fleches themselves it was impossible to make out
what was taking place. There for several hours amid incessant cannon and
musketry fire, now Russians were seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now
infantry, and now cavalry: they appeared, fired, fell, collided, not
knowing what to do with one another, screamed, and ran back again.

From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from his
marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the progress
of the action, but all these reports were false, both because it was
impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at any given
moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the actual place
of conflict but reported what they had heard from others; and also
because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to Napoleon
circumstances changed and the news he brought was already becoming
false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings that
Borodino had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in the
hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished the
troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should form up
on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given--almost
as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino--the bridge had been
retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at which Pierre
had been present at the beginning of the battle.

An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale and frightened face
and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been repulsed, Campan
wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time the adjutant had been
told that the French had been repulsed, the fleches had in fact been
recaptured by other French troops, and Davout was alive and only
slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily untrustworthy
reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either been executed before
he gave them or could not be and were not executed.

The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle
but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and only
occasionally went within musket range, made their own arrangements
without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in what direction to
fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry should run. But even
their orders, like Napoleon's, were seldom carried out, and then but
partially. For the most part things happened contrary to their orders.
Soldiers order