“I know,” broke in Bilibin, “you are thinking that it’s very easy to capture marshals, sitting on the sofa by one’s fireside. That’s true, but still why didn’t you capture him？ And you needn’t feel surprised if the most august Emperor and King Francis, like the war minister, is not very jubilant over your victory. Why, even I, a poor secretary of the Russian Embassy, feel no necessity to testify my rejoicing by giving my Franz a thaler and sending him out for a holiday to disport himself with his Liebchen on the Prater…though it’s true there is no Prater here…” He looked straight at Prince Andrey and suddenly let the creases drop out of his puckered forehead.
“Now it’s my turn to ask you ‘why,’ my dear boy,” said Bolkonsky. “I must own that I don’t understand it; perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties in it that are beyond my feeble intellect; but I can’t make it out. Mack loses a whole army, Archduke Ferdinand and Archduke Karl give no sign of life and make one blunder after another; Kutuzov alone gains at last a decisive victory, breaks the prestige of invincibility of the French, and the minister of war does not even care to learn the details！”
“For that very reason, my dear boy, don’t you see！ Hurrah for the Tsar, for Russia, for the faith！ That’s all very nice; but what have we, I mean the Austrian court, to do with your victories？ You bring us good news of a victory of Archduke Karl or Ferdinand—one archduke’s as good as the other, as you know—if it’s only a victory over a fire brigade of Bonaparte, and it will be another matter, it will set the cannons booming. But this can only tantalise us, as if it were done on purpose. Archduke Karl does nothing, Archduke Ferdinand covers himself with disgrace, you abandon Vienna, give up its defence, as though you would say to us, God is with us, and the devil take you and your capital. One general, whom we all loved, Schmidt, you put in the way of a bullet, and then congratulate us on your victory！…You must admit that anything more exasperating than the news you have brought could not be conceived. It’s as though it were done on purpose, done on purpose. But apart from that, if you were to gain a really brilliant victory, if Archduke Karl even were to win a victory, what effect could it have on the general course of events？ It’s too late now, when Vienna is occupied by the French forces.”
“Occupied？ Vienna occupied？”
“Not only is Vienna occupied, but Bonaparte is at Sch？nbrunn, and the count—our dear Count Urbna—is setting off to receive his orders.”
After the fatigues and impressions of his journey and his reception, and even more after the dinner he had just eaten, Bolkonsky felt that he could not take in all the significance of the words he had just heard.
“Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,” pursued Bilibin, “and he showed me a letter containing a full description of the parade of the French at Vienna. Prince Murat and all the rest of it … You see that your victory is not a great matter for rejoicing, and that you can’t be received as our deliverer…”
“Really, I don’t care about that, I don’t care in the slightest！” said Prince Andrey, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before Krems was really of little importance in view of such an event as the taking of the capital of Austria. “How was Vienna taken？ And its bridge and its famous fortifications, and Prince Auersperg？ We heard rumours that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna,” said he.