As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before
our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the
sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian
attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which
he would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!
“I am sure that rascal was lying,” said the count.
“They can still be called back,” said one of his suite, who like Count
Orlóv felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the enemy’s
camp.
“Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?”
“Will you have them fetched back?”
“Fetch them back, fetch them back!” said Count Orlóv with sudden
determination, looking at his watch. “It will be too late. It is quite
light.”
And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grékov. When Grékov
returned, Count Orlóv-Denísov, excited both by the abandoned attempt and
by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not appear, as
well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. All his men
felt the same excitement.
“Mount!” he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
crossed themselves.... “Forward, with God’s aid!”
“Hurrah-ah-ah!” reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies,
trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if poured out
of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.
One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw the
Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just waking
up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.
Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind and
around them, they would have captured Murat and everything there.
That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to make the
Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners. None of them
listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and thirty-eight guns were
taken on the spot, besides standards and (what seemed most important to
the Cossacks) horses, saddles, horsecloths, and the like. All this had
to be dealt with, the prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided—not
without some shouting and even a little fighting among themselves—and it
was on this that the Cossacks all busied themselves.
The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover themselves: they
formed into detachments and began firing. Orlóv-Denísov, still waiting
for the other columns to arrive, advanced no further.
Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that “the First
Column will march” and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,
commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due order
and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their appointed
places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully, began to halt;
murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and finally a
backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about, shouted, grew
angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and were late, gave
vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and went forward,
simply to get somewhere. “We shall get somewhere or other!” And they did
indeed get somewhere, though not to their right places; a few eventually
even got to their right place, but too late to be of any use and only
in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this battle played the part of
Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped assiduously from place to place,
finding everything upside down everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovút’s
corps in a wood when it was already broad daylight, though the corps
should long before have joined Orlóv-Denísov. Excited and vexed by the
failure and supposing that someone must be responsible for it, Toll
galloped up to the commander of the corps and began upbraiding him
severely, saying that he ought to be shot. General Bagovút, a fighting
old soldier of placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay,
confusion, and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody’s surprise
and quite contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things
to Toll.
“I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men as
well as anybody,” he said, and advanced with a single division.
Coming out onto a field under the enemy’s fire, this brave general went
straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering in his
agitation whether going into action now, with a single division, would
be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets were just what he
needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets killed him, and other
bullets killed many of his men. And his division remained under fire for
some time quite uselessly.
CHAPTER VII
Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the front,
but Kutúzov accompanied that column. He well knew that nothing but
confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his will, and as
far as was in his power held the troops back. He did not advance.
He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering
suggestions that they should attack.
“The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don’t see that we are
unable to execute complicated maneuvers,” said he to Milorádovich who
asked permission to advance.
“We couldn’t take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in
time, and nothing can be done now!” he replied to someone else.
When Kutúzov was informed that at the French rear—where according to the
reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody—there were now
two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermólov who was
behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous day.
“You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds,
but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,
forewarned, takes measures accordingly.”
Ermólov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these words.
He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that Kutúzov
would content himself with that hint.
“He’s having a little fun at my expense,” said Ermólov softly, nudging
with his knee Raévski who was at his side.
Soon after this, Ermólov moved up to Kutúzov and respectfully remarked:
“It is not too late yet, your Highness—the enemy has not gone away—if
you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as see
a little smoke.”
Kutúzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat’s troops
were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every hundred paces he
halted for three quarters of an hour.
The whole battle consisted in what Orlóv-Denísov’s Cossacks had done:
the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.
In consequence of this battle Kutúzov received a diamond decoration,
and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also
received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various grades,
and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.
“That’s how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!” said the
Russian officers and generals after the Tarútino battle, letting it be
understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that
we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today. But
people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking about
or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle—Tarútino, Borodinó, or
Austerlitz—takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an
essential condition.
A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than during
a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence the course
taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in advance and
never coincides with the direction of any one force.
If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a given
body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one of those
forces, but will always be a mean—what in mechanics is represented by
the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.
If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French ones, we
find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with previously
formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those descriptions
are false.
