《War And Peace》　Book15 　CHAPTER VII
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

IT was getting dusk on the 8th of November, the last day of the battle of
Krasnoe, when the soldiers reached their halting-place for the night. The whole
day had been still and frosty, with now and then a few light flakes of snow.
Towards evening the sky began to grow clearer. Through the snowflakes could be
seen a dark, purplish, starlit sky, and the frost was growing more
intense.

A regiment of musketeers, which had left Tarutino three thousand strong, but
had now dwindled to nine hundred, was among the first to reach the
halting-place, a village on the high road. The quartermasters, on meeting the
regiment, reported that all the cottages were full of sick and dead Frenchmen,
cavalrymen, and staff-officers. There was only one cottage left for the colonel
of the regiment.

The colonel went on to his cottage. The regiment passed through the village,
and stacked their guns up at the furthest cottages along the road.

Like a huge, many-legged monster, the regiment set to work preparing its food
and lodging for the night. One party of soldiers trudged off, knee-deep in the
snow, into the birch copse, on the right of the village, and the ring of axes
and cutlasses, the crash of breaking branches, and the sounds of merry voices
were immediately heard coming thence. Another group were busily at work all
round the regimental baggage-waggons, which were drawn up all together. Some fed
the horses, while others got out cooking-pots and biscuits. A third section
dispersed about the village, getting the cottages ready for the staff-officers,
carrying out the dead bodies of the French lying in the huts, and dragging away
boards, dry wood, and straw from the thatch roofs, to furnish fuel for their
fires and materials for the shelters they rigged up.

Behind the huts at the end of the village fifteen soldiers were trying with
merry shouts to pull down the high wattle wall of a barn from which they had
already removed the roof.

“Now then, a strong pull, all together!” shouted the voices; and in the dark
the huge, snow-sprinkled boards of the wall began to give. The lower stakes of
the wattle cracked more and more often, and at last the wattle wall heaved over,
together with the soldiers, who were hanging onto it. A loud shout and the roar
of coarse merriment followed.

“Work at it in twos! give us a lever here! that's it. Where are you coming
to?”

“Now, all together.… But wait, lads! … With a shout!” …

All were silent, and a low voice of velvety sweetness began singing a song.
At the end of the third verse, as the last note died away, twenty voices roared
out in chorus, “O-O-O-O-O! It's coming! Pull away! Heave away, lads! …” but in
spite of their united efforts the wall hardly moved, and in the silence that
followed the men could be heard panting for breath.

“Hi, you there, of the sixth company! You devils, you! Lend us a hand … We'll
do you a good turn one day!”

Twenty men of the sixth company, who were passing, joined them, and the
wattle wall, thirty-five feet in length, and seven feet in breadth, was dragged
along the village street, falling over, and cutting the shoulders of the panting
soldiers.

“Go on, do. … Heave away, you there.… What are you stopping for? Eh, there?”
…

The merry shouts of unseemly abuse never ceased.

“What are you about?” cried a peremptory voice, as a sergeant ran up to the
party. “There are gentry here; the general himself's in the hut here, and you
devils, you curs, you! I'll teach you!” shouted the sergeant, and sent a
swinging blow at the back of the first soldier he could come across. “Can't you
go quietly?”

The soldiers were quiet. The soldier who had received the blow began
grumbling, as he rubbed his bleeding face, which had been scratched by his being
knocked forward against the wattle.

“Ay, the devil; how he does hit a fellow! Why, he has set all my face
bleeding,” he said in a timid whisper, as the sergeant walked away. “And you
don't enjoy it, eh?” said a laughing voice; and the soldiers, moderating their
voices, moved on. As they got out of the village, they began talking as loudly
again, interspersing their talk with the same meaningless oaths.

In the hut by which the soldiers had passed there were assembled the chief
officers in command, and an eager conversation was going on over their tea about
that day's doings and the manœuvres proposed for the night. The plan was to
execute a flank movement to the left, cut off and capture the viceroy.

By the time the soldiers had dragged the fence to its place they found
blazing fires, cooking supper on all sides. The firewood was crackling, the snow
was melting, and the black shadows of soldiers were flitting to and fro all over
the space between trampled down in the snow.

Axes and cutlasses were at work on all sides. Everything was done without a
word of command being given. Wood was piled up for a supply of fuel through the
night, shanties were being rigged up for the officers, pots were being boiled,
and arms and accoutrements set to rights.

The wattle wall was set up in a semicircle to give shelter from the north,
propped up by stakes, and before it was built a camp-fire. They beat the
tattoo-call, counted over their number, had supper, and settled themselves round
the fires—some repairing their foot-gear, some smoking pipes, others stripped
naked trying to steam the lice out of their clothes.

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