When Napoleon had learned these particulars, and given his orders, he awaited the event with that tranquillity of mind peculiar to extraordinary men. He quietly employed himself in exploring the environs of his head-quarters. He remarked the progress of agriculture; but at the sight of the Gjatz, which pours its waters into the Wolga, he who had conquered so many rivers, felt anew the first emotions of his glory: he was heard to boast of being the master of those waves destined to visit Asia,—as if they were proceeding to announce his approach, and to open for him the way to that quarter of the globe.
Portrait of Murat, King of Naples
On the 4th of September, the army, still divided into three columns, set out from Gjatz and its environs. Murat had gone on a few leagues before. Ever since the arrival of Kutusof, troops of cossacks had been incessantly hovering about the heads of our columns. Murat was exasperated at seeing his cavalry forced to deploy against so feeble an obstacle. We are assured that on that day, from one of those first impulses worthy of the ages of chivalry, he dashed suddenly and alone towards their line, stopped short a few paces from them, and there, sword in hand, made a sign for them to retire, with an air and gesture so commanding, that these barbarians obeyed, and fell back in amazement.
This circumstance, which was related to us immediately, was received without incredulity. The martial air of that monarch, the brilliancy of his chivalrous dress, his reputation, and the novelty of such an action, caused this momentary ascendancy to appear true, in spite of its improbability; for such was Murat, a theatrical monarch by the splendor of his dress, and truly a king by his extraordinary valour and his inexhaustible activity; bold as the attack, and always armed with that air of superiority, that threatening audacity, which is the most dangerous of offensive weapons.
He had not marched long, however, before he was forced to halt. At Griednewa, between Gjatz and Borodino, the high-road suddenly descends into a deep ravine, whence it again rises as suddenly to a spacious height, which Kutusof had ordered Konownitzin to defend. That general at first made a vigorous resistance against the foremost troops of Murat; but as the army closely followed the latter, every moment gave increased energy to the attack, and diminished that of the defence; presently the advanced-guard of the viceroy engaged on the right of the Russians, where a charge by the Italian chasseurs was withstood for a moment by the cossacks, which excited astonishment; they became intermixed.
Platof himself admitted that in this affair an officer was wounded near him, at which he was by no means surprised; but that he nevertheless caused the sorcerer who accompanied him to be flogged before all his cossacks, loudly charging him with laziness for neglecting to turn aside the balls by his conjurations, as he had been expressly directed to do.
Konownitzin was vanquished and retired; on the 5th his bloody track was followed to the vast convent of Kolotskoi,—fortified as habitations were of old in those too highly vaunted Gothic ages, when civil wars were so frequent; when every place, not excepting even these sacred abodes of peace, was transformed into a military post.
Konownitzin, threatened on the right and left, made no other stand either at Kolotskoi or at Golowino; but when the advanced-guard debouched from that village, it beheld the whole plain and the woods infested with cossacks, the rye crops spoiled, the villages sacked; in short, a general destruction. By these signs it recognized the field of battle, which Kutusof was preparing for the grand army. Behind these clouds of Scythians were perceived three villages; they presented a line of a league. The intervals between them, intersected by ravines and wood, were covered with the enemy's riflemen. In the first moment of ardour, some French horse ventured into the midst of these Russians, and were cut off.