The battle of Tarútino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had in
view—to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the
dispositions; nor that which Count Orlóv-Denísov may have had in view—to
take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the whole
corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor the aim of
the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish himself; nor
that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got, and so on. But
if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and what all the
Russians of that day desired—to drive the French out of Russia and
destroy their army—it is quite clear that the battle of Tarútino, just
because of its incongruities, was exactly what was wanted at that stage
of the campaign. It would be difficult and even impossible to imagine
any result more opportune than the actual outcome of this battle. With
a minimum of effort and insignificant losses, despite the greatest
confusion, the most important results of the whole campaign were
attained: the transition from retreat to advance, an exposure of the
weakness of the French, and the administration of that shock which
Napoleon’s army had only awaited to begin its flight.
CHAPTER VIII
Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa; there
can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in the
hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their ancient
capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and
incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon’s hands. The Russian army, only half
the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to attack for
a whole month. Napoleon’s position is most brilliant. He can either fall
on the Russian army with double its strength and destroy it; negotiate
an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal make a menacing move on
Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse, return to Smolénsk or
Vílna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special genius would seem to be
required to retain the brilliant position the French held at that time.
For that, only very simple and easy steps were necessary: not to allow
the troops to loot, to prepare winter clothing—of which there was
sufficient in Moscow for the whole army—and methodically to collect the
provisions, of which (according to the French historians) there were
enough in Moscow to supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon,
that greatest of all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of
the army, took none of these steps.
He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used his
power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses open
to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in Moscow,
advancing on Petersburg or on Nízhni-Nóvgorod, or retiring by a more
northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutúzov afterwards
took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined than what he
actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting the troops
plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a garrison behind
him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutúzov without joining battle,
turned to the right and reached Málo-Yaroslávets, again without
attempting to break through and take the road Kutúzov took, but retiring
instead to Mozháysk along the devastated Smolénsk road. Nothing more
stupid than that could have been devised, or more disastrous for the
army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon’s aim been to destroy his army,
the most skillful strategist could hardly have devised any series
of actions that would so completely have accomplished that purpose,
independently of anything the Russian army might do.
Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his
army because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as
unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he
wished to and because he was very clever and a genius.
In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the
personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws that
guided the event.
The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon’s faculties as having
weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did not justify
his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to do the best he
could for himself and his army, as he had done previously and as he did
subsequently in 1813. His activity at that time was no less astounding
than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in Austria, and in Prussia. We do not
know for certain in how far his genius was genuine in Egypt—where forty
centuries looked down upon his grandeur—for his great exploits there are
all told us by Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius in
Austria or Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French
or German sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps
without fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans
to recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on
in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius
in order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the
matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right.
His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as
elsewhere. Order after order and plan after plan were issued by him
from the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The absence
of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of Moscow, did not
disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the welfare of his
army or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare of the people
of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or of diplomatic
considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated peace.
CHAPTER IX
With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry into
Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the movements
of the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different roads, and
charged Murat to find Kutúzov. Then he gave careful directions about the
fortification of the Krémlin, and drew up a brilliant plan for a future
campaign over the whole map of Russia.
With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain Yákovlev,
who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how to get out of
Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and his magnanimity,
and having written a letter to the Emperor Alexander in which he
considered it his duty to inform his Friend and Brother that Rostopchín
had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he dispatched Yákovlev to
Petersburg.
Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to Tutólmin, he
dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.
With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave orders
to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel Rostopchín was
punished by an order to burn down his houses.
With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a
constitution. A municipality was established and the following
announcement issued:
INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!
Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King
desires to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you how he
punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been taken to
put an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A
paternal administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form your
municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of your
needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished by a red
ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city will wear
a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only wear a red
ribbon round the left arm.
The city police is established on its former footing, and better order
already prevails in consequence of its activity. The government has
appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of police, and twenty
commissaries or captains of wards have been appointed to the different
wards of the city. You will recognize them by the white ribbon they will
wear on the left arm. Several churches of different denominations are
open, and divine service is performed in them unhindered. Your fellow
citizens are returning every day to their homes and orders have been
given that they should find in them the help and protection due to
their misfortunes. These are the measures the government has adopted to
re-establish order and relieve your condition. But to achieve this
aim it is necessary that you should add your efforts and should, if
possible, forget the misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain
the hope of a less cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and
ignominious death awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or
on what remains of your property, and finally that you should not doubt
that these will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest
and most just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you
may be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of
a state, live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to
another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the
military and civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to flow!
