PRINCE ANDREY reached the headquarters of the army at the end of June. The first army, with which the Tsar was, was stationed in a fortified camp at Drissa. The second army was retreating, striving to effect a junction with the first army, from which—so it was said—it had been cut off by immense forces of the French. Every one was dissatisfied with the general course of events in the Russian army. But no one even dreamed of any danger of the Russian provinces being invaded, no one imagined the war could extend beyond the frontiers of the western Polish provinces.
Prince Andrey found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he was sent, on the bank of the Drissa. Since there was not one large village nor dwelling-place in the neighbourhood of the camp, the immense multitude of generals and courtiers accompanying the army were distributed about the neighborhood for ten versts round in the best houses of the village on both sides of the river. Barclay de Tolly was staying four versts away from the Tsar. He gave Bolkonsky a dry and frigid reception, and said in his German accent that he would mention him to the Tsar so that a definite appointment might be given him, and that meanwhile he begged him to remain on his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince Andrey had expected to find in the army, was not here. He was in Petersburg, and Bolkonsky was glad to hear it. He was absorbed in the interest of being at the centre of the immense war that was in progress, and he was relieved to be free for a time from the irritability produced in him by the idea of Kuragin. The first four days, during which he was not called upon to do anything, he spent in riding round the whole of the fortified camp, and by the aid of his experiences and his conversations with persons of greater experience, he tried to form a definite idea about it. But the question whether such a camp were of use at all or not remained an open one in his mind. He had already, from his own military experience, formed the conviction that in war the most deeply meditated plans are of no avail （as he had seen at Austerlitz）, that everything depends on how unexpected actions of the enemy, actions that cannot possibly be foreseen, are met; that all depends on how, and by whom, the battle is led. In order to settle this last question to his own satisfaction, Prince Andrey took advantage of his position and his acquaintances to try to get an insight into the character of the persons and parties who had a hand in the organisation of the army. This was the general idea he gained of the position of affairs.