CHAPTER XXXI Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was galloping turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him, galloped in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He tried to pass either in front of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers everywhere, all with the same preoccupied expression and busy with some unseen but evidently important task.

CHAPTER XXXII Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the battery, as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him. On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing something there but that no shots were being fired from the battery. He had no time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior officer lying on the earth wall with

CHAPTER XXXIII The chief action of the battle of Borodinó was fought within the seven thousand feet between Borodinó and Bagratión’s flèches. Beyond that space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the Russians with U

CHAPTER XXXIV Napoleon’s generals—Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near that region of fire and sometimes even entered it—repeatedly led into it huge masses of well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had always happened

CHAPTER XXXV On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning sat Kutúzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed. He gave no orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested. “Yes, yes, do that,” he replied to various proposals. “Yes, yes: go,

CHAPTER XXXVI Prince Andrew’s regiment was among the reserves which till after one o’clock were stationed inactive behind Semënovsk, under heavy artillery fire. Toward two o’clock the regiment, having already lost more than two hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled