War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (latest ebook reader .TXT) ๐
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- Author: graf Leo Tolstoy
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Toll wrote a disposition: โThe first column will march to so and so,โ etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the disposition. Prince Eugรจne of Wรผrttemberg fired from a hill over the French crowds that were running past, and demanded reinforcements which did not arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round as best they could, and continued their flight.
Milorรกdovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found when he was wantedโthat chevalier sans peur et sans reproche * as he styled himselfโwho was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys demanding their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was ordered to do.
* Knight without fear and without reproach.
โI give you that column, lads,โ he said, riding up to the troops and pointing out the French to the cavalry.
And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented to themโthat is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold, frost-bitten, and starvingโand the column that had been presented to them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been anxious to do.
At Krรกsnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several hundred cannon, and a stick called a โmarshalโs staff,โ and disputed as to who had distinguished himself and were pleased with their achievementโthough they much regretted not having taken Napoleon, or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one another and especially Kutรบzov for having failed to do so.
These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes and imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable deed. They blamed Kutรบzov and said that from the very beginning of the campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought of nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that at Krรกsnoe he checked the advance because on learning that Napoleon was there he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that he had an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.
Not only did his contemporaries, carried away by their passions, talk in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as grand, while Kutรบzov is described by foreigners as a crafty, dissolute, weak old courtier, and by Russians as something indefiniteโa sort of puppet useful only because he had a Russian name.
In 1812 and 1813 Kutรบzov was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written by order of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutรบzov was a cunning court liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at Krรกsnoe and the Berรซzina he deprived the Russian army of the glory of complete victory over the French. *
* History of the year 1812. The character of Kutรบzov and reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krรกsnoe, by Bogdรกnovich.
Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary individuals who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish such men for discerning the higher laws.
For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleonโthat most insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in exile, showed human dignityโNapoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he is grand. But Kutรบzovโthe man who from the beginning to the end of his activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or deed from Borodinรณ to Vรญlna, presented an example exceptional in history of self-sacrifice and a present consciousness of the future importance of what was happeningโKutรบzov seems to them something indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year 1812 they always seem a little ashamed.
And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the will of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find an instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being so completely accomplished as that to which all Kutรบzovโs efforts were directed in 1812.
Kutรบzov never talked of โforty centuries looking down from the Pyramids,โ of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said nothing about himself, adopted no pose, always appeared to be the simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de Staรซl, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchรญn at the Yaรบza bridge galloped up to Kutรบzov with personal reproaches for having caused the destruction of Moscow, and said: โHow was it you promised not to abandon Moscow without a battle?โ Kutรบzov replied: โAnd I shall not abandon Moscow without a battle,โ though Moscow was then already abandoned. When Arakchรฉev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that Ermรณlov ought to be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutรบzov replied: โYes, I was just saying so myself,โ though a moment before he had said quite the contrary. What did it matter to himโwho then alone amid a senseless crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what was happeningโwhat did it matter to him whether Rostopchรญn attributed the calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it matter to him who was appointed chief of the artillery.
Not merely in these cases but continually did that old manโwho by experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the words serving as their expression are not what move peopleโuse quite meaningless words that happened to enter his head.
But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single aim toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodinรณ, from which time his disagreement with those about him began, he alone said that the battle of Borodinรณ was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to Lauristonโs proposal of peace, he said: There can be no peace, for such is the peopleโs will. He alone during the retreat of the French said that all our maneuvers are useless, everything is being accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy must be offered โa golden bridgeโ; that neither the Tarรบtino, the Vyรกzma, nor the Krรกsnoe battles were necessary; that we must keep some force to reach the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a single Russian for ten Frenchmen.
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