Page 1484 - war-and-peace

Chapter XXXI

Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre
was galloping turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing
sight of him, galloped in among some ranks of infantry
marching ahead of him. He tried to pass either in front
of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers ev-
erywhere, all with expression and busy with some unseen
but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same
dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in
a white hat, who for some unknown reason threatened to
trample them under his horse’s hoofs.
‘Why ride into the middle of the battalion?’ one of them
shouted at him.
Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a mus-
ket, and Pierre, bending over his saddlebow and hardly able
to control his shying horse, galloped ahead of the soldiers
where there was a free space.
There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers
stood firing. Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware
of it he had come to the bridge across the Kolocha between
Gorki and Borodino, which the French (having occupied
Borodino) were attacking in the first phase of the battle.
Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front of him and that
soldiers were doing something on both sides of it and in
the meadow, among the rows of new-mown hay which he

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