municated is very difficult to define, but it certainly is communicated very surely, and flows
rapidly, imperceptibly, and irrepressibly, as
water does in a creek. Had the Russian army
been alone without any allies, it might perhaps
have been a long time before this consciousness
of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as it was, the disorder was readily
and naturally attributed to the stupid Germans,
and everyone was convinced that a dangerous
muddle had been occasioned by the sausage
eaters.
"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up against the French?"
"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had."
"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"
"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up behind. And now here we stand hungry."
"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking the way," said an officer. "Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own country!" said another.
"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding up.
"The Eighteenth."
"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you won't get there till evening."
"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what they are doing!" said the officer and rode off.
Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.
"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out," said a soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd shoot them, the scoundrels!"
"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven't got halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated on different sides.
And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the Germans.
The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in front of the infantry, who had to wait.
At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry should be halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher command, was to blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and dispirited. After an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a shot was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying intervals–trata . . . tat–and then more and more regularly and rapidly, and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.
Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading through the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front or around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the enemy lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders from the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in those unknown surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this way the action began for the first, second, and third columns, which had gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutúzov was, stood on the Pratzen Heights.
Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog; on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of what was going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we supposed, six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea of mist, no one knew till after eight o'clock.
It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist. The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff, were not on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and begin the action, but were on this side, so close to our own forces that Napoleon with the naked eye could distinguish a mounted man from one on