With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all the
troops in turn should enter Moscow à la maraude * to obtain provisions
for themselves, so that the army might have its future provided for.
* As looters.
With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be brought back
and services to be again performed in the churches.
With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the following was
placarded everywhere:
PROCLAMATION
You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom
misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of
the soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen!
Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being restored in
it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from their hiding places
on finding that they are respected. Any violence to them or to their
property is promptly punished. His Majesty the Emperor and King protects
them, and considers no one among you his enemy except those who disobey
his orders. He desires to end your misfortunes and restore you to your
homes and families. Respond, therefore, to his benevolent intentions
and come to us without fear. Inhabitants, return with confidence to your
abodes! You will soon find means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen
and industrious artisans, return to your work, your houses, your shops,
where the protection of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay
for your work. And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where
you are hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full
assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in the
city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the products of
the soil. The government has taken the following steps to ensure freedom
of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants, husbandmen, and those
living in the neighborhood of Moscow may without any danger bring their
supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets, of which one is on
the Mokhováya Street and the other at the Provision Market. (2) Such
supplies will be bought from them at such prices as seller and buyer may
agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a fair price he will be
free to take his goods back to his village and no one may hinder him
under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday of each week are appointed
as the chief market days and to that end a sufficient number of troops
will be stationed along the highroads on Tuesdays and Saturdays at such
distances from the town as to protect the carts. (4) Similar measures
will be taken that peasants with their carts and horses may meet with no
hindrance on their return journey. (5) Steps will immediately be taken
to re-establish ordinary trading.
Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and artisans,
to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry out the
paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to
co-operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and
confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!
With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the people,
reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The Emperor
rode through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and, despite his
preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the theaters that were
established by his order.
In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads,
Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma
Mère to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining
tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He
visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by him
to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutólmin. Then, as
Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in forged
Russian money which he had prepared: “Raising the use of these means
by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let relief
be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food was too
precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part enemies,
Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to purchase food
from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them.”
With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being issued
to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military duties
and to suppress robbery.
CHAPTER X
But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans—which were
not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances—did not
affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock detached
from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless way without
engaging the cogwheels.
With reference to the military side—the plan of campaign—that work of
genius of which Thiers remarks that, “His genius never devised anything
more profound, more skillful, or more admirable,” and enters into a
polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius must be referred
not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October—that plan never was or
could be executed, for it was quite out of touch with the facts of the
case. The fortifying of the Krémlin, for which la Mosquée (as Napoleon
termed the church of Basil the Beatified) was to have been razed to
the ground, proved quite useless. The mining of the Krémlin only helped
toward fulfilling Napoleon’s wish that it should be blown up when he
left Moscow—as a child wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to
be beaten. The pursuit of the Russian army, about which Napoleon was so
concerned, produced an unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch
with the Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to Thiers it
was only eventually found, like a lost pin, by the skill—and apparently
the genius—of Murat.
With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon’s arguments as to his
magnanimity and justice, both to Tutólmin and to Yákovlev (whose chief
concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;
Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their
embassage.
With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed
incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.
With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a
municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain
people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of
preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from being
looted.
With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so easily been
settled by Napoleon’s visit to a mosque, no results were achieved.
Two or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to carry out
Napoleon’s wish, but one of them was slapped in the face by a French
soldier while conducting service, and a French official reported of
another that: “The priest whom I found and invited to say Mass cleaned
and locked up the church. That night the doors were again broken
open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and other disorders
perpetrated.”
With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious workmen and
to peasants evoked no response. There were no industrious workmen, and
the peasants caught the commissaries who ventured too far out of town
with the proclamation and killed them.
As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the troops,
these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in the
Krémlin and in Posnyákov’s house were closed again at once because the
actors and actresses were robbed.
Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as
well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The
French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the
paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to the
unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.
But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders given
by the authorities at that time was Napoleon’s attempt to stop the
looting and re-establish discipline.
This is what the army authorities were reporting:
“Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order
is not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade in a
lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they sell stolen
goods.”
“The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of
the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate
inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have
the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly
witnessed.”
“Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and pillaging—October
9.”
“Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our
district who ought to be arrested by a strong force—October 11.”
