That's why I'd like to be assigned
to this detachment.
With 4,000 exhausted men,
Bagration had been entrusted
to delay the entire enemy army
for twenty-four hours.
This respite was
indispensable to Kutuzov
in order for him to get his
transport-burdened army
out of reach of the French troops,
outnumbering his own three to one.
Gentlemen, what does this mean?
You can't leave your posts!
Take you, Captain.
You should be ashamed of
yourself, Captain Tushin.
An officer should set a good
example, and where're your boots?
If the alarm were sounded,
you'd be in your stocking feet!
Wouldn't that be a pretty sight?
So return to your posts,
gentlemen.
The soldiers say you go faster
without boots on.
Will you return to your posts?
It was getting closer and closer,
that special moment,
for which so much work had been
done and so much hardship endured,
for which soldiers had been drilled
for fifteen years,
homes and families left,
and a peasant turned
into a warrior,
for which 80,000 men lived in the
field, without wives and children,
without participation
in the affairs of civil life,
moving through
a strange, unknown country.
They lived in the fields,
on the roads, in the woods,
neglecting all the amenities
of a habitual human life.
For all those men, a road was
not the way to their family,
pleasures or work,
but a way of bypassing or attacking,
a house was not the hearth and home,
but the ambush position,
people were not their brothers,
but the tools
and the necessary victims of death.
No, my friend,
if a man could know
what would be after his death,
none of us would fear death.
That's how it is, my friend.
Fear it or not,
you won't escape it.
But you fear it anyway...
There, you smart people.
You artillerymen are so smart
because you can take everything
with you, both vodka and snacks.
And still you fear.
Uncertainty, that's what one fears
most.
Though they say that your soul
will go to Heaven...
We know there's no Heaven,
it's all just the atmosphere.
Come on, give us a taste of
your herbal vodka, Tushin.
With my pleasure.
And yet, to fathom your future
life...
It has begun! Here it is!
It has begun! The battle!
It's terrible, but glorious!
It has begun! That's it!
It has begun! That's it!
Two points up should do it.
Load, Medvedev!
Schoengraben is burning!
Please, Your Highness,
come away from here.
Please, Your Highness!
For God's sake!
Can't you see what's happening?
The French!
Fine looking soldiers.
Left, left...
Left, left...
Left, left...
Left, left...
Close in!
Battalion, halt!
Down knapsacks!
God be with us!
What is it? I don't move,
I fell, I'm killed.
There are people coming.
They will help me.
Who are these people?
They can't be the French.
O God, You who's in this sky,
forgive, save and protect me.
Are they coming to me?
Why?
To kill me?
Yes, they may kill me.
Me, who is loved by everyone?
It's impossible
that they would want to kill me!
Captain Tushin's battery had been
forgotten.
The troops assigned to cover it
had withdrawn.
The enemy could not conceive
that anyone would be so foolhardy
as to go on fighting
with four unprotected guns.
On the contrary, the French
supposed that it was here,
in the center, that the main Russian
forces were concentrated.
- Gentlemen, everyone fall back.
- Fall back everyone!
- What shall we fire, Captain?
- Nothing. A shell!
Fire!
All right, my little old lady,
don't let me down!
What do you know! Firing again.
Captain Tushin! Captain!
Have you gone mad? Haven't you
been ordered twice to fall back?
I just... I...
Fall back! Everybody fall back!
Your Excellency!
Here are two trophies.
I've captured a French officer,
the whole company's a witness!
Very well.
Remember, Your Excellency,
I'm Dolokhov, reduced in rank!
I received a bayonet wound!
Stayed right up at the front!
Remember,
Your Excellency!
Captain Tushin,
you've been ordered to fall