orts of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody--there were
now two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov who
was behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous day.

"You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds,
but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,
forewarned, takes measures accordingly."

Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these words.
He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that Kutuzov
would content himself with that hint.

"He's having a little fun at my expense," said Ermolov softly, nudging
with his knee Raevski who was at his side.

Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully remarked:

"It is not too late yet, your Highness--the enemy has not gone away--if
you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as see
a little smoke."

Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat's troops
were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every hundred paces he
halted for three quarters of an hour.

The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov's Cossacks had done:
the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.

In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration,
and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also
received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various grades,
and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.

"That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the
Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be
understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that
we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today. But
people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking about
or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle--Tarutino, Borodino, or
Austerlitz--takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an
essential condition.

A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than during
a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence the course
taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in advance and
never coincides with the direction of any one force.

If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a given
body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one of those
forces, but will alway