When Bad News Arrives — War and Peace

After the review Kutuzov meets an Austrian general in private and makes courtesy sound like a blade. He says he would gladly hand command to a more skilled ally, then cites circumstances, smiles as if belief were optional, and reads Mack's boastful letter predicting easy victory while Russian troops still lack boots.

He sends Andrew to compile scout reports into a French memorandum for the Austrian. Andrew has shed his old languor; staff officers admire or resent him, and Kutuzov has written his father praise. The paperwork is diplomacy: delay dressed as cooperation.

General Mack arrives bandaged and broken, saying you see the unfortunate Mack; the Ulm disaster is real, orders fly, and Zherkov congratulates him with a foolish grin. Andrew, pale and furious, tells Zherkov that forty thousand dead and a destroyed allied army are not material for jokes, and walks away: crisis has shown who treats war as service and who treats it as sport.