Chapter 23 Chapter Twenty-Three

Bennigsen left Gorky and followed the hillside road towards the bridge, which was the center of the position that the officer had shown Pierre, and next to the bridge were stacks of freshly cut, fragrant hay on the bank. .They drove across the bridge into Borodino, turned left again, passed a mass of soldiers and cannon, and came to a high hill where soldiers were digging.The multi-faceted fort had not yet been named at that time, and was later called the Raevsky multi-faced fort or the Highland Fort. Pierre paid no particular attention to the fort.Little did he know that this place was more memorable to him than any other place on the battlefield of Borodino.They then passed through a ravine to the village of Semyonovskoye, where soldiers were hauling the last remaining logs from farmhouses and kilns.Then they climbed another hill, passed a field of rye that was flattened by hailstones, and followed the bumpy road that had just been trodden by artillery in the cultivated land to the turret that was being built.

-------- ① A fort is a kind of fortification. — Notes from Tolstoy. Bennigsen stopped at the bastion and looked ahead at the Shevardino fort, which had belonged to us yesterday, where he could see some men on horseback.Either Napoleon or Murat was there, the officers said.Everyone looked greedily at the group of people on horseback.Pierre looked that way too, trying to guess which of the several shadowy figures was Napoleon, and then the rider disappeared as he descended the hill. Bennigsen began to explain the whole situation of our army to the officers who came up to him.Listening to Bennigsen's explanation, Pierre racked his brains to find out the truth of the current battle, but he was distressed and felt that his brain was not enough.He didn't understand at all.

Bennigsen stopped, looked at Pierre who was listening carefully, and suddenly said to him: "Perhaps you are not interested?" "Oh, on the contrary, very interested," said Pierre against his will. They turned left away from the Fort, and followed a winding path through a dense birch coppice.When they were in the woods, a white-legged brown rabbit jumped onto the road in front of them. It was frightened by the sound of hooves, and jumped on the road in front of them for a long time, attracting everyone's attention and laughter, until several people Shouting it together, they jumped into the dense forest beside the road.After walking another two or three versts through the dense forest, they came to a glade where a detachment of Tuchkov's corps was stationed on the left flank.

In this extreme left-wing place, Bennigsen spoke excitedly for a long time, and then issued a military order that Pierre felt was important.There was a plateau in front of Tuchkov's detachment.There are no troops stationed on this high ground.Bennigsen loudly criticized the mistake.He said it was madness to place troops below the mountain without holding the high ground.Several generals expressed the same opinion.One of them, with the violent temper of a soldier in particular, said that the troops were put here to be slaughtered by the enemy.Bennigsen took it upon himself to order all the troops to be moved to higher ground.

The deployment of the left wing made Pierre doubt his ability to understand the military even more.Hearing Bennigsen and the generals criticize the troops stationed on the hill, Pierre fully understood what they were saying and agreed with them; Such an obvious, major mistake. Pierre did not know that these troops were not deployed there for the purpose of defending positions, as Bennigsen thought, but for concealment and ambushes, that is, to surprise the incoming enemy.Unaware of this, Bennigsen, without reporting to the commander-in-chief, took it upon himself to move the troops forward.