War and Peace
These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They came up
to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our soldiers did
not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an officer’s hat
and seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he had been going to
sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy soldier with a shawl
tied round his head, was stronger. He raised his companion and said
something, pointing to his mouth. The soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen,
spread a greatcoat on the ground for the sick man, and brought some
buckwheat porridge and vodka for both of them.
The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his head
wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.
When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he
suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the
soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and
resting his head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire, looking at
the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally he emitted
a long-drawn groan and then again became silent. Morel, pointing to his
shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact that Ramballe was
an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer who had come up
to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would not take a French
officer into his hut to warm him, and when the messenger returned and
said that the colonel wished the officer to be brought to him, Ramballe
was told to go. He rose and tried to walk, but staggered and would have
fallen had not a soldier standing by held him up.
“You won’t do it again, eh?” said one of the soldiers, winking and
turning mockingly to Ramballe.
“Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are—a real peasant!” came
rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.
They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two
soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around their
necks while they carried him and began wailing plaintively:
“Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh, my
brave, kind friends,” and he leaned his head against the shoulder of one
of the men like a child.
Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire, surrounded by
the soldiers.
Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes, was
wearing a woman’s cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round his
head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a French song
in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the nearest soldier.
The soldiers simply held their sides as they watched him.
“Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I’ll soon pick it up. How is
it?” said the man—a singer and a wag—whom Morel was embracing.
“Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!” sang Morel, winking. “Ce
diable à quatre...” *
* “Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy
devil.”
“Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!” repeated the soldier, flourishing
his arm and really catching the tune.
“Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!” rose their rough, joyous laughter from all sides.
Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.
“Well, go on, go on!”
“Qui eut le triple talent,
De boire, de battre,
Et d’être un vert galant.” *
* Who had a triple talent
For drinking, for fighting,
And for being a gallant old boy...
“It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletáev!”
“Ke...” Zaletáev, brought out with effort: “ke-e-e-e,” he drawled,
laboriously pursing his lips, “le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e
de-tra-va-ga-la” he sang.
“Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to eat?”
“Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after
starving.”
They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a laugh set to work on
his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they watched him.
The older men, who thought it undignified to amuse themselves with such
nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side of the fire, but one
would occasionally raise himself on an elbow and glance at Morel with a
smile.
“They are men too,” said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his
coat. “Even wormwood grows on its own root.”
“O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard
frost....”
They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was looking
at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now flaring
up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering something
gladsome and mysterious to one another.
CHAPTER X
The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical
progression; and that crossing of the Berëzina about which so much has
been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and
not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been
and still is written about the Berëzina, on the French side this is only
because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities their army
had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated at one moment
into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory, and on the
Russian side merely because in Petersburg—far from the seat of war—a
plan (again one of Pfuel’s) had been devised to catch Napoleon in a
strategic trap at the Berëzina River. Everyone assured himself that all
would happen according to plan, and therefore insisted that it was just
the crossing of the Berëzina that destroyed the French army. In reality
the results of the crossing were much less disastrous to the French—in
guns and men lost—than Krásnoe had been, as the figures show.
The sole importance of the crossing of the Berëzina lies in the fact
that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans for
cutting off the enemy’s retreat and the soundness of the only possible
line of action—the one Kutúzov and the general mass of the army
demanded—namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd fled
at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed to
reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was impossible
to block its path. This was shown not so much by the arrangements it
made for crossing as by what took place at the bridges. When the bridges
broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from Moscow and women with
children who were with the French transport, all—carried on by vis
inertiæ—pressed forward into boats and into the ice-covered water and
did not surrender.
That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of pursuers
was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own people each
might hope for help from his fellows and the definite place he held
among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining in the same
pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share in the
necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed of the fact
that half the prisoners—with whom the Russians did not know what to
do—perished of cold and hunger despite their captors’ desire to save
them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The most compassionate
Russian commanders, those favorable to the French—and even the Frenchmen
in the Russian service—could do nothing for the prisoners. The French
perished from the conditions to which the Russian army was itself
exposed. It was impossible to take bread and clothes from our hungry and
indispensable soldiers to give to the French who, though not harmful, or
hated, or guilty, were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did that,
but they were exceptions.
Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was hope.
Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in collective
flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was concentrated.
The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the
remnant, especially after the Berëzina, on which (in consequence of the
Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians, and
the keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, who blamed one
another and Kutúzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of
the Petersburg Berëzina plan would be attributed to Kutúzov led
to dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly
expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a
respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was
to blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or
asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable
formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at
every turn.
Because they could not understand him all these people assumed that
it was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never grasp the
profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his phrases (which
they thought were mere phrases) about a “golden bridge,” about the
impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd of tatterdemalions,
and so forth. They had heard all that before. And all he said—that it
was necessary to await provisions, or that the men had no boots—was so
simple, while what they proposed was so complicated and clever, that
it was evident that he was old and stupid and that they, though not in
power, were commanders of genius.
After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and Petersburg
hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff reached their
maximum. Kutúzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
Only once, after the affair of the Berëzina, did he get angry and write
to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the Emperor) the following
letter:
“On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency please
be so good as to set off for Kalúga on receipt of this, and there await
further commands and appointments from His Imperial Majesty.”
But after Bennigsen’s departure, the Grand Duke Tsarévich Constantine
Pávlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the beginning of the
campaign but had subsequently been removed from the army by Kutúzov.
Now having come to the army, he informed Kutúzov of the Emperor’s
displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the slowness of their
advance. The Emperor intended to join the army personally in a few days’
time.
The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs—this
same Kutúzov who in August had been chosen commander in chief
against the sovereign’s wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke and
heir-apparent from the army—who on his own authority and contrary to the
Emperor’s will had decided on the abandonment of Moscow, now realized at
once that his day was over, that his part was played, and that the power
he was supposed to hold was no longer his. And he understood this not
merely from the attitude of the court. He saw on the one hand that the
military business in which he had played his part was ended and felt
that his mission was accomplished; and at the same time he began to
be conscious of the physical weariness of his aged body and of the
necessity of physical rest.
On the twenty-ninth of November Kutúzov entered Vílna—his “dear Vílna”
as he called it. Twice during his career Kutúzov had been governor of
Vílna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured, he found old
friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of which he had
so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the cares of army
and state and, as far as the passions that seethed around him allowed,
immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had formerly been
accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that had still to be
done in the realm of history did not concern him at all.
Chichagóv, one of the most zealous “cutters-off” and “breakers-up,” who