“The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict orders to
stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually seen returning
to the Krémlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and pillage were renewed
more violently than ever yesterday evening, last night, and today. The
Emperor sees with regret that the picked soldiers appointed to guard his
person, who should set an example of discipline, carry disobedience to
such a point that they break into the cellars and stores containing army
supplies. Others have disgraced themselves to the extent of disobeying
sentinels and officers, and have abused and beaten them.”
“The Grand Marshal of the palace,” wrote the governor, “complains
bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to
commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows
of the Emperor.”
That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot the
provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated and
perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it did not
go away.
It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused by the
capture of transport trains on the Smolénsk road, and by the battle of
Tarútino. The news of that battle of Tarútino, unexpectedly received
by Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a desire to punish the Russians
(Thiers says), and he issued the order for departure which the whole
army was demanding.
Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they had
stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal trésor, but on
seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers says)
horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not order all
the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with those of a
certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the calèches and
carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that it was a very
good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry provisions, the
sick, and the wounded.
The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal which
feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To study the
skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from the time it
entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying the dying leaps
and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very often a wounded animal,
hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the hunter’s gun, runs forward and
back again, and hastens its own end. Napoleon, under pressure from his
whole army, did the same thing. The rustle of the battle of Tarútino
frightened the beast, and it rushed forward onto the hunter’s gun,
reached him, turned back, and finally—like any wild beast—ran back along
the most disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent was
familiar.
During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have been
the leader of all these movements—as the figurehead of a ship may seem
to a savage to guide the vessel—acted like a child who, holding a couple
of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving it.
CHAPTER XI
Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of the
shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little
blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped about
him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside Karatáev at
night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but always returned
again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it still belonged to
nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor; the soldier who
told stories called it Femgálka; Karatáev and others called it Gray, or
sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name, or even of a breed or
any definite color did not seem to trouble the blue-gray dog in the
least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round as a plume, its bandy legs
served it so well that it would often gracefully lift a hind leg and run
very easily and quickly on three legs, as if disdaining to use all
four. Everything pleased it. Now it would roll on its back, yelping with
delight, now bask in the sun with a thoughtful air of importance, and
now frolic about playing with a chip of wood or a straw.
Pierre’s attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only
remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier’s trousers which by
Karatáev’s advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and
a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this
time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of
solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache
covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested
with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes
was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The former
slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now replaced by an
energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet were bare.
Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and horsemen
were passing that morning, then into the distance across the river, then
at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about biting him,
and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in various
positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he looked at his
bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction flitted across his face.
The sight of them reminded him of all he had experienced and learned
during these weeks and this recollection was pleasant to him.
For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts in
the mornings—what is called an “old wives’ summer.”
In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly
pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in
the air.
On everything—far and near—lay the magic crystal glitter seen only at
that time of autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance,
with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare trees,
the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green church spire,
and the corners of the white house in the distance, all stood out in the
transparent air in most delicate outline and with unnatural clearness.
Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a half-burned mansion
occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still showing dark green
beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled house—which in dull
weather was repulsively ugly—seemed quietly beautiful now, in the clear,
motionless brilliance.
A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a skullcap on
his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from behind a corner of
the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly wink.
“What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!” (Their name for Pierre.) “Eh? Just like
spring!”
And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his pipe,
though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.
“To be on the march in such weather...” he began.
Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the corporal told
him that nearly all the troops were starting and there ought to be an
order about the prisoners that day. Sokolóv, one of the soldiers in the
shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the corporal that something
should be done about him. The corporal replied that Pierre need not
worry about that as they had an ambulance and a permanent hospital and
arrangements would be made for the sick, and that in general everything
that could happen had been foreseen by the authorities.
“Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the captain,
you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to the captain
when he makes his round, he will do anything for you.”
(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with Pierre
and showed him all sorts of favors.)
“‘You see, St. Thomas,’ he said to me the other day. ‘Monsieur Kiril is
a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who has
had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what’s what.... If he wants
anything and asks me, he won’t get a refusal. When one has studied, you
see, one likes education and well-bred people.’ It is for your sake I
mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not been for you
that affair would have ended ill.”
And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The affair
he had alluded to had happened a few days before—a fight between the
prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had succeeded in
pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had heard Pierre
talking to the corporal immediately asked what the Frenchman had said.
