Kutuzov received the dispatch at Tsarevo-Zaimishche on the evening of the seventeenth of August.
He read it twice by the light of a single candle and then folded it into his coat.
Bagration was summoned and came at once, still in his riding boots.
The two men spoke for an hour with the door closed.
Outside, the staff waited in the yard and pretended not to listen.
Bennigsen arrived after dark and was admitted immediately.
He argued for a stand on the Tsarevo heights and was overruled.
Toll unrolled the maps on the table and marked the ridges in pencil.
Kutuzov said nothing while Toll spoke.
When Toll had finished, the old man asked only how far it was to Moscow.
Barclay de Tolly reached headquarters the next morning.
He had ridden through the night from Gzhatsk without changing horses.
His reception was correct and cold.
He was given command of the First Army and told to hold the right.
Bagration would hold the left with the Second Army.
The centre would be Dokhturov's.
Raevsky was ordered to fortify the mound that would later carry his name.
The engineers began digging the same afternoon.
Peasants from the surrounding villages were pressed into the work.
By the twentieth the redoubt was half built and the guns were arriving.
Davout's corps appeared on the Kolotcha road on the twenty-third.
Murat's cavalry screened the French advance.
The first shots were exchanged near the village of Shevardino.
Gorchakov held the Shevardino redoubt until nightfall and then withdrew.
Napoleon rode forward to look at the Russian position and said nothing for a long time.
He dined that night on a folding table in the open air.
Rain fell after midnight and stopped before dawn.
On the morning of the twenty-sixth the sun rose through mist.
Kutuzov heard mass in front of the icon of Smolensk.
The soldiers knelt in the wet grass.
Bagration stood at the flèches with his arms folded.
The French guns opened at six.
Raevsky's mound changed hands three times before noon.
Bagration was struck in the leg by a shell fragment and carried from the field.
Konovnitsyn took his place without orders.
Uvarov's cavalry crossed the Kolotcha and rode into the French rear.
Napoleon held back the Guard.
By evening both armies stood where they had begun, and neither had won.
Kutuzov ordered the retreat at midnight and rode toward Mozhaisk in the dark.
Moscow was six days away.
