess, plump and rosy, was sitting in an 
easy chair with her work in her hands, talking incessant-
ly, repeating Petersburg reminiscences and even phrases. 
Prince Andrew came up, stroked her hair, and asked if she 
felt rested after their journey. She answered him and con-
tinued her chatter.
The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It 
was an autumn night, so dark that the coachman could 
not see the carriage pole. Servants with lanterns were bus-
tling about in the porch. The immense house was brilliant 
with lights shining through its lofty windows. The domestic 
serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to 

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the young prince. The members of the household were all 
gathered in the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Made-
moiselle Bourienne, Princess Mary, and the little princess. 
Prince Andrew had been called to his father’s study as the 
latter wished to say good-by to him alone. All were waiting 
for them to come out.
When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in 
his old-age spectacles and white dressing gown, in which 
he received no one but his son, sat at the table writing. He 
glanced round.
‘Going?’ And he went on writing.
‘I’ve come to say good-by.’
‘Kiss me here,’ and he touched his cheek: ‘Thanks, 
thanks!’
‘What do you thank me for?’
‘For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman’s 
apron strings. The Service before everything. Thanks, 
thanks!’ And he went on writing, so that his quill spluttered 
and squeaked. ‘If you have anything to say, say it. These two 
things can be done together,’ he added.
‘About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on 
your hands..’
‘Why talk nonsense? Say what you want.’
‘When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an 
accoucheur.... Let him be here...’
The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understand-
ing, fixed his stern eyes on his son.
‘I know that no one can help if nature does not do her 
work,’ said Prince Andrew, evidently confused. ‘I know that 

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out of a million cases only one goes wrong, but it is her fan-
cy and mine. They have been telling her things. She has had 
a dream and is frightened.’
‘Hm... Hm...’ muttered the old prince to himself, finish-
ing what he was writing. ‘I’ll do it.’
He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his 
son began to laugh.
‘It’s a bad business, eh?’
‘What is bad, Father?’
‘The wife!’ said the old prince, briefly and significantly.
‘I don’t understand!’ said Prince Andrew.
‘No, it can’t be helped, lad,’ said the prince. ‘They’re all 
like that; one can’t unmarry. Don’t be afraid; I won’t tell 
anyone, but you know it yourself.’
He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, 
shook it, looked straight into his son’s face with keen eyes 
which seemed to see through him, and again laughed his 
frigid laugh.
The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had un-
derstood him. The old man continued to fold and seal his 
letter, snatching up and throwing down the wax, the seal, 
and the paper, with his accustomed rapidity.
‘What’s to be done? She’s pretty! I will do everything. 
Make your mind easy,’ said he in abrupt sentences while 
sealing his letter.
Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and dis-
pleased that his father understood him. The old man got up 
and gave the letter to his son.
‘Listen!’ said he; ‘don’t worry about your wife: what can 

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be done shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilar-
ionovich.* I have written that he should make use of you in 
proper places and not keep you long as an adjutant: a bad 
position! Tell him I remember and like him. Write and tell 
me how he receives you. If he is all rightserve him. Nicholas 
Bolkonski’s son need not serve under anyone if he is in dis-
favor. Now come here.’
*Kutuzov.
He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, 
but his son was accustomed to understand him. He led him 
to the desk, raised the lid, drew out a drawer, and took out 
an exercise book filled with his bold, tall, close handwrit-
ing.
‘I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are 
my memoirs; hand them to the Emperor after my death. 
Now here is a Lombard bond and a letter; it is a premium for 
the man who writes a history of Suvorov’s wars. Send it to 
the Academy. Here are some jottings for you to read when I 
am gone. You will find them useful.’
Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt 
live a long time yet. He felt that he must not say it.
‘I will do it all, Father,’ he said.
‘Well, now, good-by!’ He gave his son his hand to kiss, 
and embraced him. ‘Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they 
kill you it will hurt me, your old father...’ he paused unex-
pectedly, and then in a querulous voice suddenly shrieked: 
‘but if I hear that you have not behaved like a son of Nicho-
las Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!’
‘You need not have said that to me, Father,’ said the son 

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with a smile.
The old man was silent.
‘I also wanted to ask you,’ continued Prince Andrew, ‘if 
I’m killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away 
from youas I said yesterday... let him grow up with you.... 
Please.’
‘Not let the wife have him?’ said the old man, and 
laughed.
They stood silent, facing one another. The old man’s sharp 
eyes were fixed straight on his son’s. Something twitched in 
the lower part of the old prince’s face.
‘We’ve said good-by. Go!’ he suddenly shouted in a loud, 
angry voice, opening his door.
‘What is it? What?’ asked both princesses when they saw 
for a moment at the door Prince Andrew and the figure of 
the old man in a white dressing gown, spectacled and wig-
less, shouting in an angry voice.
Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.
‘Well!’ he said, turning to his wife.
And this ‘Well!’ sounded coldly ironic, as if he were say-
ing,: ‘Now go through your performance.’
‘Andrew, already!’ said the little princess, turning pale 
and looking with dismay at her husband.
He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on 
his shoulder.
He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked 
into her face, and carefully placed her in an easy chair.
‘Adieu, Mary,’ said he gently to his sister, taking her by 
the hand and kissing her, and then he left the room with 

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rapid steps.
The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle 
Bourienne chafing her temples. Princess Mary, supporting 
her sister-in-law, still looked with her beautiful eyes full of 
tears at the door through which Prince Andrew had gone 
and made the sign of the cross in his direction. From the 
study, like pistol shots, came the frequent sound of the old 
man angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince Andrew 
gone when the study door opened quickly and the stern fig-
ure of the old man in the white dressing gown looked out.
‘Gone? That’s all right!’ said he; and looking angrily at 
the unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprov-
ingly and slammed the door.

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BOOK TWO: 1805

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Chapter I
In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the vil-
lages and towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other 
regiments freshly arriving from Russia were settling near 
the fortress of Braunau and burdening the inhabitants on 
whom they were quartered. Braunau was the headquarters 
of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.
On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that 
had just reached Braunau had halted half a mile from the 
town, waiting to be inspected by the commander in chief. 
Despite the un-Russian appearance of the locality and sur-
roundingsfruit gardens, stone fences, tiled roofs, and hills 
in the distanceand despite the fact that the inhabitants (who 
gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not Russians, the 
regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment 
preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Rus-
sia.
On the evening of the last day’s march an order had been 
received that the commander in chief would inspect the 
regiment on the march. Though the words of the order were 
not clear to the regimental commander, and the question 
arose whether the troops were to be in marching order or 
not, it was decided at a consultation between the battalion 
commanders to present the regiment in parade order, on 
the principle that it is always better to ‘bow too low than 

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not bow low enough.’ So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile 
march, were kept mending and cleaning all night long 
without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and compa-
ny commanders calculated and reckoned, and by morning 
the regimentinstead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it 
had been on its last march the day beforepresented a well-
ordered array of two thousand men each of whom knew his 
place and his duty, had every button and every strap in place, 
and shone with cleanliness. And not only externally was all 
in order, but had it pleased the commander in chief to look 
under the uniforms he would have found on every man a 
clean shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number 
of articles, ‘awl, soap, and all,’ as the soldiers say. There was 
only one circumstance concerning which no one could be 
at ease. It was the state of the soldiers’ boots. More than half 
the men’s boots were in holes. But this defect was not due 
to any fault of the regimental commander, for in spite of re-
peated demands boots had not been issued by the Austrian 
commissariat, and the regiment had marched some seven 
hundred miles.
The commander of the regiment was an elderly, cho-
leric, stout, and thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows 
and whiskers, and wider from chest to back than across the 
shoulders. He had on a brand-new uniform showing the 
creases where it had been folded and thick gold epaulettes 
which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive 
shoulders. He had the air of a man happily performing one 
of the most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in 
front of the line and at every step pulled himself up, slightly 

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arching his back. It was plain that the commander admired 
his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind was en-
grossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides 
military matters, social interests and the fair sex occupied 
no small part of his thoughts.
‘Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?’ he said, addressing one of 
the battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward 
(it was plain that they both felt happy). ‘We had our hands 
full last night. However, I think the regiment is not a bad 
one, eh?’
The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and 
laughed.
‘It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin 
Meadow.’
‘What?’ asked the commander.
At that moment, on the road from the town on which sig-
nalers had been posted, two men appeared on horse back. 
They were an aide-decamp followed by a Cossack.
The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which 
had not been clearly worded the day before, namely, that the 
commander in chief wished to see the regiment just in the 
state in which it had been on the march: in their greatcoats, 
and packs, and without any preparation whatever.
A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come 
to Kutuzov the day before with proposals and demands for 
him to join up with the army of the Archduke Ferdinand 
and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering this junction ad-
visable, meant, among other arguments in support of his 
view, to show the Austrian general the wretched state in 

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which the troops arrived from Russia. With this object he 
intended to meet the regiment; so the worse the condition 
it was in, the better pleased the commander in chief would 
be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know these circum-
stances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that the 
men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, 
and that the commander in chief would otherwise be dis-
satisfied. On hearing this the regimental commander hung 
his head, silently shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his 
arms with a choleric gesture.
‘A fine mess we’ve made of it!’ he remarked.
‘There now! Didn’t I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if 
it was said ‘on the march’ it meant in greatcoats?’ said he 
reproachfully to the battalion commander. ‘Oh, my God!’ 
he added, stepping resolutely forward. ‘Company com-
manders!’ he shouted in a voice accustomed to command. 
‘Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?’ he asked the 
aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently relat-
ing to the personage he was referring to.
‘In an hour’s time, I should say.’
‘Shall we have time to change clothes?’
‘I don’t know, General...’
The regimental commander, going up to the line him-
self, ordered the soldiers to change into their greatcoats. 
The company commanders ran off to their companies, the 
sergeants major began bustling (the greatcoats were not in 
very good condition), and instantly the squares that had up 
to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and 
stretch and hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were run-

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ning to and fro, throwing up their knapsacks with a jerk of 
their shoulders and pulling the straps over their heads, un-
strapping their overcoats and drawing the sleeves on with 
upraised arms.
In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares 
had become gray instead of black. The regimental com-
mander walked with his jerky steps to the front of the 
regiment and examined it from a distance.
‘Whatever is this? This!’ he shouted and stood still. ‘Com-
mander of the third company!’
‘Commander of the third company wanted by the gen-
eral!... commander to the general... third company to the 
commander.’ The words passed along the lines and an adju-
tant ran to look for the missing officer.
When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their 
destination in a cry of: ‘The general to the third company,’ 
the missing officer appeared from behind his company and, 
though he was a middle-aged man and not in the habit of 
running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on his toes toward 
the general. The captain’s face showed the uneasiness of a 
schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not learned. 
Spots appeared on his nose, the redness of which was ev-
idently due to intemperance, and his mouth twitched 
nervously. The general looked the captain up and down as 
he came up panting, slackening his pace as he approached.
‘You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What 
is this?’ shouted the regimental commander, thrusting for-
ward his jaw and pointing at a soldier in the ranks of the 
third company in a greatcoat of bluish cloth, which con-

