Book 3 Part 2 Chapter 5 (Chapter 192 overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: The retreat. The drought. Prince Andrei's popularity. His detour to Luisiya Gorui. Scenes on the place. The little girls and the plums. The men bathing. Chair a canon. Letter from Prince Bagration to Arakcheyef.
Briggs: Prince Andrey visits Bald Hills. The bathing soldiers - cannon-fodder."
Maude: Prince Andrew passing Bald Hills with his regiment. The retreat: heat and terrible dust. He rides over to the house. The little girls and the plums. The soldiers bathe in a pond. 'Cannon-fodder'. Bagration's letter to Arakcheev
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Russian army retreats from Smolensk. Prince Andrei visits deserted Bald Hills. Exhausted troops bathe in a pond. Letter from Bagration to Arakcheev.

Translation:

V.

From Smolensk the troops continued back. The enemy was walking following behind them. On the 10th of August the regiment, which was commanded by Prince Andrey, passed by the big road, past the prospectus leading to Bald Mountains, and the heat and drought were standing for more than three weeks. Every day by the sky went curly clouds, occasionally overshadowing the sun; but in the evening it again cleared, and the sun sat down in the brownish-red haze. Only the strong dew at night refreshed the land. The remaining roots of the bread burned and spilled out. The swamps dried up. The cattle roared from hunger, not finding food by the burned by the sun meadows. Only at night and in the forests, while still holding the dew, was it cool. Yet by the road, by the big road, by which went the troops, even at night, even by the forests, was not this coolness. The dew was not noticeable on the sandy dust roads, pounded more than to a quarter arshin. Only as it dawned, did they begin to move. The wagons of the artillery moved and went by the hub, but the infantry by ankle in the soft, stuffy, not cooled down behind the night, hot dust. Only as this part of sandy dust was kneaded by feet and wheels, another rose and stood as a cloud above the army, getting stuck in eyes, in hairs, in ears, in nostrils, and the main thing in the lungs of the people and animals, moving by this road. The higher lifted the sun, by that higher lifted the cloud of dust, and through this thin, hot dust, in the sun, not covered by clouds, was able to be looked at by the simple eye. The sun presented a big crimson ball. The wind was not, and people suffocated in this motionless atmosphere. The people went, encircling their noses and mouths by handkerchiefs. Coming to the village, all threw to the well. Fighting for water, and drinking it before mud.

Prince Andrey commanded the regiment, and the arrangement of the regiment, the well-being of his people, the misery of receiving and returning orders occupied him. The fire of Smolensk and its abandonment was an epoch for Prince Andrey. A new sense of bitterness against the enemy forced him to forget his grief. He was all loyal to the deeds of his regiment, he was caring about his people and officers and affectionate with them. In the regiment he was called our prince, they were proud of and loved him. But he was nice and gentle only with his own regiment, with Timohin and so on, with people completely new and in a foreign environment, with people that could not know and understand his past; but only as he came across with someone from his former, from the staff, he immediately again bristled; was made spiteful, mocking and contemptuous. All that connected his memory with his past, repulsed him, and because of it he tried to in relations of this former world only not to be unfair and enforce his duty.

Really, all in the dark, in the gloomy world presented Prince Andrey — especially after how they left Smolensk (which by his concepts could and must be protected) on the 6th of August, and after how his sick father should run to Moscow and to throw onto the plundering so the favorite, built and inhabited by them Bald Mountains; but despite that, thanks to the regiment Prince Andrey could only think about other, completely independent from common issues, the subject — about his regiment. On the 10th of August the column, in which was his regiment, equaled with Bald Mountains. Prince Andrey two days to that backwards received news that his father, son and sister left to Moscow, although for Prince Andrey there was nothing to do at Bald Mountains, he, with his peculiar desire to poison his grief, decided that he should call in on Bald Mountains.

He told to ride himself on horse and with the transition went on horseback to his paternal village, at which he was born and spent his childhood. Driving past the pond, at which there were always dozens of women, in conversation, beating rolls and rinsing their linen, Prince Andrey saw that at the pond nobody was, and ripped off the raft, half drenched with water, sideways swimming by the middle of the pond. Prince Andrey drove to the gatehouse. At the stone gate entry nobody was, and the door was unlocked. The track of the garden was now thickets, and calves and horses went by the English park. Prince Andrey drove to the greenhouse: the glasses were smashed, and the woods in tubs were some knocked down and some dried up. He called out to Taras the gardener. Nothing responded. Circling the greenhouse at the exhibition, he saw that the board carved fence was all broken, and the fruit drains were ripped off from the branches. An old peasant (Prince Andrey had seen him at the gate in childhood) sat and wove bast on a green bench.

He was deaf and did not hear the entrance of Prince Andrey. He sat at the shop, at which loved to sit the old prince, and about him was hung up a tab on branches broken off and dried magnolia.

