put it
into a shed boarded up with planks!" He smiled, and went and lay down to
sleep beside his companions.

CHAPTER XV

In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a letter
from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow, though
Napoleon was already not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga road.
Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one formerly
brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no question of peace.

Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla
detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of Broussier's
division had been seen at Forminsk and that being separated from the
rest of the French army they might easily be destroyed. The soldiers and
officers again demanded action. Generals on the staff, excited by the
memory of the easy victory at Tarutino, urged Kutuzov to carry out
Dorokhov's suggestion. Kutuzov did not consider any offensive necessary.
The result was a compromise which was inevitable: a small detachment was
sent to Forminsk to attack Broussier.

By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhturov--that same
modest little Dokhturov whom no one had described to us as drawing up
plans of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering crosses
on batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was spoken of
as undecided and undiscerning--but whom we find commanding wherever
the position was most difficult all through the Russo-French wars from
Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he remained last at the
Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what was possible when all
were flying and perishing and not a single general was left in the rear
guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk with twenty thousand men
to defend the town against Napoleon's whole army. In Smolensk, at the
Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he
was awakened by the bombardment of the town--and Smolensk held out all
day long. At the battle of Borodino, when Bagration was killed and nine
tenths of the men of our left flank had fallen and the full force of the
French artillery fire was directed against it, the man sent there was
this same irresolute and undiscerning Dokhturov--Kutuzov hastening to
rectify a mistake he had made by sending someone else there first.
And the quiet little Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodin