The Clock Begins to Tick — War and Peace

The next day the Emperor stops at Wischau. His physician Villier is summoned again and again. News spreads that he is unwell: he has eaten nothing and slept badly, shaken by the killed and wounded. At daybreak on the seventeenth a French officer with a flag of truce is brought in from the outposts. It is Savary. The Emperor has only just fallen asleep, so Savary waits until midday, then rides off an hour later with Prince Dolgorúkov toward the French advanced post. Rumour says Savary came to propose a meeting with Napoleon. To the army's joy and pride, a personal interview is refused; Dolgorúkov, the victor at Wischau, goes instead, in case the talks are a real desire for peace. Toward evening he returns and remains a long time alone with the Tsar.

On the eighteenth and nineteenth the army advances two days' march; enemy outposts, after brief shots, retreat. From midday on the nineteenth a bustling activity begins at the Emperor's headquarters, reaches Kutúzov's by afternoon, and by night has the whole eighty thousand rising from their bivouacs, a mass six miles long. It is like the first movement of a tower clock's main wheel: one wheel stirs another, until hands advance. The result of all those passions, among 160,000 Russians and French, will be only the loss of Austerlitz, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.

Prince Andrew is on duty with the commander in chief. Kutúzov visits the Tsar, then Count Tolstóy, the grand marshal of the court. Andrew, feeling that headquarters is dissatisfied with the old man and that the Emperor's people use the tone of those who know something others do not, looks in on Dolgorúkov, who is at tea with Bilíbin. The fete is for tomorrow. Dolgorúkov will not temporize now that Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a general battle: why else ask for an interview, negotiate, and retreat against his own method? He is a man in a grey overcoat, anxious to be called "Your Majesty," who got no title. Suvórov's rule was to attack; the energy of young men often shows the way better than old Cunctators. Andrew has been at the outposts and cannot even say where the chief forces are; Dolgorúkov spreads a map and runs through Weyrother's flanking plan, then stops listening when Andrew offers his own. There will be a council at Kutúzov's tonight. Bilíbin jokes that, win or lose, the glory of Russian arms is secure: except Kutúzov, the column commanders are Wimpfen, Langeron, Lichtenstein, Hohenlohe, and a string of Polish names. Dolgorúkov names Milorádovich and Dokhtúrov. On the way home Andrew asks Kutúzov what he thinks of tomorrow's battle. The old general looks at him sternly: he thinks it will be lost, and he told Count Tolstóy to tell the Emperor. The answer was that the count was engaged with rice and cutlets, and the general should look after military matters himself.