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trasted with the others. ‘What have you been after? The 
commander in chief is expected and you leave your place? 
Eh? I’ll teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a pa-
rade.... Eh...?’
The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on 
his superior, pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to 
his cap, as if in this pressure lay his only hope of salvation.
‘Well, why don’t you speak? Whom have you got there 
dressed up as a Hungarian?’ said the commander with an 
austere gibe.
‘Your excellency..’
‘Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what 
about your excellency?... nobody knows.’
‘Your excellency, it’s the officer Dolokhov, who has been 
reduced to the ranks,’ said the captain softly.
‘Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into 
a soldier? If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation 
uniform like the others.’
‘Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the 
march.’
‘Gave him leave? Leave? That’s just like you young men,’ 
said the regimental commander cooling down a little. 
‘Leave indeed.... One says a word to you and you... What?’ 
he added with renewed irritation, ‘I beg you to dress your 
men decently.’
And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, 
directed his jerky steps down the line. He was evidently 
pleased at his own display of anger and walking up to the 
regiment wished to find a further excuse for wrath. Having 

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snapped at an officer for an unpolished badge, at another 
because his line was not straight, he reached the third com-
pany.
‘H-o-o-w are you standing? Where’s your leg? Your leg?’ 
shouted the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, 
while there were still five men between him and Dolokhov 
with his bluish-gray uniform.
Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking 
straight with his clear, insolent eyes in the general’s face.
‘Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change 
his coat... the ras...’ he did not finish.
‘General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to en-
dure...’ Dolokhov hurriedly interrupted.
‘No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!’
‘Not bound to endure insults,’ Dolokhov concluded in 
loud, ringing tones.
The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general 
became silent, angrily pulling down his tight scarf.
‘I request you to have the goodness to change your coat,’ 
he said as he turned away.

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Chapter II
‘He’s coming!’ shouted the signaler at that moment.
The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, 
seized the stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body 
across the saddle, righted himself, drew his saber, and with 
a happy and resolute countenance, opening his mouth awry, 
prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered like a bird preen-
ing its plumage and became motionless.
‘Att-ention!’ shouted the regimental commander in a 
soul-shaking voice which expressed joy for himself, severity 
for the regiment, and welcome for the approaching chief.
Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by 
trees, came a high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly 
creaking on its springs and drawn by six horses at a smart 
trot. Behind the caleche galloped the suite and a convoy of 
Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian general, in a white 
uniform that looked strange among the Russian black ones. 
The caleche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov and 
the Austrian general were talking in low voices and Ku-
tuzov smiled slightly as treading heavily he stepped down 
from the carriage just as if those two thousand men breath-
lessly gazing at him and the regimental commander did not 
exist.
The word of command rang out, and again the regiment 
quivered, as with a jingling sound it presented arms. Then 

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amidst a dead silence the feeble voice of the commander in 
chief was heard. The regiment roared, ‘Health to your ex... 
len... len... lency!’ and again all became silent. At first Kutu-
zov stood still while the regiment moved; then he and the 
general in white, accompanied by the suite, walked between 
the ranks.
From the way the regimental commander saluted the 
commander in chief and devoured him with his eyes, draw-
ing himself up obsequiously, and from the way he walked 
through the ranks behind the generals, bending forward 
and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and from 
the way he darted forward at every word or gesture of the 
commander in chief, it was evident that he performed his 
duty as a subordinate with even greater zeal than his duty as 
a commander. Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its 
commander the regiment, in comparison with others that 
had reached Braunau at the same time, was in splendid con-
dition. There were only 217 sick and stragglers. Everything 
was in good order except the boots.
Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stop-
ping to say a few friendly words to officers he had known in 
the Turkish war, sometimes also to the soldiers. Looking at 
their boots he several times shook his head sadly, pointing 
them out to the Austrian general with an expression which 
seemed to say that he was not blaming anyone, but could 
not help noticing what a bad state of things it was. The reg-
imental commander ran forward on each such occasion, 
fearing to miss a single word of the commander in chief’s 
regarding the regiment. Behind Kutuzov, at a distance that 

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allowed every softly spoken word to be heard, followed some 
twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen talked among 
themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the 
commander in chief walked a handsome adjutant. This was 
Prince Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvitski, 
a tall staff officer, extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, 
handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvitski could hardly keep 
from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who 
walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and with-
out a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes, 
watched the regimental commander’s back and mimicked 
his every movement. Each time the commander started and 
bent forward, the hussar started and bent forward in ex-
actly the same manner. Nesvitski laughed and nudged the 
others to make them look at the wag.
Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of 
eyes which were starting from their sockets to watch their 
chief. On reaching the third company he suddenly stopped. 
His suite, not having expected this, involuntarily came clos-
er to him.
‘Ah, Timokhin!’ said he, recognizing the red-nosed cap-
tain who had been reprimanded on account of the blue 
greatcoat.
One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch 
himself more than Timokhin had done when he was repri-
manded by the regimental commander, but now that the 
commander in chief addressed him he drew himself up to 
such an extent that it seemed he could not have sustained it 
had the commander in chief continued to look at him, and 

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so Kutuzov, who evidently understood his case and wished 
him nothing but good, quickly turned away, a scarcely per-
ceptible smile flitting over his scarred and puffy face.
‘Another Ismail comrade,’ said he. ‘A brave officer! Are 
you satisfied with him?’ he asked the regimental command-
er.
And the latterunconscious that he was being reflected in 
the hussar officer as in a looking glassstarted, moved for-
ward, and answered: ‘Highly satisfied, your excellency!’
‘We all have our weaknesses,’ said Kutuzov smiling and 
walking away from him. ‘He used to have a predilection for 
Bacchus.’
The regimental commander was afraid he might be 
blamed for this and did not answer. The hussar at that mo-
ment noticed the face of the red-nosed captain and his 
drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his expression and pose 
with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help laughing. 
Kutuzov turned round. The officer evidently had complete 
control of his face, and while Kutuzov was turning man-
aged to make a grimace and then assume a most serious, 
deferential, and innocent expression.
The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, 
apparently trying to recollect something. Prince Andrew 
stepped forward from among the suite and said in French:
‘You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, re-
duced to the ranks in this regiment.’
‘Where is Dolokhov?’ asked Kutuzov.
Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier’s gray 
greatcoat, did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the 

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fair-haired soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward 
from the ranks, went up to the commander in chief, and 
presented arms.
‘Have you a complaint to make?’ Kutuzov asked with a 
slight frown.
‘This is Dolokhov,’ said Prince Andrew.
‘Ah!’ said Kutuzov. ‘I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do 
your duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan’t forget you 
if you deserve well.’
The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just 
as boldly as they had looked at the regimental commander, 
seeming by their expression to tear open the veil of conven-
tion that separates a commander in chief so widely from a 
private.
‘One thing I ask of your excellency,’ Dolokhov said in 
his firm, ringing, deliberate voice. ‘I ask an opportunity to 
atone for my fault and prove my devotion to His Majesty the 
Emperor and to Russia!’
Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with 
which he had turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted 
over his face. He turned away with a grimace as if to say 
that everything Dolokhov had said to him and everything 
he could say had long been known to him, that he was wea-
ry of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away 
and went to the carriage.
The regiment broke up into companies, which went to 
their appointed quarters near Braunau, where they hoped 
to receive boots and clothes and to rest after their hard 
marches.

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‘You won’t bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?’ said the 
regimental commander, overtaking the third company on 
its way to its quarters and riding up to Captain Timokhin 
who was walking in front. (The regimental commander’s 
face now that the inspection was happily over beamed with 
irrepressible delight.) ‘It’s in the Emperor’s service... it can’t 
be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on parade... I am 
the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very pleased!’ 
And he held out his hand to the captain.
‘Don’t mention it, General, as if I’d be so bold!’ replied 
the captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile 
which showed where two front teeth were missing that had 
been knocked out by the butt end of a gun at Ismail.
‘And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won’t forget himhe may be 
quite easy. And tell me, pleaseI’ve been meaning to askhow 
is to askhow is he behaving himself, and in general..’
‘As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your 
excellency; but his character...’ said Timokhin.
‘And what about his character?’ asked the regimental 
commander.
‘It’s different on different days,’ answered the captain. 
‘One day he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, 
and the next he’s a wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he 
nearly killed a Jew.’
‘Oh, well, well!’ remarked the regimental commander. 
‘Still, one must have pity on a young man in misfortune. 
You know he has important connections... Well, then, you 
just..’
‘I will, your excellency,’ said Timokhin, showing by his 

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smile that he understood his commander’s wish.
‘Well, of course, of course!’
The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the 
ranks and, reining in his horse, said to him:
‘After the next affair... epaulettes.’
Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor 
did the mocking smile on his lips change.
‘Well, that’s all right,’ continued the regimental com-
mander. ‘A cup of vodka for the men from me,’ he added 
so that the soldiers could hear. ‘I thank you all! God be 
praised!’ and he rode past that company and overtook the 
next one.
‘Well, he’s really a good fellow, one can serve under him,’ 
said Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.
‘In a word, a hearty one...’ said the subaltern, laugh-
ing (the regimental commander was nicknamed King of 
Hearts).
The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection 
infected the soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The 
soldiers’ voices could be heard on every side.
‘And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?’
‘And so he is! Quite blind!’
‘No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and 
leg bands... he noticed everything..’
‘When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..’
‘And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if 
he were smeared with chalkas white as flour! I suppose they 
polish him up as they do the guns.’
‘I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to be-

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gin? You were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte 
himself was at Braunau.’
‘Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he 
doesn’t know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Aus-
trians, you see, are putting them down. When they’ve been 
put down, the war with Buonaparte will begin. And he says 
Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you’re a fool. You’d better 
listen more carefully!’
‘What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth com-
pany is turning into the village already... they will have their 
buckwheat cooked before we reach our quarters.’
‘Give me a biscuit, you devil!’
‘And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That’s just it, 
friend! Ah, well, never mind, here you are.’
‘They might call a halt here or we’ll have to do another 
four miles without eating.’
‘Wasn’t it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just 
sit still and are drawn along.’
‘And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There 
they all seemed to be Polesall under the Russian crownbut 
here they’re all regular Germans.’
‘Singers to the front ‘ came the captain’s order.
And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to 
the front. A drummer, their leader, turned round facing 
the singers, and flourishing his arm, began a long-drawn-
out soldiers’ song, commencing with the words: ‘Morning 
dawned, the sun was rising,’ and concluding: ‘On then, 
brothers, on to glory, led by Father Kamenski.’ This song 
had been composed in the Turkish campaign and now be-

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ing sung in Austria, the only change being that the words 
‘Father Kamenski’ were replaced by ‘Father Kutuzov.’
Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and 
waved his arms as if flinging something to the ground, the 
drummera lean, handsome soldier of fortylooked sternly 
at the singers and screwed up his eyes. Then having satis-
fied himself that all eyes were fixed on him, he raised both 
arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but precious object 
above his head and, holding it there for some seconds, sud-
denly flung it down and began:
‘Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!’
‘Oh, my bower new...!’ chimed in twenty voices, and the 
castanet player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, 
rushed out to the front and, walking backwards before the 
company, jerked his shoulders and flourished his casta-
nets as if threatening someone. The soldiers, swinging their 
arms and keeping time spontaneously, marched with long 
steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the creak-
ing of springs, and the tramp of horses’ hoofs were heard. 
Kutuzov and his suite were returning to the town. The com-
mander in chief made a sign that the men should continue 
to march at ease, and he and all his suite showed pleasure at 
the sound of the singing and the sight of the dancing soldier 
and the gay and smartly marching men. In the second file 
from the right flank, beside which the carriage passed the 
company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted notice. 
It was Dolokhov marching with particular grace and bold-
ness in time to the song and looking at those driving past as 
if he pitied all who were not at that moment marching with 

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the company. The hussar cornet of Kutuzov’s suite who had 
mimicked the regimental commander, fell back from the 
carriage and rode up to Dolokhov.
Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, 
belonged to the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had 
met Dolokhov abroad as a private and had not seen fit to 
recognize him. But now that Kutuzov had spoken to the 
gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of 
an old friend.
‘My dear fellow, how are you?’ said he through the sing-
ing, making his horse keep pace with the company.
‘How am I?’ Dolokhov answered coldly. ‘I am as you 
see.’
The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free 
and easy gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the inten-
tional coldness of Dolokhov’s reply.
‘And how do you get on with the officers?’ inquired 
Zherkov.
‘All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wrig-
gled onto the staff?’
‘I was attached; I’m on duty.’
Both were silent.
‘She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve,’ 
went the song, arousing an involuntary sensation of cour-
age and cheerfulness. Their conversation would probably 
have been different but for the effect of that song.
‘Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?’ asked Do-
lokhov.
‘The devil only knows! They say so.’

