The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and seventh of October: kitchens and sheds dismantled, carts loaded, troops and baggage starting. At seven in the morning a convoy in marching trim, wearing shakos and carrying enormous sacks, stood before the sheds. Inside, everyone was ready except Sokolov, pale and thin with dysentery, still barefoot, moaning less from pain than from fear of being left alone. Pierre, girt with a rope and wearing shoes Karataev had made from leather torn off a tea chest, squatted beside him and said they had a hospital, that Sokolov might be better off than the rest. He went to ask again. At the door came the corporal who had offered a pipe the day before, now in marching kit with two soldiers, come to shut the door for the count.
Pierre began to ask about the sick man and doubted whether this was the same corporal, so unlike himself did the man seem. A sharp rattle of drums sounded from both sides. The corporal frowned, uttered oaths, and slammed the door. In the semidark, drums drowning the groans, Pierre recognised that mysterious, callous force which compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men, the force he had witnessed at the executions. To fear it, to address entreaties to its tools, was useless. One had to wait and endure. He did not go back to Sokolov. When the prisoners squeezed out like a flock of sheep, he pushed forward to the captain who had been ready to do anything for him. The captain, also in marching kit, had the same it on his cold face. Pass on, pass on. Pierre told him the man was dying. He'll manage to walk, devil take him. The drums rattled, and Pierre understood that the force completely controlled these men.
The officer prisoners were separated and told to march in front: about thirty officers, Pierre among them, and about three hundred men. The officers from other sheds were better dressed and looked mistrustfully at his shoes. A fat major in a Kazan dressing gown tied with a towel growled that they were all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry. A commissariat official in felt boots announced which wards had burned; a Pole disputed the identifications. What does it matter whether it is St Nicholas or St Blasius, the major snapped, you see it's burned down. Near a church in the Khamovniki, one of the few unburned quarters, the mass of prisoners started aside in horror. A man's body had been set upright against the palings, its face smeared with soot. Convoy guards cursed and drove the crowd on with their swords.
Coming Up in Chapter 293
Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter the prisoners march, followed only by their escort and its wagons, but when they reach the supply stores they come among a huge packed train of artillery mingled with private vehicles. At the bridge they all halt, waiting for those in front to get across.