Prince Andrey drove home. A few limes in the old garden were cut down, only a piebald with its foal horse went before the very house between the roses. The house was boarded up with shutters. One window downstairs was open. A yard boy, seeing Prince Andrey, ran into the house.

Alpatych, sending his family, alone stayed at Bald Mountains; he sat at home and was reading Lives. Upon learning about the arrival of Prince Andrey, he, with glasses on his nose, fastening got out from the home, hastily came up to the prince and saying nothing, cried, kissing the Prince Andrey at the knee.

Then he turned away with his heart at his weakness and began to report to him about the position of cases. All valuable and dear was taken away to Bogucharovo. The bread, to 100 quarters, also was taken out; the hay and the spring, extraordinary, as spoke Alpatych, crop until the year of greens were taken and beveled — the troops. The men busted, some went also to Bogucharovo, a small part stayed.

Prince Andrey, not listening to him, asked:

— When left my father and sister? — concerning, when they left to Moscow. Alpatych responded, believing that he asked about the departure to Bogucharovo, that they left on the 7th, and again spread about the deeds of economics, asking orders.

— Whether you order to let go under the list of teams of oats? At us there are still 600 quarters left, — asked Alpatych.

"What to respond to him?" thought Prince Andrey, looking at the shining in the sun bald head old man and in the expression of his face reading this consciousness that he himself understood these untimely issues, but asks only so that to drown his grief.

— Yes, let it go, — he said.

— Should you have deigned to notice the disorder in the garden, — spoke Alpatych, — that was impossible to prevent: three regiments passed and spent the night, in particular the dragoons. I wrote out the ranks and the rank of the commander for filing a petition.

— Well what are you to do? Will you stay, should the enemy occupy? — Prince Andrey asked him.

Alpatych, turning his face to Prince Andrey, looked at him; and suddenly, with a solemn gesture raised his hand up:

— He is my patron, and his will is my will! — he spoke.

A crowd of peasants and the court went by the meadow, with open heads approaching to Prince Andrey.

— Well goodbye! — said Prince Andrey, bending down to Alpatych. — Go away yourself, take away what you can, and the people lead to go away to Ryazan or to near Moscow. — Alpatych snuggled up to his leg and sobbed. Prince Andrey carefully pushed him aside, and, touching his horse to a gallop, went downwards by the alley.

At the exhibition all so the same was indifferent, as a fly on the face of a dear dead man, sat an old man and banged by the bast shoe, and two girls with plums on a hem, which they plucked from the greenhouse woods, ran from there, and stumbled upon Prince Andrey. Seeing the young baron, the older girl, with an expression on his face of fright, grabbed behind the hand her smaller product and with it together hid behind the birch, not having time to pick up the scattered green plums.

Prince Andrey, scared, hastily turned away from them, fearing to give notice to them that he saw them. His pity began for this pretty frightened girl. He was afraid to take a look at her, but together with that he irresistibly wanted this. The new, Otradnoe and sedative feeling overcame him, when he, looking at these girls, got the existence of other, completely alien to him and so the same legitimate human interests, as those which occupied him. These girls obviously passionately wanted only — to take away and eat up these green plums, and not be caught, and Prince Andrey desired with them together the success of their enterprise. He could not hold on, so that to not take a look at them another time. Believing themselves now in safety, they popped out of the ambush, and with some food and their thin voices, holding the hem, funnily and fastly ran by the grass meadows in their own tanned barefoot feet.

Prince Andrey refreshed a little, leaving from the region of the dusty big road by which moved the troops. Yet near behind Bald Mountains, he entered again on the road and caught up with the regiment at the halt, at the dam of a short pond. It was the 2nd hour after noon. The sun, a red orb in the dust, as an unbearable hell burned back through his black frock coat. The dust, all such the same, still stood above the speaking, humming and stopped troops. The wind was not. In traveling by the dam Prince Andrey smelled the slime and freshness of the pond. He wanted in the water — how dirty it was. He turned back on the pond, with some carried shouting and laughter. The small turbid with the green pond, apparently, rose in quarters and two, flooding the dam because of how it was full of men, soldiers, naked, floundering in their white bodies, with brick-red hands, faces and necks. All this naked, white, human meat, with laughter and whooping, floundered in this dirty puddle as a carp stuffed in a watering can. This fun responded to the floundering, and because it was especially sad.

One young, blond soldier — another Prince Andrey knew — of the 3rd company, with a strap under the calf, crossing, retreated backwards so that to very well scatter and flop in the water; another black, always shaggy noncommissioned officer, by his belt in the water, twitching muscular as in camp, happily snorted, pouring on his head his black by brush hands. Was heard slapping each other, screeching, and hooting.