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‘I’m glad,’ answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the 
song demanded.
‘I say, come round some evening and we’ll have a game 
of faro!’ said Zherkov.
‘Why, have you too much money?’
‘Do come.’
‘I can’t. I’ve sworn not to. I won’t drink and won’t play till 
I get reinstated.’
‘Well, that’s only till the first engagement.’
‘We shall see.’
They were again silent.
‘Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use 
on the staff..’
Dolokhov smiled. ‘Don’t trouble. If I want anything, I 
won’t begI’ll take it!’
‘Well, never mind; I only..’
‘And I only..’
‘Good-by.’
‘Good health..’
‘It’s 
a 
long, 
long 
way. 
To my native land..’
Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced ex-
citedly from foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then 
settled down, galloped past the company, and overtook the 
carriage, still keeping time to the song.

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Chapter III
On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Aus-
trian general into his private room and, calling his adjutant, 
asked for some papers relating to the condition of the 
troops on their arrival, and the letters that had come from 
the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in command of the ad-
vanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the room 
with the required papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian mem-
ber of the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a 
plan was spread out.
‘Ah!...’ said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this 
exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went 
on with the conversation in French.
‘All I can say, General,’ said he with a pleasant elegance 
of expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to 
each deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov 
himself listened with pleasure to his own voice. ‘All I can 
say, General, is that if the matter depended on my personal 
wishes, the will of His Majesty the Emperor Francis would 
have been fulfilled long ago. I should long ago have joined 
the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me 
personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme 
command of the army into the hands of a better informed 
and more skillful generalof whom Austria has so manyand 
to lay down all this heavy responsibility. But circumstances 

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are sometimes too strong for us, General.’
And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, ‘You 
are quite at liberty not to believe me and I don’t even care 
whether you do or not, but you have no grounds for telling 
me so. And that is the whole point.’
The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no op-
tion but to reply in the same tone.
‘On the contrary,’ he said, in a querulous and angry 
tone that contrasted with his flattering words, ‘on the con-
trary, your excellency’s participation in the common action 
is highly valued by His Majesty; but we think the present 
delay is depriving the splendid Russian troops and their 
commander of the laurels they have been accustomed to 
win in their battles,’ he concluded his evidently prearranged 
sentence.
Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.
‘But that is my conviction, and judging by the last let-
ter with which His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has 
honored me, I imagine that the Austrian troops, under the 
direction of so skillful a leader as General Mack, have by 
now already gained a decisive victory and no longer need 
our aid,’ said Kutuzov.
The general frowned. Though there was no definite news 
of an Austrian defeat, there were many circumstances con-
firming the unfavorable rumors that were afloat, and so 
Kutuzov’s suggestion of an Austrian victory sounded much 
like irony. But Kutuzov went on blandly smiling with the 
same expression, which seemed to say that he had a right to 
suppose so. And, in fact, the last letter he had received from 

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Mack’s army informed him of a victory and stated strategi-
cally the position of the army was very favorable.
‘Give me that letter,’ said Kutuzov turning to Prince An-
drew. ‘Please have a look at it’and Kutuzov with an ironical 
smile about the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian 
general the following passage, in German, from the Arch-
duke Ferdinand’s letter:
We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy 
thousand men with which to attack and defeat the enemy 
should he cross the Lech. Also, as we are masters of Ulm, we 
cannot be deprived of the advantage of commanding both 
sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not cross the 
Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line 
of communications, recross the river lower down, and frus-
trate his intention should he try to direct his whole force 
against our faithful ally. We shall therefore confidently 
await the moment when the Imperial Russian army will be 
fully equipped, and shall then, in conjunction with it, easily 
find a way to prepare for the enemy the fate he deserves.
Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and 
looked at the member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and at-
tentively.
‘But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising 
one to expect the worst,’ said the Austrian general, evident-
ly wishing to have done with jests and to come to business. 
He involuntarily looked round at the aide-de-camp.
‘Excuse me, General,’ interrupted Kutuzov, also turn-
ing to Prince Andrew. ‘Look here, my dear fellow, get from 
Kozlovski all the reports from our scouts. Here are two 

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letters from Count Nostitz and here is one from His High-
ness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these,’ he said, 
handing him several papers, ‘make a neat memorandum in 
French out of all this, showing all the news we have had of 
the movements of the Austrian army, and then give it to his 
excellency.’
Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having un-
derstood from the first not only what had been said but also 
what Kutuzov would have liked to tell him. He gathered up 
the papers and with a bow to both, stepped softly over the 
carpet and went out into the waiting room.
Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew 
had left Russia, he had changed greatly during that period. 
In the expression of his face, in his movements, in his walk, 
scarcely a trace was left of his former affected languor and 
indolence. He now looked like a man who has time to think 
of the impression he makes on others, but is occupied with 
agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed more 
satisfaction with himself and those around him, his smile 
and glance were brighter and more attractive.
Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received 
him very kindly, promised not to forget him, distinguished 
him above the other adjutants, and had taken him to Vi-
enna and given him the more serious commissions. From 
Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade, Prince Andrew’s 
father.
Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by 
his industry, firmness, and expedition. I consider myself 
fortunate to have such a subordinate by me.

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On Kutuzov’s staff, among his fellow officers and in the 
army generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Pe-
tersburg society, two quite opposite reputations. Some, a 
minority, acknowledged him to be different from them-
selves and from everyone else, expected great things of him, 
listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with them 
Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the ma-
jority, disliked him and considered him conceited, cold, and 
disagreeable. But among these people Prince Andrew knew 
how to take his stand so that they respected and even feared 
him.
Coming out of Kutuzov’s room into the waiting room 
with the papers in his hand Prince Andrew came up to his 
comrade, the aide-de-camp on duty, Kozlovski, who was 
sitting at the window with a book.
‘Well, Prince?’ asked Kozlovski.
‘I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why 
we are not advancing.’
‘And why is it?’
Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.
‘Any news from Mack?’
‘No.’
‘If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have 
come.’
‘Probably,’ said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer 
door.
But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, 
with the order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black 
bandage round his head, who had evidently just arrived, en-

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tered quickly, slamming the door. Prince Andrew stopped 
short.
‘Commander in Chief Kutuzov?’ said the newly arrived 
general speaking quickly with a harsh German accent, 
looking to both sides and advancing straight toward the in-
ner door.
‘The commander in chief is engaged,’ said Kozlovski, go-
ing hurriedly up to the unknown general and blocking his 
way to the door. ‘Whom shall I announce?’
The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Ko-
zlovski, who was rather short, as if surprised that anyone 
should not know him.
‘The commander in chief is engaged,’ repeated Kozlovski 
calmly.
The general’s face clouded, his lips quivered and trem-
bled. He took out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something 
in pencil, tore out the leaf, gave it to Kozlovski, stepped 
quickly to the window, and threw himself into a chair, gaz-
ing at those in the room as if asking, ‘Why do they look 
at me?’ Then he lifted his head, stretched his neck as if he 
intended to say something, but immediately, with affected 
indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer 
sound which immediately broke off. The door of the pri-
vate room opened and Kutuzov appeared in the doorway. 
The general with the bandaged head bent forward as though 
running away from some danger, and, making long, quick 
strides with his thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.
‘Vous voyez le malheureux Mack,’ he uttered in a broken 
voice.

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Kutuzov’s face as he stood in the open doorway remained 
perfectly immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran 
over his face like a wave and his forehead became smooth 
again, he bowed his head respectfully, closed his eyes, si-
lently let Mack enter his room before him, and closed the 
door himself behind him.
The report which had been circulated that the Austrians 
had been beaten and that the whole army had surrendered 
at Ulm proved to be correct. Within half an hour adju-
tants had been sent in various directions with orders which 
showed that the Russian troops, who had hitherto been in-
active, would also soon have to meet the enemy.
Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose 
chief interest lay in the general progress of the war. When 
he saw Mack and heard the details of his disaster he un-
derstood that half the campaign was lost, understood all 
the difficulties of the Russian army’s position, and vivid-
ly imagined what awaited it and the part he would have to 
play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the thought 
of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week’s 
time he might, perhaps, see and take part in the first Rus-
sian encounter with the French since Suvorov met them. He 
feared that Bonaparte’s genius might outweigh all the cour-
age of the Russian troops, and at the same time could not 
admit the idea of his hero being disgraced.
Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew 
went toward his room to write to his father, to whom he 
wrote every day. In the corridor he met Nesvitski, with 
whom he shared a room, and the wag Zherkov; they were 

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as usual laughing.
‘Why are you so glum?’ asked Nesvitski noticing Prince 
Andrew’s pale face and glittering eyes.
‘There’s nothing to be gay about,’ answered Bolkonski.
Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, 
there came toward them from the other end of the corri-
dor, Strauch, an Austrian general who on Kutuzov’s staff 
in charge of the provisioning of the Russian army, and the 
member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived the previ-
ous evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor 
for the generals to pass the three officers quite easily, but 
Zherkov, pushing Nesvitski aside with his arm, said in a 
breathless voice,
‘They’re coming!... they’re coming!... Stand aside, make 
way, please make way!’
The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished 
to avoid embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag 
Zherkov there suddenly appeared a stupid smile of glee 
which he seemed unable to suppress.
‘Your excellency,’ said he in German, stepping forward 
and addressing the Austrian general, ‘I have the honor to 
congratulate you.’
He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and 
then with the other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing 
lesson.
The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severe-
ly but, seeing the seriousness of his stupid smile, could not 
but give him a moment’s attention. He screwed up his eyes 
showing that he was listening.

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‘I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has 
arrived, quite well, only a little bruised just here,’ he added, 
pointing with a beaming smile to his head.
The general frowned, turned away, and went on.
‘Gott, wie naiv!’* said he angrily, after he had gone a few 
steps.
*”Good God, what simplicity!’
Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince An-
drew, but Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away 
with an angry look and turned to Zherkov. The nervous ir-
ritation aroused by the appearance of Mack, the news of his 
defeat, and the thought of what lay before the Russian army 
found vent in anger at Zherkov’s untimely jest.
‘If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself,’ he said 
sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, ‘I can’t pre-
vent your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play 
the fool in my presence, I will teach you to behave your-
self.’
Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst 
that they gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.
‘What’s the matter? I only congratulated them,’ said 
Zherkov.
‘I am not jesting with you; please be silent!’ cried Bolkon-
ski, and taking Nesvitski’s arm he left Zherkov, who did not 
know what to say.
‘Come, what’s the matter, old fellow?’ said Nesvitski try-
ing to soothe him.
‘What’s the matter?’ exclaimed Prince Andrew standing 
still in his excitement. ‘Don’t you understand that either we 

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are officers serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in 
the successes and grieving at the misfortunes of our com-
mon cause, or we are merely lackeys who care nothing for 
their master’s business. Quarante mille hommes massacres 
et l’armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la le mot 
pour rire,’* he said, as if strengthening his views by this 
French sentence. ‘C’ est bien pour un garcon de rein comme 
cet individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, 
pas pour vous.*[2] Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself 
in this way,’ he added in Russianbut pronouncing the word 
with a French accenthaving noticed that Zherkov could still 
hear him.
*”Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our 
allies destroyed, and you find that a cause for jesting!’
*[2] ‘It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow 
of whom you have made a friend, but not for you, not for 
you.’
He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would an-
swer, but he turned and went out of the corridor.

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Chapter IV
The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from 
Braunau. The squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served 
as a cadet was quartered in the German village of Salze-
neck. The best quarters in the village were assigned to 
cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known 
throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. 
Cadet Rostov, ever since he had overtaken the regiment in 
Poland, had lived with the squadron commander.
On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquar-
ters over the news of Mack’s defeat, the camp life of the 
officers of this squadron was proceeding as usual. Denisov, 
who had been losing at cards all night, had not yet come 
home when Rostov rode back early in the morning from 
a foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet uniform, with a 
jerk to his horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg over 
the saddle with a supple youthful movement, stood for a 
moment in the stirrup as if loathe to part from his horse, 
and at last sprang down and called to his orderly.
‘Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!’ said he to the hussar who 
rushed up headlong to the horse. ‘Walk him up and down, 
my dear fellow,’ he continued, with that gay brotherly cor-
diality which goodhearted young people show to everyone 
when they are happy.
‘Yes, your excellency,’ answered the Ukrainian gaily, 

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tossing his head.
‘Mind, walk him up and down well!’
Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bond-
arenko had already thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle 
over the horse’s head. It was evident that the cadet was lib-
eral with his tips and that it paid to serve him. Rostov patted 
the horse’s neck and then his flank, and lingered for a mo-
ment.
‘Splendid! What a horse he will be!’ he thought with a 
smile, and holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran 
up the steps of the porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat 
and a pointed cap, pitchfork in hand, was clearing manure 
from the cowhouse, looked out, and his face immediately 
brightened on seeing Rostov. ‘Schon gut Morgen! Schon gut 
Morgen!’* he said winking with a merry smile, evidently 
pleased to greet the young man.
*”A very good morning! A very good morning!’
‘Schon fleissig?’* said Rostov with the same gay brotherly 
smile which did not leave his eager face. ‘Hoch Oestreicher! 
Hoch Russen! Kaiser Alexander hoch!’*[2] said he, quoting 
words often repeated by the German landlord.
*”Busy already?’
*[2] ‘Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians! 
Hurrah for Emperor Alexander!’
The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled 
off his cap, and waving it above his head cried:
‘Und die ganze Welt hoch!’*
*”And hurrah for the whole world!’
Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German 

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and ctied laughing, ‘Und vivat die ganze Welt!’ Though 
neither the German cleaning his cowshed nor Rostov back 
with his platoon from foraging for hay had any reason for 
rejoicing, they looked at each other with joyful delight and 
brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of their mutual 
affection, and parted smiling, the German returning to his 
cowshed and Rostov going to the cottage he occupied with 
Denisov.
‘What about your master?’ he asked Lavrushka, Denis-
ov’s orderly, whom all the regiment knew for a rogue.
‘Hasn’t been in since the evening. Must have been losing,’ 
answered Lavrushka. ‘I know by now, if he wins he comes 
back early to brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it 
means he’s lost and will come back in a rage. Will you have 
coffee?’
‘Yes, bring some.’
Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. ‘He’s 
coming!’ said he. ‘Now for trouble!’ Rostov looked out of 
the window and saw Denisov coming home. Denisov was a 
small man with a red face, sparkling black eyes, and black 
tousled mustache and hair. He wore an unfastened cloak, 
wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a crumpled 
shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch 
gloomily, hanging his head.
‘Lavwuska!’ he shouted loudly and angrily, ‘take it off, 
blockhead!’
‘Well, I am taking it off,’ replied Lavrushka’s voice.
‘Ah, you’re up already,’ said Denisov, entering the room.
‘Long ago,’ answered Rostov, ‘I have already been for the 

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hay, and have seen Fraulein Mathilde.’
‘Weally! And I’ve been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday 
like a damned fool!’ cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r’s. 
‘Such ill luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and 
went on. Hullo there! Tea!’
Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his 
short strong teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both 
hands to ruffle up his thick tangled black hair.
‘And what devil made me go to that wat?’ (an officer nick-
named ‘the rat’) he said, rubbing his forehead and whole 
face with both hands. ‘Just fancy, he didn’t let me win a sin-
gle cahd, not one cahd.’
He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped 
it in his fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks 
fly, while he continued to shout.
‘He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one 
doubles it; gives the singles and snatches the doubles!’
He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and 
threw it away. Then he remained silent for a while, and all 
at once looked cheerfully with his glittering, black eyes at 
Rostov.
‘If at least we had some women here; but there’s noth-
ing foh one to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting 
soon. Hullo, who’s there?’ he said, turning to the door as he 
heard a tread of heavy boots and the clinking of spurs that 
came to a stop, and a respectful cough.
‘The squadron quartermaster!’ said Lavrushka.
Denisov’s face puckered still more.
‘Wetched!’ he muttered, throwing down a purse with 

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some gold in it. ‘Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much 
there is left and shove the purse undah the pillow,’ he said, 
and went out to the quartermaster.
Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the 
old and new coins in separate piles, began counting them.
‘Ah! Telyanin! How d’ye do? They plucked me last night,’ 
came Denisov’s voice from the next room.
‘Where? At Bykov’s, at the rat’s... I knew it,’ replied a pip-
ing voice, and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the 
same squadron, entered the room.
Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the 
damp little hand which was offered him. Telyanin for some 
reason had been transferred from the Guards just before 
this campaign. He behaved very well in the regiment but 
was not liked; Rostov especially detested him and was un-
able to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to the 
man.
‘Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?’ he 
asked. (Rook was a young horse Telyanin had sold to Ros-
tov.)
The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to 
straight in the face; his eyes continually wandered from one 
object to another.
‘I saw you riding this morning...’ he added.
‘Oh, he’s all right, a good horse,’ answered Rostov, though 
the horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was 
not worth half that sum. ‘He’s begun to go a little lame on 
the left foreleg,’ he added.
‘The hoof’s cracked! That’s nothing. I’ll teach you what to 

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do and show you what kind of rivet to use.’
‘Yes, please do,’ said Rostov.
‘I’ll show you, I’ll show you! It’s not a secret. And it’s a 
horse you’ll thank me for.’
‘Then I’ll have it brought round,’ said Rostov wishing to 
avoid Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.
In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on 
the threshold facing the quartermaster who was report-
ing to him. On seeing Rostov, Denisov screwed up his face 
and pointing over his shoulder with his thumb to the room 
where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned and gave a shudder 
of disgust.
‘Ugh! I don’t like that fellow‘‘ he said, regardless of the 
quartermaster’s presence.
Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: ‘Nor 
do I, but what’s one to do?’ and, having given his order, he 
returned to Telyanin.
Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which 
Rostov had left him, rubbing his small white hands.
‘Well there certainly are disgusting people,’ thought Ros-
tov as he entered.
‘Have you told them to bring the horse?’ asked Telyanin, 
getting up and looking carelessly about him.
‘I have.’
‘Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov 
about yesterday’s order. Have you got it, Denisov?’
‘Not yet. But where are you off to?’
‘I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse,’ said 
Telyanin.

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They went through the porch and into the stable. The 
lieutenant explained how to rivet the hoof and went away 
to his own quarters.
When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and 
a sausage on the table. Denisov was sitting there scratching 
with his pen on a sheet of paper. He looked gloomily in Ros-
tov’s face and said: ‘I am witing to her.’
He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand 
and, evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what 
he wanted to write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.
‘You see, my fwiend,’ he said, ‘we sleep when we don’t 
love. We are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and 
one is a God, one is pua’ as on the first day of cweation... 
Who’s that now? Send him to the devil, I’m busy!’ he shouted 
to Lavrushka, who went up to him not in the least abashed.
‘Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It’s the 
quartermaster for the money.’
Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but 
stopped.
‘Wetched business,’ he muttered to himself. ‘How much 
is left in the puhse?’ he asked, turning to Rostov.
‘Seven new and three old imperials.’
‘Oh, it’s wetched! Well, what are you standing there 
for, you sca’cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh,’ he shouted to 
Lavrushka.
‘Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you 
know,’ said Rostov, blushing.
‘Don’t like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don’t,’ 
growled Denisov.

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‘But if you won’t accept money from me like a comrade, 
you will offend me. Really I have some,’ Rostov repeated.
‘No, I tell you.’
And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from un-
der the pillow.
‘Where have you put it, Wostov?’
‘Under the lower pillow.’
‘It’s not there.’
Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was 
not there.
‘That’s a miwacle.’
‘Wait, haven’t you dropped it?’ said Rostov, picking up 
the pillows one at a time and shaking them.
He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not 
there.
‘Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember think-
ing that you kept it under your head like a treasure,’ said 
Rostov. ‘I put it just here. Where is it?’ he asked, turning to 
Lavrushka.
‘I haven’t been in the room. It must be where you put it.’
‘But it isn’t?..’
‘You’re always like that; you thwow a thing down any-
where and forget it. Feel in your pockets.’
‘No, if I hadn’t thought of it being a treasure,’ said Ros-
tov, ‘but I remember putting it there.’
Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the 
bed and under the table, searched everywhere, and stood 
still in the middle of the room. Denisov silently watched 
Lavrushka’s movements, and when the latter threw up his 

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arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found Denisov 
glanced at Rostov.
‘Wostov, you’ve not been playing schoolboy twicks..’
Rostov felt Denisov’s gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, 
and instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had 
seemed congested somewhere below his throat rushed to 
his face and eyes. He could not draw breath.
‘And there hasn’t been anyone in the room except the 
lieutenant and yourselves. It must be here somewhere,’ said 
Lavrushka.
‘Now then, you devil’s puppet, look alive and hunt for it!’ 
shouted Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at 
the man with a threatening gesture. ‘If the purse isn’t found 
I’ll flog you, I’ll flog you all.’
Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his 
coat, buckled on his saber, and put on his cap.
‘I must have that purse, I tell you,’ shouted Denisov, shak-
ing his orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against 
the wall.
‘Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it,’ said 
Rostov, going toward the door without raising his eyes. 
Denisov paused, thought a moment, and, evidently under-
standing what Rostov hinted at, seized his arm.
‘Nonsense!’ he cried, and the veins on his forehead and 
neck stood out like cords. ‘You are mad, I tell you. I won’t 
allow it. The purse is here! I’ll flay this scoundwel alive, and 
it will be found.’
‘I know who has taken it,’ repeated Rostov in an unsteady 
voice, and went to the door.

