“Your excellency, that’s the truth of it, the holy truth,” put in Timohin; “who would spare himself now! The soldiers in my battalion, would you believe it, wouldn’t drink their vodka; this isn’t an ordinary day, they say.”

All were silent.

The officers rose. Prince Andrey went with them out of the barn, giving the last instructions to the adjutant. When the officers had gone, Pierre came nearer to Prince Andrey, and was just about to begin talking when they heard the tramp of hoofs not far away on the road, and glancing in that direction Prince Andrey recognised Woltzogen and Klausewitz, accompanied by a Cossack. They rode close by them, still talking, and Pierre and Prince Andrey could not help overhearing the following phrases in German:

“The war ought to be carried on over a wide extent of country. I cannot sufficiently strongly express that view of the matter,” one said in German.

“Oh yes,” said another voice, “since the object is to wear out the enemy, one must not consider the losses of private persons.”

“Certainly not,” acquiesced the first voice.

“Carried into a wide extent of country,” Prince Andrey repeated with a wrathful snort, when they had ridden by. “In that open country I had a father and son and sister at Bleak Hills. He doesn’t care about that. That’s just what I was saying to you: these excellent Germans won’t win the battle to-morrow, they will only make a mess of it, so far as they are able, because they have nothing in their German noddles but calculations that are not worth a rotten egg, and they haven’t in their hearts the one thing that’s wanted for to-morrow, that Timohin has. They have given all Europe up to him, and now they have come to teach us—fine teachers!” he added, his voice growing shrill again

“So you think the battle to-morrow will be a victory,” said Pierre.

“Yes, yes,” said Prince Andrey absently. “There’s one thing I would do, if I were in power,” he began again. “I wouldn’t take prisoners. What sense is there in taking prisoners? That’s chivalry. The French have destroyed my home and are coming to destroy Moscow; they have outraged and are outraging me at every second. They are my enemies, they are all criminals to my way of thinking. And so thinks Timohin, and all the army with him. They must be put to death. Since they are my enemies, they can’t be my friends, whatever they may have said at Tilsit.”

“Yes, yes,” said Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince Andrey. “I entirely agree with you!”

The question that had been disturbing Pierre all that day, since the Mozhaisk hill, now struck him as perfectly clear and fully solved. He saw now all the import and all the gravity of the war and the impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the stern, grave faces of which he had had glimpses, appeared to him in a new light now. He saw, to borrow a term from physics, the latent heat of patriotism in all those men he had seen, and saw in it the explanation of the composure and apparent levity with which they were all preparing for death. “We ought not to take prisoners,” said Prince Andrey. “That change alone would transform the whole aspect of war and would make it less cruel. But playing at war, that’s what’s vile; and playing at magnanimity and all the rest of it. That magnanimity and sensibility is like the magnanimity and sensibility of the lady who turns sick at the sight of a slaughtered calf—she is so kind-hearted she can’t see blood—but eats fricasseed veal with a very good appetite. They talk of the laws of warfare, of chivalry, of flags of truce, and humanity to the wounded, and so on. That’s all rubbish. I saw enough in 1805 of chivalry and flags of truce: they duped us, and we duped them. They plunder other people’s homes, issue false money, and, worse than all, kill my children, my father, and then talk of the laws of warfare, and generosity to a fallen foe. No prisoners; and go to give and to meet death! Any one who has come to think this as I have, through the same sufferings …”