On the banks, at the dam, in the pond, everywhere was white, healthy, muscular meat. The officer Timohin, with his red nose, wiped himself with a towel at the dam and was ashamed at seeing the prince, however, he decided to turn to him:

— That is okay, your excellency, you would deign it! — he said.

— Dirty, — said Prince Andrey, wincing.

— We now clean you up. — and Timohin, still undressing, ran to clean.

— The prince wants to.

— What? Our prince? — began talking a voice, and all hurried so that forcibly Prince Andrey had time to reassure them. He thought it better to shower in the barn.

"Meat, body, meat for guns!"623 he thought, looking at their naked bodies, and shuddered not so much from cold, as much as from most of his incomprehensible disgust and horror at seeing this huge quantity of bodies, rinsing in the dirty pond.

—————

On the 7th of August, Prince Bagration at his Mihaylovka stop on the Smolensk road wrote the following:

"Gracious sire Count Alexei Andreevich,"

(He wrote Arakcheev, but knew that his letter would be read by the sovereign and because, in how much he was capable of, pondered each of his words.)

"I think that the minister now reported about the abandonment to the enemy of Smolensk. Hurt, sad, and all the army in despair at how a very major place in vain was thrown. I, with my parties, requested personally to him, in a convincing way, finally and write; but he agrees with nothing. I swear to you my honor that Napoleon was in such a bag, as never, and he would lose half his army, but not take Smolensk. Our troops so fought and so fight, as never. I kept with 15 thousands more for 35 hours and beat them; but he did not want to stay for 14 hours. This is a shame, and blurs our army; but he mostly, it seems to me, must not live in the world. Should he inform that our losses are great, — it is not true; maybe about 4 thousand, not more, but this is not; although would it be ten, how to be, war! Yet behind that enemy is a lost abyss...

"What does it cost to stay two more days? At least, they would themselves have gone; for they did not have water to drink for people and horses. He gave word to me that he would not retreat, but suddenly sent a disposition that he at night would go away. In such a way we cannot fight and we can soon bring the enemy into Moscow...

"Hearing carries that you think about peace. So that makes up, my God protect! After all the donation and after these extravagant retreats — put up: you place all Russia against yourself, and any of us for shame to place to carry the uniform. Should it really be so gone — we need to fight, while Russia may be and while people are on legs...

"You need to command alone, but not two. Your minister may be good by ministry; but a general is not that, that is bad and lousy, and he is given the fate of our only fatherland... I, rightly, am losing my mind from annoyance; forgive me that I am the insolent type. It is seen that he does not love the sovereign and wishes death to us all, who advises to conclude peace and to command the army a minister. And so I am writing you the truth: prepare the militia. For the minister in a very master way leads to the capital behind the guest himself. A great suspicion feeds throughout the army at Sir Wing-Adjutant Voltsogen. He, they say, is another Napoleon, rather than ours and he advises all the ministers. I am not only courteous against him, but I obey as a сorporal, although I am older than him. This hurts; but, love prepares the benefactor and sovereign — I obey. I only pity the sovereign that entrusts such a glorious army. Imagine that in our retreat we have lost people from fatigue and in the hospitals are more than 15 thousand; but should we advance, this would not be. Say for God, that our Russia — our mother — will say that it is so fearful and for what such a good and zealous fatherland do we give back bastards and instill in each subject hatred and disgrace? What coward is to be to be afraid? I am not to blame that the minister is unsolvable, a coward, stupid, slow and has all thin qualities. All the army cries completely, and swears to its death..."

623 chair à canon! (cannon fodder!)

Time: 10th of August, August 7th
Mentioned: three weeks, evening, night, August 6th, two days before, Prince Andrei's childhood,
Locations: Smolensk, Lysyya Gory
Mentioned: Moscow, English, Bogucharovo, Ryazan, Moscow suburban estate, Russia

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: We move into a, thanks to the end of last chapter, pretty natural segue to Prince Andrei and the retreat from Smolensk. A long desolation description gives us the environmental destruction of the war. In rather short and stark sentences, Tolstoy paints a pretty dire picture of the circumstances of the retreat before moving to Andrei personally.

“The burning and abandoning of Smolensk marked an epoch for Prince Andrei. The new feeling of anger against the foe made him forget his own grief. He was devoted entirely to the affairs of his regiment”. This description
for Andrei appears in a somewhat varied format at the start of Part Six in Bromfield.

Andrei goes to visit Bald Hills now that his family, so he believes, has left. We get quite an abandonment description here. There is a line break after the soldiers wash in the dirty pond, switching to Prince Bagration writing
a, real life, letter to Arakcheev.

“The rumor is going around that you are thinking about peace. God forbid that we make peace! After all the sacrifices, and after such muddleheaded retreats--to make peace: you will set the whole of Russia against you,
and every one of us will think it a shame to wear a uniform...One person must be in command, not two.”

The retreat costing lives in fatigue and hospitals foreshadows the more famous retreat later in the novel.

Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):

Prince Andrei (also “our prince”, “Illustriousness”, and “young barin”.)

Timokhin (assumingly the same Timokhin as the one in Book 1.)

Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky (just “father” and “old prince”.)

Nikolushka (just “his little son”.)

Princess Mariya (just “sister”.)

Taras

Alpatuitch

Prince Bagration

Count Aleksei Andreyevitch Arakcheyef (The title and first two names are “Monsieur le comte Alexis Andreievitch” in Bell. “Count Alexei Andreevich” in Mandelker. “Count Aleksei Andreyevich” in Dunnigan. “Count
Aleksey Andreyevich” in Briggs. “Count Alexei Andreyevich” in Edmonds. “Count Alexis Andreevich” in Maude. “Count Alexey Andreevitch” in Garnett. “Count Aleksyey Andreevich” in Wiener.)

Alexander (just “sovereign”.)

Barclay de Tolly (only the “minister”, though Maude, Mandelker, and Briggs put the name in parentheses as a reminder.)

Napoleon

Woltzogen (with “the flugel-adjutant” as a title and “mr” as a prefix.)

(of course many undifferentiated soldiers, the gatekeeper, an old muzhik that Prince Andrei remembered as a boy that is deaf, a little peasant lad, Alpatuitch’s family, two young girls, a blond young soldier, and
a dark-complexioned non-commissioned officer.)

Abridged Versions: Line break between “that filthy pond.” and “On the nineteenth of August” in Dole. Line break in the same spot in Bell, Briggs, Garnett, Wiener, Edmonds, and Mandelker.

Chapter 14 in Bell.
Gibian: Chapter 5: line break after "in the dirty pond."

Fuller: Chapter ends with a break after the leaving of Alpatitch, cutting the dirty pond and the Bagration letter.

Komroff: The opening environment description is shortened and Andre’s treatment of his regiment is removed. The two girls that Andre sees playing are gone as well. The chapter also ends with a line break
after Alpatitch leaves.

Kropotkin: Only the description of Andrei’s reaction to Smolensk and his position with his regiment is kept. End of chapter 3.

Bromfield: We go to Alpatych and the old prince, who gives him the news of Smolensk. The old prince gets Marya to write a letter and the architect and Bourrienne to run different errands, including sending
Bourrienne to Smolensk, which Marya, fighting herself and her spite towards her, tries to intercede for her. The doctor says that the old prince has had a mild stroke and says that he should not travel to
Moscow but to Bogucharovo. Line break into the chapter we are in following Andrei. This all plays out pretty much the same. End of chapter 2 with no Prince Bagration letter.
Simmons: Chapter 5: a lot of the description of the retreat and Prince Andrew's new epoch is shortened. The description of the abandoned Bald Hills is also shortened. Line break after "in the dirty pond."
Bagration's letter is shortened.

Additional Notes: Bell notes that there is a confusion of dates in this chapter due to the mixing of new and old style calendars.

Garnett (on Lives of the Saints): “Russian translations of books about the lives of Byzantine and indigenous saints were extremely popular among Russian peasants, merchants, and uneducated townspeople.”

Herold: Page 350: “The main reason for his staying two weeks at Vitebsk, however, was in all likelihood that he expected to receive peace overtures from Alexander....August 16-17...In the afternoon the

emperor ordered a general attack on Smolensk, which until then he had only bombarded. The fighting was extremely severe: the French lost almost nine thousand men, the Russians more than ten thousand.” Walter/Carruthers: Chapter 3: "Now we believed that the Russians would wait on the other bank and attack, but nothing happened. Bonaparte fired upon the high points held by the Russians with a few cannon

and sent his cavalry across the water. The Russians, however, withdrew after a short encounter...We now believed that, once in Russia, we need do nothing but forage - which, however, proved to be an

illusion. The town of Poniemon was already stripped before we could enter, and so were all the villages...The worst torture was the march, because the closed ranks forced all to go in columns; the heat

and the dust flared up into our eyes as if from smoking coal heaps. The hardship was doubled by the continual halting of the troops whenever we came to a swamp or a narrow road. Often one had to stand for

half an hour; then another such period was spent catching up and drudging away without water or food." Bayley (Eugene Onegin): Page 22: "Consider the scene in which Tatyana, after writing to Onegin, flies from the house to seat herself trembling on a bench near the orchard in which the servant girls are

singing as they pick berries. The girls inhabit their world, Tatyana, inhabits hers. She listens inattentively, her mind on her own troubles. The scene is curiously similar to that wonderful scene in War and Peace

when during the Russian retreat Prince Andrew sees in the abandoned garden at his family house two little girls whose only preoccupation is to try to steal some unripe plums....In Tolstoy we share in his

analysis of a situation, and in a perception which in Pushkin we infer for ourselves, and yet an affinity is unmistakable."