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‘And I tell you, don’t you dahe to do it!’ shouted Denisov, 
rushing at the cadet to restrain him.
But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger 
as though Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his 
eyes directly on his face.
‘Do you understand what you’re saying?’ he said in a 
trembling voice. ‘There was no one else in the room except 
myself. So that if it is not so, then..’
He could not finish, and ran out of the room.
‘Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody,’ were the last 
words Rostov heard.
Rostov went to Telyanin’s quarters.
‘The master is not in, he’s gone to headquarters,’ said 
Telyanin’s orderly. ‘Has something happened?’ he added, 
surprised at the cadet’s troubled face.
‘No, nothing.’
‘You’ve only just missed him,’ said the orderly.
The headquarters were situated two miles away from 
Salzeneck, and Rostov, without returning home, took a 
horse and rode there. There was an inn in the village which 
the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to it and saw Telya-
nin’s horse at the porch.
In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting 
over a dish of sausages and a bottle of wine.
‘Ah, you’ve come here too, young man!’ he said, smiling 
and raising his eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the 
word; and he sat down at the nearest table.
Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Rus-

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sian officer in the room. No one spoke and the only sounds 
heard were the clatter of knives and the munching of the 
lieutenant.
When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his 
pocket a double purse and, drawing its rings aside with his 
small, white, turned-up fingers, drew out a gold imperial, 
and lifting his eyebrows gave it to the waiter.
‘Please be quick,’ he said.
The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Tely-
anin.
‘Allow me to look at your purse,’ he said in a low, almost 
inaudible, voice.
With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin 
handed him the purse.
‘Yes, it’s a nice purse. Yes, yes,’ he said, growing suddenly 
pale, and added, ‘Look at it, young man.’
Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the 
money in it, and looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was 
looking about in his usual way and suddenly seemed to 
grow very merry.
‘If we get to Vienna I’ll get rid of it there but in these 
wretched little towns there’s nowhere to spend it,’ said he. 
‘Well, let me have it, young man, I’m going.’
Rostov did not speak.
‘And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed 
you quite decently here,’ continued Telyanin. ‘Now then, let 
me have it.’
He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Ros-
tov let go of it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly 

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slipping it into the pocket of his riding breeches, with his 
eyebrows lifted and his mouth slightly open, as if to say, 
‘Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in my pocket and that’s 
quite simple and is no else’s business.’
‘Well, young man?’ he said with a sigh, and from under 
his lifted brows he glanced into Rostov’s eyes.
Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin’s 
eyes to Rostov’s and back, and back again and again in an 
instant.
‘Come here,’ said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin’s 
arm and almost dragging him to the window. ‘That money 
is Denisov’s; you took it...’ he whispered just above Telya-
nin’s ear.
‘What? What? How dare you? What?’ said Telyanin.
But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and 
an entreaty for pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an 
enormous load of doubt fell from him. He was glad, and at 
the same instant began to pity the miserable man who stood 
before him, but the task he had begun had to be completed.
‘Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine,’ 
muttered Telyanin, taking up his cap and moving toward a 
small empty room. ‘We must have an explanation..’
‘I know it and shall prove it,’ said Rostov.
‘I..’
Every muscle of Telyanin’s pale, terrified face began 
to quiver, his eyes still shifted from side to side but with 
a downward look not rising to Rostov’s face, and his sobs 
were audible.
‘Count!... Don’t ruin a young fellow... here is this wretch-

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ed money, take it...’ He threw it on the table. ‘I have an old 
father and mother!..’
Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin’s eyes, and 
went out of the room without a word. But at the door he 
stopped and then retraced his steps. ‘O God,’ he said with 
tears in his eyes, ‘how could you do it?’
‘Count...’ said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.
‘Don’t touch me,’ said Rostov, drawing back. ‘If you need 
it, take the money,’ and he threw the purse to him and ran 
out of the inn.

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Chapter V
That same evening there was an animated discussion 
among the squadron’s officers in Denisov’s quarters.
‘And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the 
colonel!’ said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enor-
mous mustaches and many wrinkles on his large features, 
to Rostov who was crimson with excitement.
The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the 
ranks for affairs of honor and had twice regained his com-
mission.
‘I will allow no one to call me a liar!’ cried Rostov. ‘He 
told me I lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He 
may keep me on duty every day, or may place me under ar-
rest, but no one can make me apologize, because if he, as 
commander of this regiment, thinks it beneath his dignity 
to give me satisfaction, then..’
‘You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen,’ in-
terrupted the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking 
his long mustache. ‘You tell the colonel in the presence of 
other officers that an officer has stolen..’
‘I’m not to blame that the conversation began in the pres-
ence of other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken 
before them, but I am not a diplomatist. That’s why I joined 
the hussars, thinking that here one would not need finesse; 
and he tells me that I am lyingso let him give me satisfac-

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tion..’
‘That’s all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that’s 
not the point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the ques-
tion for a cadet to demand satisfaction of his regimental 
commander?’
Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening 
to the conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in 
it. He answered the staff captain’s question by a disapprov-
ing shake of his head.
‘You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before 
other officers,’ continued the staff captain, ‘and Bogdanich’ 
(the colonel was called Bogdanich) ‘shuts you up.’
‘He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth.’
‘Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him 
and must apologize.’
‘Not on any account!’ exclaimed Rostov.
‘I did not expect this of you,’ said the staff captain se-
riously and severely. ‘You don’t wish to apologize, but, 
man, it’s not only to him but to the whole regimentall of 
usyou’re to blame all round. The case is this: you ought to 
have thought the matter over and taken advice; but no, you 
go and blurt it all straight out before the officers. Now what 
was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and disgrace 
the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because 
of one scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don’t see it 
like that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were 
saying what was not true. It’s not pleasant, but what’s to be 
done, my dear fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now, 
when one wants to smooth the thing over, some conceit 

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prevents your apologizing, and you wish to make the whole 
affair public. You are offended at being put on duty a bit, but 
why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatev-
er Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave 
old colonel! You’re quick at taking offense, but you don’t 
mind disgracing the whole regiment!’ The staff captain’s 
voice began to tremble. ‘You have been in the regiment next 
to no time, my lad, you’re here today and tomorrow you’ll 
be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your fingers 
when it is said ‘There are thieves among the Pavlograd offi-
cers!’ But it’s not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denisov? 
It’s not the same!’
Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasion-
ally looked with his glittering black eyes at Rostov.
‘You value your own pride and don’t wish to apologize,’ 
continued the staff captain, ‘but we old fellows, who have 
grown up in and, God willing, are going to die in the regi-
ment, we prize the honor of the regiment, and Bogdanich 
knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old fellow! And all this is not 
right, it’s not right! You may take offense or not but I always 
stick to mother truth. It’s not right!’
And the staff captain rose and turned away from Ros-
tov.
‘That’s twue, devil take it’ shouted Denisov, jumping up. 
‘Now then, Wostov, now then!’
Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at 
one officer and then at the other.
‘No, gentlemen, no... you mustn’t think... I quite under-
stand. You’re wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for 

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the honor of the regiment I’d... Ah well, I’ll show that in 
action, and for me the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, 
it’s true I’m to blame, to blame all round. Well, what else do 
you want?..’
‘Come, that’s right, Count!’ cried the staff captain, turn-
ing round and clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big 
hand.
‘I tell you,’ shouted Denisov, ‘he’s a fine fellow.’
‘That’s better, Count,’ said the staff captain, beginning to 
address Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confes-
sion. ‘Go and apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!’
‘Gentlemen, I’ll do anything. No one shall hear a word 
from me,’ said Rostov in an imploring voice, ‘but I can’t 
apologize, by God I can’t, do what you will! How can I go 
and apologize like a little boy asking forgiveness?’
Denisov began to laugh.
‘It’ll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you’ll 
pay for your obstinacy,’ said Kirsten.
‘No, on my word it’s not obstinacy! I can’t describe the 
feeling. I can’t..’
‘Well, it’s as you like,’ said the staff captain. ‘And what 
has become of that scoundrel?’ he asked Denisov.
‘He has weported himself sick, he’s to be stwuck off the 
list tomowwow,’ muttered Denisov.
‘It is an illness, there’s no other way of explaining it,’ said 
the staff captain.
‘Illness or not, he’d better not cwoss my path. I’d kill 
him!’ shouted Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.
Just then Zherkov entered the room.

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‘What brings you here?’ cried the officers turning to the 
newcomer.
‘We’re to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surren-
dered with his whole army.’
‘It’s not true!’
‘I’ve seen him myself!’
‘What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?’
‘Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such 
news! But how did you come here?’
‘I’ve been sent back to the regiment all on account of 
that devil, Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. 
I congratulated him on Mack’s arrival... What’s the matter, 
Rostov? You look as if you’d just come out of a hot bath.’
‘Oh, my dear fellow, we’re in such a stew here these last 
two days.’
The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the 
news brought by Zherkov. They were under orders to ad-
vance next day.
‘We’re going into action, gentlemen!’
‘Well, thank God! We’ve been sitting here too long!’

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Chapter VI
Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind 
him the bridges over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun 
(near Linz). On October 23 the Russian troops were cross-
ing the river Enns. At midday the Russian baggage train, 
the artillery, and columns of troops were defiling through 
the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.
It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse 
that opened out before the heights on which the Russian 
batteries stood guarding the bridge was at times veiled by 
a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and then, sudden-
ly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could be 
clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down 
below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-
roofed houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides 
of which streamed jostling masses of Russian troops. At the 
bend of the Danube, vessels, an island, and a castle with a 
park surrounded by the waters of the confluence of the Enns 
and the Danube became visible, and the rocky left bank of 
the Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic back-
ground of green treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a 
convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far 
away on the other side of the Enns the enemy’s horse patrols 
could be discerned.
Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the gen-

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eral in command of the rearguard stood with a staff officer, 
scanning the country through his fieldglass. A little behind 
them Nesvitski, who had been sent to the rearguard by the 
commander in chief, was sitting on the trail of a gun car-
riage. A Cossack who accompanied him had handed him a 
knapsack and a flask, and Nesvitski was treating some of-
ficers to pies and real doppelkummel. The officers gladly 
gathered round him, some on their knees, some squatting 
Turkish fashion on the wet grass.
‘Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no 
fool. It’s a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gen-
tlemen?’ Nesvitski was saying.
‘Thank you very much, Prince,’ answered one of the 
officers, pleased to be talking to a staff officer of such im-
portance. ‘It’s a lovely place! We passed close to the park and 
saw two deer... and what a splendid house!’
‘Look, Prince,’ said another, who would have dearly liked 
to take another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to 
be examining the countryside‘See, our infantrymen have 
already got there. Look there in the meadow behind the vil-
lage, three of them are dragging something. They’ll ransack 
that castle,’ he remarked with evident approval.
‘So they will,’ said Nesvitski. ‘No, but what I should like,’ 
added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome 
mouth, ‘would be to slip in over there.’
He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his 
eyes narrowed and gleamed.
‘That would be fine, gentlemen!’
The officers laughed.

