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While our left was achieving this brilliant success, the centre, consisting of the troops of Marshals Soult and Bernadotte, who had been placed by the Emperor in the valley of the Goldbach where they were hidden by a thick mist, advanced towards the slope on which stood the village of Pratzen.
"Par Saint Louis," cried General d'Auvergne, as he directed his telescope on the Russian line, "those fellows have lost their senses! See if they have not moved their artillery away from the Pratzen, and weakened their centre more and more! Soult sees it: mark how he presses his columns on! There they go, faster and faster! But look! there's a movement yonder, the Russians perceive their mistake."
The movement of the allies had the effect of partly withdrawing their troops from the plateau of Pratzen. At a signal from the emperor the strongly concentrated center of the French army moved forward in a dense mass, directing their march towards the plateau, which they made all haste to occupy. They had reached the foot of the hill before the rising mist revealed them to the enemy.
Caution urged him to hold back his men to the last moment, until the need of giving cohesion to the turning movement led the Czar impatiently to order his advance. Scarcely had the Russians descended beyond Pratzen when they were exposed to a furious attack.
He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident, self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun floating up out of the mist.
I was even more dismayed the next day when Napoleon, in the course of his usual visit to his troops, started off in the direction of the Chasseur's bivouac, for a simple question put to an officer could expose everything; but just when I thought that I was done for, I heard the sound of the band of the Russian force, camped on the high ground of the Pratzen half a league from our position.
Their properties confiscated, themselves suspected, what tie binds them to this country? You are not more an alien here than I am." "And yet, Duchesne, you shed your blood freely for this same cause you condemn. You charged the Pratzen, some days ago, with four squadrons, against a whole column of Russian cavalry." "Ay, and would again to-morrow, boy.
Though he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights just where he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief, he could not, did not wish to, believe that. Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds.
We must not for one man lose six." The Russian guard at last turned towards Pratzen. A French battalion, which had let itself be drawn in pursuit, was in danger. Napoleon, stationed at the centre with the infantry of the guard, and the corps of Bernadotte, perceived the disorder. "Take there the Mamelukes and the chasseurs of the guard," said he to Rapp.
When he had reached the village of Pratzen he halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number forming the commander in chief's suite. He was in a state of suppressed excitement and irritation, though controlledly calm as a man is at the approach of a long-awaited moment. He was firmly convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his bridge of Arcola.
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