He might…not only might, but ought to have gone up to the Emperor. And it was a unique chance of showing his devotion to the Emperor. And he had not made use of it.… “What have I done？” he thought. And he turned his horse and galloped back to the spot where he had seen the Emperor; but there was no one now beyond the ditch. There were only transport waggons and carriages going by. From one carrier Rostov learned that Kutuzov’s staff were not far off in the village towards which the transport waggons were going. Rostov followed them.
In front of him was Kutuzov’s postillion leading horses in horse-cloths. A baggage waggon followed the postillion, and behind the waggon walked an old bandy-legged servant in a cap and a cape.
“Tit, hey. Tit！” said the postillion.
“Eh,” responded the old man absent-mindedly.
“Tit！ Stupay molotit！” （“Tit, go a-thrashing！”）
“Ugh, the fool, pugh！” said the old man, spitting angrily. A short interval of silence followed, and then the same joke was repeated.
By five o’clock in the evening the battle had been lost at every point. More than a hundred cannons were in the possession of the French. Przhebyshevsky and his corps had surrendered. The other columns had retreated, with the loss of half their men, in confused, disorderly masses. All that were left of Langeron’s and Dohturov’s forces were crowded together in hopeless confusion on the dikes and banks of the ponds near the village of Augest.
At six o’clock the only firing still to be heard was a heavy cannonade on the French side from numerous batteries ranged on the slope of the table-land of Pratzen, and directed at our retreating troops.
In the rearguard Dohturov and the rest, rallying their battalions, had been firing at the French cavalry who were pursuing them. It was begining to get dark. On the narrow dam of Augest, where the old miller in his peaked cap had sat for so many years with his fishing tackle, while his grandson, with tucked-up shirt-sleeves, turned over the silvery, floundering fish in the net; on that dam where the Moravians, in their shaggy caps and blue jackets, had for so many years peacefully driven their horses and waggons, loaded with wheat, to the mill and driven back over the same dam, dusty with flour that whitened their waggons—on that narrow dam men, made hideous by the terror of death, now crowded together, amid army waggons and cannons, under horses’ feet and between carriage-wheels, crushing each other, dying, stepping over the dying, and killing each other, only to be killed in the same way a few steps further on.
Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew lashing the air and thumped down, or a grenade burst in the midst of that dense crowd, slaying men and splashing blood on those who stood near. Dolohov, wounded in the hand, with some dozen soldiers of his company on foot （he was already an officer） and his general on horseback, were the sole representatives of a whole regiment. Carried along by the crowd, they were squeezed in the approach to the dam and stood still, jammed in on all sides because a horse with a cannon had fallen, and the crowd were dragging it away. A cannon ball killed some one behind them, another fell in front of them and spurted the blood upon Dolohov. The crowd moved forward desperately, was jammed, moved a few steps and was stopped again. “Only to get over these hundred steps and certain safety： stay here two minutes and death to a certainty,” each man was thinking.
Dolohov standing in the centre of the crowd, forced his way to the edge of the dam, knocking down two soldiers, and ran on to the slippery ice that covered the millpond.
“Turn this way！” he shouted, bounding over the ice, which cracked under him. “Turn this way！” he kept shouting to the cannon. “It bears！…” The ice bore him, but swayed and cracked, and it was evident that, not to speak of a cannon or a crowd of people, it would give way in a moment under him alone. Men gazed at him and pressed to the bank, unable to bring themselves to step on to the ice. The general of his regiment on horseback at the end of the dam lifted his hand and opened his mouth to speak to Dolohov. Suddenly one of the cannon balls flew so low over the heads of the crowd that all ducked. There was a wet splash, as the general fell from his horse into a pool of blood. No one glanced at the general, no one thought of picking him up.
“On to the ice！ Get on the ice！ Get on！ turn！ don’t you hear！ Get on！” innumerable voices fell to shouting immediately after the ball had struck the general, not knowing themselves what and why they were shouting.
One of the hindmost cannons that had been got on to the dam was turned off upon the ice. Crowds of soldiers began running from the dam on to the frozen pond. The ice cracked under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped into the water. He tried to right himself and floundered up to his waist. The soldiers nearest tried to draw back, the driver of the cannon pulled up his horse, but still the shouts were heard from behind： “Get on to the ice, why are you stopping？ go on！ go on！” And screams of terror were heard in the crowd. The soldiers near the cannon waved at the horses, and lashed them to make them turn and go on. The horses moved from the dam’s edge. The ice that had held under the foot-soldiers broke in a huge piece, and some forty men who were on it dashed, some forwards, some backwards, drowning one another.
Still the cannon balls whizzed as regularly and thumped on to the ice, into the water, and most often into the crowd that covered the dam, the pond and the bank.