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‘Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian 
girls among them. On my word I’d give five years of my life 
for it!’
‘They must be feeling dull, too,’ said one of the bolder of-
ficers, laughing.
Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed 
out something to the general, who looked through his field 
glass.
‘Yes, so it is, so it is,’ said the general angrily, lowering the 
field glass and shrugging his shoulders, ‘so it is! They’ll be 
fired on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?’
On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the na-
ked eye, and from their battery a milk-white cloud arose. 
Then came the distant report of a shot, and our troops could 
be seen hurrying to the crossing.
Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smil-
ing.
‘Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?’ he 
said.
‘It’s a bad business,’ said the general without answering 
him, ‘our men have been wasting time.’
‘Hadn’t I better ride over, your excellency?’ asked Nes-
vitski.
‘Yes, please do,’ answered the general, and he repeated 
the order that had already once been given in detail: ‘and 
tell the hussars that they are to cross last and to fire the 
bridge as I ordered; and the inflammable material on the 
bridge must be reinspected.’
‘Very good,’ answered Nesvitski.

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He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put 
away the knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person 
easily into the saddle.
‘I’ll really call in on the nuns,’ he said to the officers who 
watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path 
down the hill.
‘Now then, let’s see how far it will carry, Captain. Just 
try!’ said the general, turning to an artillery officer. ‘Have a 
little fun to pass the time.’
‘Crew, to your guns!’ commanded the officer.
In a moment the men came running gaily from their 
campfires and began loading.
‘One!’ came the command.
Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out 
with a deafening metallic roar, and a whistling grenade 
flew above the heads of our troops below the hill and fell far 
short of the enemy, a little smoke showing the spot where 
it burst.
The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. 
Everyone got up and began watching the movements of our 
troops below, as plainly visible as if but a stone’s throw away, 
and the movements of the approaching enemy farther off. 
At the same instant the sun came fully out from behind the 
clouds, and the clear sound of the solitary shot and the bril-
liance of the bright sunshine merged in a single joyous and 
spirited impression.

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Chapter VII
Two of the enemy’s shots had already flown across the 
bridge, where there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince 
Nesvitski, who had alighted from his horse and whose big 
body was body was jammed against the railings. He looked 
back laughing to the Cossack who stood a few steps behind 
him holding two horses by their bridles. Each time Prince 
Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed him 
back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he 
could do was to smile.
‘What a fine fellow you are, friend!’ said the Cossack to 
a convoy soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the 
infantrymen who were crowded together close to his wheels 
and his horses. ‘What a fellow! You can’t wait a moment! 
Don’t you see the general wants to pass?’
But the convoyman took no notice of the word ‘general’ 
and shouted at the soldiers who were blocking his way. ‘Hi 
there, boys! Keep to the left! Wait a bit.’ But the soldiers, 
crowded together shoulder to shoulder, their bayonets in-
terlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense mass. Looking 
down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the rapid, noisy 
little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying round 
the piles of the bridge chased each other along. Looking on 
the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers, 
shoulder straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long 

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muskets, and, under the shakos, faces with broad cheek-
bones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions, and feet 
that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks 
of the bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of 
men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of the Enns, an 
officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different from that 
of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of 
wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or 
a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and 
sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers’ or 
company’s baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and 
hemmed in on all sides, moved across the bridge.
‘It’s as if a dam had burst,’ said the Cossack hopelessly. 
‘Are there many more of you to come?’
‘A million all but one!’ replied a waggish soldier in a torn 
coat, with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an 
old man.
‘If he’ (he meant the enemy) ‘begins popping at the bridge 
now,’ said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, ‘you’ll for-
get to scratch yourself.’
That soldier passed on, and after him came another sit-
ting on a cart.
‘Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?’ said 
an orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the 
back of it.
And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some 
merry soldiers who had evidently been drinking.
‘And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with 
the butt end of his gun...’ a soldier whose greatcoat was well 

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tucked up said gaily, with a wide swing of his arm.
‘Yes, the ham was just delicious...’ answered another with 
a loud laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did 
not learn who had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham 
had to do with it.
‘Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they 
think they’ll all be killed,’ a sergeant was saying angrily and 
reproachfully.
‘As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean,’ said a young 
soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from 
laughing, ‘I felt like dying of fright. I did, ‘pon my word, I 
got that frightened!’ said he, as if bragging of having been 
frightened.
That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that 
had gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses 
led by a German, and seemed loaded with a whole house-
ful of effects. A fine brindled cow with a large udder was 
attached to the cart behind. A woman with an unweaned 
baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl with bright 
red cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently 
these fugitives were allowed to pass by special permission. 
The eyes of all the soldiers turned toward the women, and 
while the vehicle was passing at foot pace all the soldiers’ 
remarks related to the two young ones. Every face bore al-
most the same smile, expressing unseemly thoughts about 
the women.
‘Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!’
‘Sell me the missis,’ said another soldier, addressing the 
German, who, angry and frightened, strode energetically 

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along with downcast eyes.
‘See how smart she’s made herself! Oh, the devils!’
‘There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!’
‘I have seen as much before now, mate!’
‘Where are you going?’ asked an infantry officer who was 
eating an apple, also half smiling as he looked at the hand-
some girl.
The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not 
understand.
‘Take it if you like,’ said the officer, giving the girl an ap-
ple.
The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the 
men on the bridge did not take his eyes off the women till 
they had passed. When they had gone by, the same stream 
of soldiers followed, with the same kind of talk, and at last 
all stopped. As often happens, the horses of a convoy wagon 
became restive at the end of the bridge, and the whole crowd 
had to wait.
‘And why are they stopping? There’s no proper order!’ 
said the soldiers. ‘Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! 
Can’t you wait? It’ll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here’s 
an officer jammed in too’different voices were saying in the 
crowd, as the men looked at one another, and all pressed to-
ward the exit from the bridge.
Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, 
Nesvitski suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something 
swiftly approaching... something big, that splashed into the 
water.
‘Just see where it carries to!’ a soldier near by said sternly, 

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looking round at the sound.
‘Encouraging us to get along quicker,’ said another un-
easily.
The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was 
a cannon ball.
‘Hey, Cossack, my horse!’ he said. ‘Now, then, you there! 
get out of the way! Make way!’
With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and 
shouting continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed 
themselves to make way for him, but again pressed on him 
so that they jammed his leg, and those nearest him were not 
to blame for they were themselves pressed still harder from 
behind.
‘Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!’ came a hoarse 
voice from behind him.
Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away 
but separated by the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska 
Denisov, red and shaggy, with his cap on the back of his 
black head and a cloak hanging jauntily over his shoulder.
‘Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!’ shouted 
Denisov evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with 
their bloodshot whites glittering and rolling as he waved his 
sheathed saber in a small bare hand as red as his face.
‘Ah, Vaska!’ joyfully replied Nesvitski. ‘What’s up with 
you?’
‘The squadwon can’t pass,’ shouted Vaska Denisov, 
showing his white teeth fiercely and spurring his black 
thoroughbred Arab, which twitched its ears as the bayonets 
touched it, and snorted, spurting white foam from his bit, 

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tramping the planks of the bridge with his hoofs, and ap-
parently ready to jump over the railings had his rider let 
him. ‘What is this? They’re like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of 
the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart! 
I’ll hack you with my saber!’ he shouted, actually drawing 
his saber from its scabbard and flourishing it
The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified 
faces, and Denisov joined Nesvitski.
‘How’s it you’re not drunk today?’ said Nesvitski when 
the other had ridden up to him.
‘They don’t even give one time to dwink!’ answered Vas-
ka Denisov. ‘They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo 
all day. If they mean to fight, let’s fight. But the devil knows 
what this is.’
‘What a dandy you are today!’ said Nesvitski, looking at 
Denisov’s new cloak and saddlecloth.
Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief 
that diffused a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski’s 
nose.
‘Of course. I’m going into action! I’ve shaved, bwushed 
my teeth, and scented myself.’
The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cos-
sack, and the determination of Denisov who flourished 
his sword and shouted frantically, had such an effect that 
they managed to squeeze through to the farther side of the 
bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the bridge Nesvitski 
found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the order, and 
having done this he rode back.
Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of 

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the bridge. Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neigh-
ing and pawing the ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he 
watched his squadron draw nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, 
as of several horses galloping, resounded on the planks of 
the bridge, and the squadron, officers in front and men four 
abreast, spread across the bridge and began to emerge on 
his side of it.
The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the 
bridge in the trampled mud and gazed with that particu-
lar feeling of ill-will, estrangement, and ridicule with which 
troops of different arms usually encounter one another at 
the clean, smart hussars who moved past them in regular 
order.
‘Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!’ said one.
‘What good are they? They’re led about just for show!’ 
remarked another.
‘Don’t kick up the dust, you infantry!’ jested an hussar 
whose prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot sol-
diers.
‘I’d like to put you on a two days’ march with a knap-
sack! Your fine cords would soon get a bit rubbed,’ said an 
infantryman, wiping the mud off his face with his sleeve. 
‘Perched up there, you’re more like a bird than a man.’
‘There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. 
You’d look fine,’ said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier 
who bent under the weight of his knapsack.
‘Take a stick between your legs, that’ll suit you for a 
horse!’ the hussar shouted back.

