War and Peace
French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the
welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually
meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a
large continent.
Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without
replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has
obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the divine
authority of the kings and the “fate” of the ancients, to reach the same
conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations guided
by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to which these
nations and humanity at large are tending.
At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon to
Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent novelty of
their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.
In the first place the historian describes the activity of individuals
who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian considers
only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men, while another
includes also orators, learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets).
Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward which humanity is being led
is known to the historians: to one of them this goal is the greatness of
the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; to another it is liberty, equality,
and a certain kind of civilization of a small corner of the world called
Europe.
In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is expressed
by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it moves
eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward.
In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable
symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting to
it, as the first movement had done, the nations of middle Europe. The
counter movement reaches the starting point of the first movement in the
west—Paris—and subsides.
During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions
of men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions
of Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
another.
What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people burn
houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these events?
What force made men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and
most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the
monuments and tradition of that period.
For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns to the
science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity to know
themselves.
If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that reply
would have been clear and complete. One might believe or disbelieve
in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone believing in
it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the history of that
period, nor would there have been any contradictions.
But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit the
conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the Deity
in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other answers.
Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know what
this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced these
events? Then listen:
“Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such and such
mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France badly. His
descendants were weak men and they too ruled France badly. And they had
such and such favorites and such and such mistresses. Moreover, certain
men wrote some books at that time. At the end of the eighteenth century
there were a couple of dozen men in Paris who began to talk about all
men being free and equal. This caused people all over France to begin
to slash at and drown one another. They killed the king and many other
people. At that time there was in France a man of genius—Napoleon. He
conquered everybody everywhere—that is, he killed many people because
he was a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and
killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned to
France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him. Having
become an Emperor he again went out to kill people in Italy, Austria,
and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. In Russia there
was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and
therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends
with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled and again began killing many
people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand men into Russia and captured
Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and the Emperor
Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to
arm against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly
became his enemies and their forces advanced against the fresh forces he
raised. The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to
abdicate, and sent him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the
title of Emperor and showing him every respect, though five years before
and one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand.
Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the laughingstock both of the
French and the Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears
before his Old Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then
the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who
managed to sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and
thereby extended the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by
these conversations made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the
diplomatists and monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of
again ordering their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon
arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating
him, immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were
angry at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated
the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent him
to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the beloved
France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that rock and
bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a reaction
occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress their
subjects.”
It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic—a caricature of the
historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild expression of
the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions, which all the
historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the histories
of separate states to the writers of general histories and the new
histories of the culture of that period.
The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that
modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.
If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of
humanity and of the peoples, the first question—in the absence of a
reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible—is: what is the
power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies
either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very
proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not
what was asked. All that would be interesting if we recognized a divine
power based on itself and always consistently directing its nations
through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we do not acknowledge such
a power, and therefore before speaking about Napoleons, Louis-es, and
authors, we ought to be shown the connection existing between these men
and the movement of the nations.
If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it should
be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole interest of
history lies precisely in that force.
History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone
reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new
force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really
quite well known to everybody.
CHAPTER II
What force moves the nations?
Biographical historians and historians of separate nations understand
this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In their narration
events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and Alexander, or in
general of the persons they describe. The answers given by this kind
of historian to the question of what force causes events to happen are
satisfactory only as long as there is but one historian to each event.
As soon as historians of different nationalities and tendencies begin
to describe the same event, the replies they give immediately lose all
meaning, for this force is understood by them all not only differently
but often in quite contradictory ways. One historian says that an
event was produced by Napoleon’s power, another that it was produced by
Alexander’s, a third that it was due to the power of some other person.
Besides this, historians of that kind contradict each other even
in their statement as to the force on which the authority of some
particular person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon’s
power was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it
was based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians
of this class, by mutually destroying one another’s positions, destroy
the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no
reply to history’s essential question.
Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to
recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians’ view of the force
which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power inherent in
heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a multiplicity of variously
directed forces. In describing a war or the subjugation of a people, a
general historian looks for the cause of the event not in the power
of one man, but in the interaction of many persons connected with the
event.
According to this view the power of historical personages, represented
as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would seem, be regarded
as a force that itself produces events. Yet in most cases universal
historians still employ the conception of power as a force that itself
produces events, and treat it as their cause. In their exposition, an
historic character is first the product of his time, and his power only
the resultant of various forces, and then his power is itself a force
producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and others, for instance, at one
time prove Napoleon to be a product of the Revolution, of the ideas of
1789 and so forth, and at another plainly say that the campaign of 1812
and other things they do not like were simply the product of Napoleon’s
misdirected will, and that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their
development by Napoleon’s caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the
general temper of the age produced Napoleon’s power. But Napoleon’s
power suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of
the age.
This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur at
every step, but the universal historians’ accounts are all made up of
a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs because after