Next evening the troops assembled in their appointed places and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with dark purple clouds but no rain. The ground was damp, not muddy. Men were forbidden to talk out loud, smoke, or strike a light, and they tried to keep the horses from neighing. Secrecy heightened the charm; they marched gaily. Some columns supposed they had arrived, piled arms, and settled on the cold ground. The majority marched all night and came out where they evidently should not have been. Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks, the least important detachment, reached his place on time, at the outskirts of a forest on the path from Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.
Toward dawn a Polish sergeant from Poniatowski's corps was brought in, a deserter slighted in the service who offered, with a hundred men, to capture Murat alive less than a mile away. The offer was too tempting. After much argument Major-General Grekov rode off with two Cossack regiments. Orlov-Denisov promised the sergeant a hundred gold pieces if he told the truth, and hanging if he lied. Waiting, the count saw no Russian columns on the open declivity to his right, though they would have been visible far off. The French camp seemed to stir. Suddenly the absent sergeant looked like an impostor. Orlov sent to fetch Grekov back, then, excited by the abandoned attempt and the still-missing infantry, ordered the Cossacks forward. They poured across a brook. The camp, undressed and only just waking, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses. Had the Cossacks pursued, they would have taken Murat and everything there. Instead they busied themselves with fifteen hundred prisoners, thirty-eight guns, standards, and horses, dividing booty with some shouting and fighting. The French recovered, formed detachments, and began firing.
Meanwhile Bennigsen's belated infantry, directed by Toll, started in due order and, as always, got somewhere other than their appointed places. Toll, playing Weyrother's part from Austerlitz, galloped from point to point finding everything upside down. He stumbled on Bagovut's corps in a wood in broad daylight and said the commander ought to be shot. The usually placid old soldier flew into a rage, said he preferred not to take lessons but could die with his men, and advanced with a single division straight under fire. One of the first bullets killed him. His division remained there quite uselessly.
Coming Up in Chapter 286
Meanwhile another column is to attack the French from the front, but Kutuzov accompanies that column. Knowing the battle is undertaken against his will, he holds the troops back as far as is in his power. He rides silently on his small grey horse, indolently answering suggestions that they should attack.