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Chapter VIII
The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, 
squeezing together as they approached it as if pass-
ing through a funnel. At last the baggage wagons had all 
crossed, the crush was less, and the last battalion came onto 
the bridge. Only Denisov’s squadron of hussars remained 
on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who 
could be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was 
not yet visible from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from 
the valley through which the river flowed was formed by 
the rising ground only half a mile away. At the foot of the 
hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of our Cossack 
scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the 
high ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. 
These were the French. A group of Cossack scouts retired 
down the hill at a trot. All the officers and men of Denisov’s 
squadron, though they tried to talk of other things and to 
look in other directions, thought only of what was there on 
the hilltop, and kept constantly looking at the patches ap-
pearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the enemy’s 
troops. The weather had cleared again since noon and the 
sun was descending brightly upon the Danube and the dark 
hills around it. It was calm, and at intervals the bugle calls 
and the shouts of the enemy could be heard from the hill. 
There was no one now between the squadron and the enemy 

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except a few scattered skirmishers. An empty space of some 
seven hundred yards was all that separated them. The en-
emy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible, 
and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was 
all the more clearly felt.
‘One step beyond that boundary line which resembles 
the line dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, 
suffering, and death. And what is there? Who is there?there 
beyond that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No 
one knows, but one wants to know. You fear and yet long 
to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must be 
crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as 
you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of 
death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, 
and are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and 
healthy men.’ So thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who 
comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives a partic-
ular glamour and glad keenness of impression to everything 
that takes place at such moments.
On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of 
a cannon rose, and a ball flew whistling over the heads of 
the hussar squadron. The officers who had been standing 
together rode off to their places. The hussars began careful-
ly aligning their horses. Silence fell on the whole squadron. 
All were looking at the enemy in front and at the squadron 
commander, awaiting the word of command. A second and 
a third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at 
the hussars, but the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew 
over the heads of the horsemen and fell somewhere beyond 

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them. The hussars did not look round, but at the sound of 
each shot, as at the word of command, the whole squadron 
with its rows of faces so alike yet so different, holding its 
breath while the ball flew past, rose in the stirrups and sank 
back again. The soldiers without turning their heads glanced 
at one another, curious to see their comrades’ impression. 
Every face, from Denisov’s to that of the bugler, showed one 
common expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement, 
around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned, look-
ing at the soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet 
Mironov ducked every time a ball flew past. Rostov on the 
left flank, mounted on his Rooka handsome horse despite its 
game leghad the happy air of a schoolboy called up before a 
large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he 
will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with 
a clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how 
calmly he sat under fire. But despite himself, on his face too 
that same indication of something new and stern showed 
round the mouth.
‘Who’s that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That’s not 
wight! Look at me,’ cried Denisov who, unable to keep still 
on one spot, kept turning his horse in front of the squad-
ron.
The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and 
his whole short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand 
and stumpy fingers in which he held the hilt of his naked sa-
ber, looked just as it usually did, especially toward evening 
when he had emptied his second bottle; he was only redder 
than usual. With his shaggy head thrown back like birds 

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when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the 
sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though fall-
ing backwards in the saddle, he galloped to the other flank 
of the squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to the men to 
look to their pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The staff captain 
on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a walk to meet 
him. His face with its long mustache was serious as always, 
only his eyes were brighter than usual.
‘Well, what about it?’ said he to Denisov. ‘It won’t come to 
a fight. You’ll seewe shall retire.’
‘The devil only knows what they’re about!’ muttered 
Denisov. ‘Ah, Wostov,’ he cried noticing the cadet’s bright 
face, ‘you’ve got it at last.’
And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the 
cadet. Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander 
appeared on the bridge. Denisov galloped up to him.
‘Your excellency! Let us attack them! I’ll dwive them 
off.’
‘Attack indeed!’ said the colonel in a bored voice, pucker-
ing up his face as if driving off a troublesome fly. ‘And why 
are you stopping here? Don’t you see the skirmishers are re-
treating? Lead the squadron back.’
The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range 
of fire without having lost a single man. The second squad-
ron that had been in the front line followed them across and 
the last Cossacks quitted the farther side of the river.
The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, 
retired up the hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl 
Bogdanich Schubert, came up to Denisov’s squadron and 

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rode at a footpace not far from Rostov, without taking any 
notice of him although they were now meeting for the first 
time since their encounter concerning Telyanin. Rostov, 
feeling that he was at the front and in the power of a man 
toward whom he now admitted that he had been to blame, 
did not lift his eyes from the colonel’s athletic back, his nape 
covered with light hair, and his red neck. It seemed to Ros-
tov that Bogdanich was only pretending not to notice him, 
and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet’s cour-
age, so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; 
then it seemed to him that Bogdanich rode so near in order 
to show him his courage. Next he thought that his enemy 
would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to pun-
ish himRostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack, 
Bogdanich would come up to him as he lay wounded and 
would magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.
The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the 
Pavlograds as he had but recently left their regiment, rode 
up to the colonel. After his dismissal from headquarters 
Zherkov had not remained in the regiment, saying he was 
not such a fool as to slave at the front when he could get 
more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and had suc-
ceeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince 
Bagration. He now came to his former chief with an order 
from the commander of the rear guard.
‘Colonel,’ he said, addressing Rostov’s enemy with an 
air of gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, 
‘there is an order to stop and fire the bridge.’
‘An order to who?’ asked the colonel morosely.

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‘I don’t myself know ‘to who,’’ replied the cornet in a se-
rious tone, ‘but the prince told me to ‘go and tell the colonel 
that the hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.’’
Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode 
up to the colonel of hussars with the same order. After him 
the stout Nesvitski came galloping up on a Cossack horse 
that could scarcely carry his weight.
‘How’s this, Colonel?’ he shouted as he approached. ‘I 
told you to fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and 
blundered; they are all beside themselves over there and one 
can’t make anything out.’
The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned 
to Nesvitski.
‘You spoke to me of inflammable material,’ said he, ‘but 
you said nothing about firing it.’
‘But, my dear sir,’ said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off 
his cap and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with 
his plump hand, ‘wasn’t I telling you to fire the bridge, when 
inflammable material had been put in position?’
‘I am not your ‘dear sir,’ Mr. Staff Officer, and you did 
not tell me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is 
my habit orders strictly to obey. You said the bridge would 
be burned, but who would it burn, I could not know by the 
holy spirit!’
‘Ah, that’s always the way!’ said Nesvitski with a wave of 
the hand. ‘How did you get here?’ said he, turning to Zherk-
ov.
‘On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring 
you out!’

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‘You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer...’ continued the colo-
nel in an offended tone.
‘Colonel,’ interrupted the officer of the suite, ‘You must 
be quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grape-
shot.’
The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at 
the stout staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.
‘I will the bridge fire,’ he said in a solemn tone as if to 
announce that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to 
endure he would still do the right thing.
Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it 
were to blame for everything, the colonel moved forward 
and ordered the second squadron, that in which Rostov was 
serving under Denisov, to return to the bridge.
‘There, it’s just as I thought,’ said Rostov to himself. 
‘He wishes to test me!’ His heart contracted and the blood 
rushed to his face. ‘Let him see whether I am a coward!’ he 
thought.
Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the seri-
ous expression appeared that they had worn when under 
fire. Rostov watched his enemy, the colonel, closelyto find in 
his face confirmation of his own conjecture, but the colonel 
did not once glance at Rostov, and looked as he always did 
when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came the word of 
command.
‘Look sharp! Look sharp!’ several voices repeated around 
him.
Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jin-
gling, the hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what 

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they were to do. The men were crossing themselves. Ros-
tov no longer looked at the colonel, he had no time. He was 
afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much afraid that his 
heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his horse 
into an orderly’s charge, and he felt the blood rush to his 
heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him, leaning back and 
shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the hussars 
running all around him, their spurs catching and their sa-
bers clattering.
‘Stretchers!’ shouted someone behind him.
Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; 
he ran on, trying only to be ahead of the others; but just 
at the bridge, not looking at the ground, he came on some 
sticky, trodden mud, stumbled, and fell on his hands. The 
others outstripped him.
‘At boss zides, Captain,’ he heard the voice of the colonel, 
who, having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the 
bridge, with a triumphant, cheerful face.
Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked 
at his enemy and was about to run on, thinking that the far-
ther he went to the front the better. But Bogdanich, without 
looking at or recognizing Rostov, shouted to him:
‘Who’s that running on the middle of the bridge? To the 
right! Come back, Cadet!’ he cried angrily; and turning to 
Denisov, who, showing off his courage, had ridden on to the 
planks of the bridge:
‘Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount,’ he 
said.
‘Oh, every bullet has its billet,’ answered Vaska Denisov, 

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turning in his saddle.
Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite 
were standing together out of range of the shots, watching, 
now the small group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green 
jackets braided with cord, and blue riding breeches, who 
were swarming near the bridge, and then at what was ap-
proaching in the distance from the opposite sidethe blue 
uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as ar-
tillery.
‘Will they burn the bridge or not? Who’ll get there first? 
Will they get there and fire the bridge or will the French get 
within grapeshot range and wipe them out?’ These were the 
questions each man of the troops on the high ground above 
the bridge involuntarily asked himself with a sinking heart-
watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright evening 
light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with 
their bayonets and guns.
‘Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!’ said Nesvitski; ‘they are 
within grapeshot range now.’
‘He shouldn’t have taken so many men,’ said the officer 
of the suite.
‘True enough,’ answered Nesvitski; ‘two smart fellows 
could have done the job just as well.’
‘Ah, your excellency,’ put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on 
the hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impos-
sible to know whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. 
‘Ah, your excellency! How you look at things! Send two 
men? And who then would give us the Vladimir medal and 
ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the squadron 

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may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. 
Our Bogdanich knows how things are done.’
‘There now!’ said the officer of the suite, ‘that’s grape-
shot.’
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which 
were being detached and hurriedly removed.
On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a 
cloud of smoke appeared, then a second and a third almost 
simultaneously, and at the moment when the first report 
was heard a fourth was seen. Then two reports one after an-
other, and a third.
‘Oh! Oh!’ groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing 
the officer of the suite by the arm. ‘Look! A man has fallen! 
Fallen, fallen!’
‘Two, I think.’
‘If I were Tsar I would never go to war,’ said Nesvitski, 
turning away.
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in 
their blue uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. 
Smoke appeared again but at irregular intervals, and grape-
shot cracked and rattled onto the bridge. But this time 
Nesvitski could not see what was happening there, as a 
dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had suc-
ceeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were 
now firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because 
the guns were trained and there was someone to fire at.
The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot 
before the hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdi-
rected and the shot went too high, but the last round fell in 

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the midst of a group of hussars and knocked three of them 
over.
Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had 
paused on the bridge not knowing what to do. There was no 
one to hew down (as he had always imagined battles to him-
self), nor could he help to fire the bridge because he had not 
brought any burning straw with him like the other soldiers. 
He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard a rat-
tle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar 
nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran 
up to him with the others. Again someone shouted, ‘Stretch-
ers!’ Four men seized the hussar and began lifting him.
‘Oooh! For Christ’s sake let me alone!’ cried the wound-
ed man, but still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for 
something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the 
Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky 
looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and 
glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the wa-
ters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the 
faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the 
mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of 
their summits... There was peace and happiness... ‘I should 
wishing for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there,’ 
thought Rostov. ‘In myself alone and in that sunshine there 
is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and 
this uncertainty and hurry... Therethey are shouting again, 
and again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run 
with them, and it, death, is here above me and around... An-

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other instant and I shall never again see the sun, this water, 
that gorge!..’
At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, 
and other stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the 
fear of death and of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of 
life, all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation.
‘O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, 
and protect me!’ Rostov whispered.
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; 
their voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers dis-
appeared from sight.
‘Well, fwiend? So you’ve smelt powdah!’ shouted Vaska 
Denisov just above his ear.
‘It’s all over; but I am a cowardyes, a coward!’ thought 
Rostov, and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which 
stood resting one foot, from the orderly and began to 
mount.
‘Was that grapeshot?’ he asked Denisov.
‘Yes and no mistake!’ cried Denisov. ‘You worked like 
wegular bwicks and it’s nasty work! An attack’s pleasant 
work! Hacking away at the dogs! But this sort of thing is the 
very devil, with them shooting at you like a target.’
And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near 
Rostov, composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and 
the officer from the suite.
‘Well, it seems that no one has noticed,’ thought Rostov. 
And this was true. No one had taken any notice, for every-
one knew the sensation which the cadet under fire for the 
first time had experienced.

