War and Peace
only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they
were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former
agitation and obscurity. He fell asleep.
He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but that
he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and
insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and
discussed something trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere.
Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had
more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by
empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to
disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded
all else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything
depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went, and
tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he would not be
in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all his powers. He
was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was the fear of death. It
stood behind the door. But just when he was clumsily creeping toward
the door, that dreadful something on the other side was already pressing
against it and forcing its way in. Something not human—death—was
breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He seized the
door, making a final effort to hold it back—to lock it was no longer
possible—but his efforts were weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from
behind by that terror, opened and closed again.
Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts were vain
and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It entered, and it was
death, and Prince Andrew died.
But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was asleep,
and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he awoke.
“Yes, it was death! I died—and woke up. Yes, death is an awakening!” And
all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil that had till then
concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt as
if powers till then confined within him had been liberated, and that
strange lightness did not again leave him.
When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan, Natásha went
up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer and looked at
her strangely, not understanding.
That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary’s
arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting fever
assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did not interest
Natásha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her were more
convincing.
From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew together with
his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration of life it did
not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep compared to the
duration of a dream.
There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow
awakening.
His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both
Princess Mary and Natásha, who did not leave him, felt this. They did
not weep or shudder and during these last days they themselves felt
that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left
them) but on what reminded them most closely of him—his body. Both felt
this so strongly that the outward and terrible side of death did not
affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment their grief.
Neither in his presence nor out of it did they weep, nor did they ever
talk to one another about him. They felt that they could not express in
words what they understood.
They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and deeper,
away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so and that it
was right.
He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of
him. When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the boy’s
and turned away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess Mary and
Natásha understood that) but simply because he thought it was all that
was required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy, he did
what was demanded and looked round as if asking whether there was
anything else he should do.
When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving,
occurred, Princess Mary and Natásha were present.
“Is it over?” said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes
lain motionless, growing cold before them. Natásha went up, looked at
the dead eyes, and hastened to close them. She closed them but did not
kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of him—his
body.
“Where has he gone? Where is he now?...”
When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table,
everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept.
Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful perplexity.
The countess and Sónya cried from pity for Natásha and because he was
no more. The old count cried because he felt that before long, he, too,
must take the same terrible step.
Natásha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their own
personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion which
had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of the
simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in their
presence.
BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812
CHAPTER I
Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but
the desire to find those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without
considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one
of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the
first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says:
“This is the cause!” In historical events (where the actions of men are
the subject of observation) the first and most primitive approximation
to present itself was the will of the gods and, after that, the will of
those who stood in the most prominent position—the heroes of history.
But we need only penetrate to the essence of any historic event—which
lies in the activity of the general mass of men who take part in it—to
be convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the
actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may seem
to be a matter of indifference whether we understand the meaning of
historical events this way or that; yet there is the same difference
between a man who says that the people of the West moved on the East
because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this happened because
it had to happen, as there is between those who declared that the
earth was stationary and that the planets moved round it and those who
admitted that they did not know what upheld the earth, but knew there
were laws directing its movement and that of the other planets. There
is, and can be, no cause of an historical event except the one cause of
all causes. But there are laws directing events, and some of these laws
are known to us while we are conscious of others we cannot comprehend.
The discovery of these laws is only possible when we have quite
abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man,
just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was
possible only when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the
earth.
The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodinó and the
occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the most
important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the Russian
army from the Ryazána to the Kalúga road and to the Tarútino camp—the
so-called flank march across the Krásnaya Pakhrá River. They ascribe the
glory of that achievement of genius to different men and dispute as to
whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians, including the French,
acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders when they speak of
that flank march. But it is hard to understand why military writers,
and following them others, consider this flank march to be the profound
conception of some one man who saved Russia and destroyed Napoleon. In
the first place it is hard to understand where the profundity and genius
of this movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to see that
the best position for an army when it is not being attacked is where
there are most provisions; and even a dull boy of thirteen could have
guessed that the best position for an army after its retreat from Moscow
in 1812 was on the Kalúga road. So it is impossible to understand by
what reasoning the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver
was a profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why
they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and destroy
the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded, accompanied,
or followed by other circumstances, might have proved ruinous to the
Russians and salutary for the French. If the position of the Russian
army really began to improve from the time of that march, it does not at
all follow that the march was the cause of it.
That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to
the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its
destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If
Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
inactive? If the Russian army at Krásnaya Pakhrá had given battle as
Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French
attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhrá? What
would have happened if on approaching Tarútino, Napoleon had attacked
the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when he
attacked them at Smolénsk? What would have happened had the French moved
on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank march that
brought salvation might have proved disastrous.
The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying
history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be
attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in
reality, like the retreat from Filí, it did not suggest itself to anyone
in its entirety, but resulted—moment by moment, step by step, event by
event—from an endless number of most diverse circumstances and was only
seen in its entirety when it had been accomplished and belonged to the
past.
At the council at Filí the prevailing thought in the minds of the
Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, a
direct retreat by the Nízhni road. In proof of this there is the fact
that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and above
all there is the well-known conversation after the council, between the
commander in chief and Lanskóy, who was in charge of the commissariat
department. Lanskóy informed the commander in chief that the army
supplies were for the most part stored along the Oká in the Túla and
Ryazán provinces, and that if they retreated on Nízhni the army would
be separated from its supplies by the broad river Oká, which cannot be
crossed early in winter. This was the first indication of the necessity
of deviating from what had previously seemed the most natural course—a
direct retreat on Nízhni-Nóvgorod. The army turned more to the south,
along the Ryazán road and nearer to its supplies. Subsequently the
inactivity of the French (who even lost sight of the Russian army),
concern for the safety of the arsenal at Túla, and especially the
advantages of drawing nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn
still further south to the Túla road. Having crossed over, by a forced
march, to the Túla road beyond the Pakhrá, the Russian commanders
intended to remain at Podólsk and had no thought of the Tarútino