War and Peace
with those about him began, he alone said that the battle of Borodinó
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 Lauriston’s proposal of
peace, he said: There can be no peace, for such is the people’s 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 “a golden bridge”; that neither
the Tarútino, the Vyázma, nor the Krásnoe 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.
And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakchéev
to please the Emperor, he alone—incurring thereby the Emperor’s
displeasure—said in Vílna that to carry the war beyond the frontier is
useless and harmful.
Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of the
events. His actions—without the smallest deviation—were all directed
to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his strength for
conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out
of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the sufferings of our people
and of our army.
This procrastinator Kutúzov, whose motto was “Patience and Time,”
this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodinó, investing the
preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutúzov who before
the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be lost, he alone, in
contradiction to everyone else, declared till his death that Borodinó
was a victory, despite the assurance of generals that the battle was
lost and despite the fact that for an army to have to retire after
winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during the whole retreat
insisted that battles, which were useless then, should not be fought,
and that a new war should not be begun nor the frontiers of Russia
crossed.
It is easy now to understand the significance of these events—if only we
abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that existed
only in the heads of a dozen individuals—for the events and results now
lie before us.
But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general opinion,
so truly discern the importance of the people’s view of the events that
in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?
The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of the
events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he possessed in
full purity and strength.
Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling caused
the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar’s wish, to
select him—an old man in disfavor—to be their representative in the
national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest human
pedestal from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all his powers
not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing pity on
them.
That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not be
cast in the false mold of a European hero—the supposed ruler of men—that
history has invented.
To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception of
greatness.
CHAPTER VI
The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle of
Krásnoe. Toward evening—after much disputing and many mistakes made by
generals who did not go to their proper places, and after adjutants had
been sent about with counterorders—when it had become plain that the
enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and would be no
battle, Kutúzov left Krásnoe and went to Dóbroe whither his headquarters
had that day been transferred.
The day was clear and frosty. Kutúzov rode to Dóbroe on his plump little
white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented generals who
whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the road groups of
French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them)
were crowding to warm themselves at campfires. Near Dóbroe an immense
crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with talk and wrapped and bandaged
in anything they had been able to get hold of, were standing in the road
beside a long row of unharnessed French guns. At the approach of the
commander in chief the buzz of talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on
Kutúzov who, wearing a white cap with a red band and a padded overcoat
that bulged on his round shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his
white horse. One of the generals was reporting to him where the guns and
prisoners had been captured.
Kutúzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general was
saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he gazed
attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a specially
wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by frost-bitten noses
and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and festering eyes.
One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them, one of
whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of raw
flesh with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial in
the fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the malevolent
expression with which, after a glance at Kutúzov, the soldier with the
sores immediately turned away and went on with what he was doing.
Kutúzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He puckered his
face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head. At another
spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a Frenchman on the
shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly manner, and Kutúzov with
the same expression on his face again swayed his head.
“What were you saying?” he asked the general, who continuing his report
directed the commander in chief’s attention to some standards captured
from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhénsk regiment.
“Ah, the standards!” said Kutúzov, evidently detaching himself with
difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him.
He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at him from
all sides awaiting a word from him.
He stopped in front of the Preobrazhénsk regiment, sighed deeply, and
closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers carrying
the standards to advance and surround the commander in chief with them.
Kutúzov was silent for a few seconds and then, submitting with evident
reluctance to the duty imposed by his position, raised his head
and began to speak. A throng of officers surrounded him. He looked
attentively around at the circle of officers, recognizing several of
them.
“I thank you all!” he said, addressing the soldiers and then again the
officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words were
distinctly heard. “I thank you all for your hard and faithful service.
The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor to you
forever.”
He paused and looked around.
“Lower its head, lower it!” he said to a soldier who had accidentally
lowered the French eagle he was holding before the Preobrazhénsk
standards. “Lower, lower, that’s it. Hurrah lads!” he added, addressing
the men with a rapid movement of his chin.
“Hur-r-rah!” roared thousands of voices.
While the soldiers were shouting Kutúzov leaned forward in his saddle
and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and apparently ironic
gleam.
“You see, brothers...” said he when the shouts had ceased... and all at
once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no longer
the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who wanted to
tell his comrades something very important.
There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of the
soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was going to
say.
“You see, brothers, I know it’s hard for you, but it can’t be helped!
Bear up; it won’t be for long now! We’ll see our visitors off and then
we’ll rest. The Tsar won’t forget your service. It is hard for you, but
still you are at home while they—you see what they have come to,” said
he, pointing to the prisoners. “Worse off than our poorest beggars.
While they were strong we didn’t spare ourselves, but now we may even
pity them. They are human beings too. Isn’t it so, lads?”
He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze fixed
upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew brighter
and brighter with an old man’s mild smile, which drew the corners of his
lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased speaking and bowed
his head as if in perplexity.
“But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody
bastards!” he cried, suddenly lifting his head.
And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first time
during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the soldiers
laughing joyfully and shouting “Hurrah!”
Kutúzov’s words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could have
repeated the field marshal’s address, begun solemnly and then changing
into an old man’s simplehearted talk; but the hearty sincerity of that
speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined with pity for the foe
and consciousness of the justice of our cause, exactly expressed by that
old man’s good-natured expletives, was not merely understood but lay
in the soul of every soldier and found expression in their joyous and
long-sustained shouts. Afterwards when one of the generals addressed
Kutúzov asking whether he wished his calèche to be sent for, Kutúzov in
answering unexpectedly gave a sob, being evidently greatly moved.
CHAPTER VII
When the troops reached their night’s halting place on the eighth of
November, the last day of the Krásnoe battles, it was already growing
dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional lightly
falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the falling
snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost grew
keener.
An infantry regiment which had left Tarútino three thousand strong but
now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that night
at its halting place—a village on the highroad. The quartermasters who
met the regiment announced that all the huts were full of sick and dead
Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff. There was only one hut
available for the regimental commander.
The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the
village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.
Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its
lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep
through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village, and
immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of branches,
and merry voices could be heard from there. Another section amid the
regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a group was busy
getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the horses. A third
section scattered through the village arranging quarters for the staff
officers, carrying out the French corpses that were in the huts, and
dragging away boards, dry wood, and thatch from the roofs, for the
campfires, or wattle fences to serve for shelter.
Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle
wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.
“Now then, all together—shove!” cried the voices, and the huge surface
of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost, was seen
swaying in the gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked more and
more and at last the wall fell, and with it the men who had been pushing