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‘Here’s something for you to report,’ said Zherkov. ‘See if 
I don’t get promoted to a sublieutenancy.’
‘Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!’ said the colo-
nel triumphantly and gaily.
‘And if he asks about the losses?’
‘A trifle,’ said the colonel in his bass voice: ‘two hussars 
wounded, and one knocked out,’ he added, unable to re-
strain a happy smile, and pronouncing the phrase ‘knocked 
out’ with ringing distinctness.

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Chapter IX
Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men 
under the command of Bonaparte, encountering a popula-
tion that was unfriendly to it, losing confidence in its allies, 
suffering from shortness of supplies, and compelled to act 
under conditions of war unlike anything that had been 
foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men 
commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the 
Danube, stopping where overtaken by the enemy and fight-
ing rearguard actions only as far as necessary to enable it to 
retreat without losing its heavy equipment. There had been 
actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the 
courage and enduranceacknowledged even by the enemy-
with which the Russians fought, the only consequence of 
these actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops 
that had escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at 
Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and Kutu-
zov was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces. 
The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought of. In-
stead of an offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared 
in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been 
handed to Kutuzov when he was in Vienna by the Aus-
trian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost unattainable aim 
remaining for him was to effect a junction with the forces 
that were advancing from Russia, without losing his army 

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as Mack had done at Ulm.
On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army 
crossed to the left bank of the Danube and took up a posi-
tion for the first time with the river between himself and 
the main body of the French. On the thirtieth he attacked 
Mortier’s division, which was on the left bank, and broke it 
up. In this action for the first time trophies were taken: ban-
ners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time, 
after a fortnight’s retreat, the Russian troops had halted and 
after a fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the 
French. Though the troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and 
had lost a third of their number in killed, wounded, sick, 
and stragglers; though a number of sick and wounded had 
been abandoned on the other side of the Danube with a let-
ter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of 
the enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in 
Krems converted into military hospitals could no longer ac-
commodate all the sick and wounded, yet the stand made 
at Krems and the victory over Mortier raised the spirits of 
the army considerably. Throughout the whole army and at 
headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors were 
rife of the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, of 
some victory gained by the Austrians, and of the retreat of 
the frightened Bonaparte.
Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance 
on the Austrian General Schmidt, who was killed in the 
action. His horse had been wounded under him and his 
own arm slightly grazed by a bullet. As a mark of the com-
mander in chief’s special favor he was sent with the news 

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of this victory to the Austrian court, now no longer at Vi-
enna (which was threatened by the French) but at Brunn. 
Despite his apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could 
endure physical fatigue far better than many very muscular 
men, and on the night of the battle, having arrived at Krems 
excited but not weary, with dispatches from Dokhturov to 
Kutuzov, he was sent immediately with a special dispatch to 
Brunn. To be so sent meant not only a reward but an impor-
tant step toward promotion.
The night was dark but starry, the road showed black 
in the snow that had fallen the previous daythe day of the 
battle. Reviewing his impressions of the recent battle, pic-
turing pleasantly to himself the impression his news of a 
victory would create, or recalling the send-off given him 
by the commander in chief and his fellow officers, Prince 
Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise enjoying the 
feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a long-
desired happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears 
seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels and the sensation 
of victory. Then he began to imagine that the Russians were 
running away and that he himself was killed, but he quickly 
roused himself with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh 
that this was not so but that on the contrary the French had 
run away. He again recalled all the details of the victory and 
his own calm courage during the battle, and feeling reas-
sured he dozed off.... The dark starry night was followed by a 
bright cheerful morning. The snow was thawing in the sun-
shine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides of the 
road were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.

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At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Rus-
sian wounded. The Russian officer in charge of the transport 
lolled back in the front cart, shouting and scolding a soldier 
with coarse abuse. In each of the long German carts six or 
more pale, dirty, bandaged men were being jolted over the 
stony road. Some of them were talking (he heard Russian 
words), others were eating bread; the more severely wound-
ed looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children, 
at the envoy hurrying past them.
Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier 
in what action they had been wounded. ‘Day before yester-
day, on the Danube,’ answered the soldier. Prince Andrew 
took out his purse and gave the soldier three gold pieces.
‘That’s for them all,’ he said to the officer who came up.
‘Get well soon, lads!’ he continued, turning to the sol-
diers. ‘There’s plenty to do still.’
‘What news, sir?’ asked the officer, evidently anxious to 
start a conversation.
‘Good news!... Go on!’ he shouted to the driver, and they 
galloped on.
It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled 
over the paved streets of Brunn and found himself sur-
rounded by high buildings, the lights of shops, houses, 
and street lamps, fine carriages, and all that atmosphere of 
a large and active town which is always so attractive to a 
soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and sleep-
less night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace 
felt even more vigorous and alert than he had done the day 
before. Only his eyes gleamed feverishly and his thoughts 

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followed one another with extraordinary clearness and ra-
pidity. He again vividly recalled the details of the battle, 
no longer dim, but definite and in the concise form con-
cise form in which he imagined himself stating them to the 
Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions 
that might be put to him and the answers he would give. 
He expected to be at once presented to the Emperor. At the 
chief entrance to the palace, however, an official came run-
ning out to meet him, and learning that he was a special 
messenger led him to another entrance.
‘To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There 
you will find the adjutant on duty,’ said the official. ‘He will 
conduct you to the Minister of War.’
The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked 
him to wait, and went in to the Minister of War. Five min-
utes later he returned and bowing with particular courtesy 
ushered Prince Andrew before him along a corridor to the 
cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The adju-
tant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off 
any attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian mes-
senger.
Prince Andrew’s joyous feeling was considerably weak-
ened as he approached the door of the minister’s room. He 
felt offended, and without his noticing it the feeling of of-
fense immediately turned into one of disdain which was 
quite uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly suggested to 
him a point of view which gave him a right to despise the 
adjutant and the minister. ‘Away from the smell of powder, 
they probably think it easy to gain victories!’ he thought. 

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His eyes narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of 
the Minister of War with peculiarly deliberate steps. This 
feeling of disdain was heightened when he saw the minis-
ter seated at a large table reading some papers and making 
pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three minutes 
taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each 
side of the minister’s bent bald head with its gray temples. 
He went on reading to the end, without raising his eyes at 
the opening of the door and the sound of footsteps.
‘Take this and deliver it,’ said he to his adjutant, hand-
ing him the papers and still taking no notice of the special 
messenger.
Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov’s 
army interested the Minister of War less than any of the 
other matters he was concerned with, or he wanted to give 
the Russian special messenger that impression. ‘But that is a 
matter of perfect indifference to me,’ he thought. The min-
ister drew the remaining papers together, arranged them 
evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual and 
distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince An-
drew the firm, intelligent expression on his face changed 
in a way evidently deliberate and habitual to him. His face 
took on the stupid artificial smile (which does not even at-
tempt to hide its artificiality) of a man who is continually 
receiving many petitioners one after another.
‘From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?’ he asked. ‘I hope 
it is good news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? 
A victory? It was high time!’
He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and 

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began to read it with a mournful expression.
‘Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!’ he exclaimed in Ger-
man. ‘What a calamity! What a calamity!’
Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the 
table and looked at Prince Andrew, evidently considering 
something.
‘Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But 
Mortier is not captured.’ Again he pondered. ‘I am very glad 
you have brought good news, though Schmidt’s death is a 
heavy price to pay for the victory. His Majesty will no doubt 
wish to see you, but not today. I thank you! You must have 
a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the parade. However, 
I will let you know.’
The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was 
speaking, reappeared.
‘Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will prob-
ably desire to see you,’ he added, bowing his head.
When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the 
interest and happiness the victory had afforded him had 
been now left in the indifferent hands of the Minister of War 
and the polite adjutant. The whole tenor of his thoughts in-
stantaneously changed; the battle seemed the memory of a 
remote event long past.

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Chapter X
Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian 
acquaintance of his in the diplomatic service.
‘Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome 
visitor,’ said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. 
‘Franz, put the prince’s things in my bedroom,’ said he to 
the servant who was ushering Bolkonski in. ‘So you’re a 
messenger of victory, eh? Splendid! And I am sitting here 
ill, as you see.’
After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into 
the diplomat’s luxurious study and sat down to the dinner 
prepared for him. Bilibin settled down comfortably beside 
the fire.
After his journey and the campaign during which he had 
been deprived of all the comforts of cleanliness and all the 
refinements of life, Prince Andrew felt a pleasant sense of 
repose among luxurious surroundings such as he had been 
accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was pleasant, af-
ter his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not in Russian 
(for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who 
would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to 
the Austrians which was then particularly strong.
Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the 
same circle as Prince Andrew. They had known each oth-
er previously in Petersburg, but had become more intimate 

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when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as 
Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising 
high in the military profession, so to an even greater extent 
Bilibin gave promise of rising in his diplomatic career. He 
still a young man but no longer a young diplomat, as he had 
entered the service at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris 
and Copenhagen, and now held a rather important post in 
Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador in 
Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those 
many diplomats who are esteemed because they have cer-
tain negative qualities, avoid doing certain things, and speak 
French. He was one of those, who, liking work, knew how 
to do it, and despite his indolence would sometimes spend 
a whole night at his writing table. He worked well whatever 
the import of his work. It was not the question ‘What for?’ 
but the question ‘How?’ that interested him. What the diplo-
matic matter might be he did not care, but it gave him great 
pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or report, skill-
fully, pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin’s services were valued 
not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill in dealing 
and conversing with those in the highest spheres.
Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it 
could be made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited 
an opportunity to say something striking and took part in a 
conversation only when that was possible. His conversation 
was always sprinkled with wittily original, finished phrases 
of general interest. These sayings were prepared in the inner 
laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, 
so that insignificant society people might carry them from 

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drawing room to drawing room. And, in fact, Bilibin’s wit-
ticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing rooms 
and often had an influence on matters considered impor-
tant.
His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrin-
kles, which always looked as clean and well washed as the 
tips of one’s fingers after a Russian bath. The movement of 
these wrinkles formed the principal play of expression on 
his face. Now his forehead would pucker into deep folds and 
his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows would descend 
and deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, deep-
set eyes always twinkled and looked out straight.
‘Well, now tell me about your exploits,’ said he.
Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning him-
self, described the engagement and his reception by the 
Minister of War.
‘They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a 
game of skittles,’ said he in conclusion.
Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.
‘Cependant, mon cher,’ he remarked, examining his nails 
from a distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, 
‘malgre la haute estime que je professe pour the Orthodox 
Russian army, j’avoue que votre victoire n’est pas des plus 
victorieuses.’*
*”But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Or-
thodox Russian army, I must say that your victory was not