Guests were awaiting the arrival of their honoured guest, the hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagration. On receiving the news of the defeat of Austerlitz, all Moscow had at first been thrown into bewilderment. At that period the Russians were so used to victories, that on receiving news of a defeat, some people were simply incredulous, while others sought an explanation of so strange an event in exceptional circumstances of some kind.
At the English Club, where every one of note, every one who had authentic information and weight gathered together, during December, when the news began to arrive, not a word was said about video door entry the war and about the last defeat; it was as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who took the lead in conversation at the club, such as Count Rostoptchin, Prince Yury Vladimirovitch Dolgoruky, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemsky, did not put in an appearance at the club, but met together in their intimate circles at each other's houses.
That section of Moscow society which took its opinions from others to which, indeed, Count Ilya Andreivitch Rostov belonged remained for a short time without leaders and without definite views upon the progress of the war. People felt in Moscow that something was wrong, and that it door phone intercom