While Pierre was repeating what he had been told about the army leaving
Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier came up to the door of
the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his fingers to his forehead by way
of greeting, he asked Pierre whether the soldier Platoche to whom he had
given a shirt to sew was in that shed.
A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to them,
which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into boots and
shirts for them.
“Ready, ready, dear fellow!” said Karatáev, coming out with a neatly
folded shirt.
Karatáev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at work,
was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot. His
hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree bast,
and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.
“A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here it is,
ready,” said Platón, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had sewn.
The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his
hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had
a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin bare
body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking on
would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly. None
of the prisoners said a word.
“See, it fits well!” Platón kept repeating, pulling the shirt straight.
The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without raising
his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.
“You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper
tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse,” said
Platón with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his work.
“It’s good, quite good, thank you,” said the Frenchman, in French, “but
there must be some linen left over.”
“It will fit better still when it sets to your body,” said Karatáev,
still admiring his handiwork. “You’ll be nice and comfortable....”
“Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?” said the
Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note and
gave it to Karatáev. “But give me the pieces that are over.”
Pierre saw that Platón did not want to understand what the Frenchman
was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karatáev thanked the
Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The Frenchman
insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over and asked
Pierre to translate what he said.
“What does he want the bits for?” said Karatáev. “They’d make fine leg
bands for us. Well, never mind.”
And Karatáev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression, took
a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the
Frenchman without looking at him. “Oh dear!” muttered Karatáev and went
away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment, then
looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre’s look had told him
something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:
“Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!” And handing back the odd
bits he turned and went out.
“There, look at that,” said Karatáev, swaying his head. “People said
they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It’s what the old
folk used to say: ‘A sweating hand’s an open hand, a dry hand’s close.’
He’s naked, but yet he’s given it back.”
Karatáev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the
pieces.
“But they’ll make grand leg bands, dear friend,” he said, and went back
into the shed.
CHAPTER XII
Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and though
the French had offered to move him from the men’s to the officers’ shed,
he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.
In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme
limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his physical
strength and health, of which he had till then been unconscious, and
thanks especially to the fact that the privations came so gradually that
it was impossible to say when they began, he endured his position
not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this time he obtained the
tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly striven in vain to reach.
He had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that
inner harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle
of Borodinó. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the
dissipations of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice,
and in romantic love for Natásha; he had sought it by reasoning—and all
these quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking
about it he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the
horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in
Karatáev.
Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as it
were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the agitating
thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important. It did
not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or politics, or
Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things were no business
of his, and that he was not called on to judge concerning them and
therefore could not do so. “Russia and summer weather are not bound
together,” he thought, repeating words of Karatáev’s which he found
strangely consoling. His intention of killing Napoleon and his
calculations of the cabalistic number of the beast of the Apocalypse now
seemed to him meaningless and even ridiculous. His anger with his wife
and anxiety that his name should not be smirched now seemed not merely
trivial but even amusing. What concern was it of his that somewhere or
other that woman was leading the life she preferred? What did it matter
to anybody, and especially to him, whether or not they found out that
their prisoner’s name was Count Bezúkhov?
He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and quite
agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew’s thoughts somewhat
differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that happiness could
only be negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony
as though he was really saying that all desire for positive happiness is
implanted in us merely to torment us and never be satisfied. But Pierre
believed it without any mental reservation. The absence of suffering,
the satisfaction of one’s needs and consequent freedom in the choice of
one’s occupation, that is, of one’s way of life, now seemed to Pierre to
be indubitably man’s highest happiness. Here and now for the first time
he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat,
drinking when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of
warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to
talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one’s needs—good
food, cleanliness, and freedom—now that he was deprived of all this,
seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice
of occupation, that is, of his way of life—now that that was so
restricted—seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a
superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one’s
needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation—such freedom as
his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his
own life—is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult
and destroys the desire and possibility of having an occupation.
All Pierre’s daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free. Yet
subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke with
enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable, strong,
joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind and inner
freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.
When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn, and
saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still dark
at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, and the
wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple distance,
when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the noise of the
crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when afterwards light
gleamed from the east and the sun’s rim appeared solemnly from behind a
cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the hoarfrost, the distance and the
river, all began to sparkle in the glad light—Pierre felt a new joy and
strength in life such as he had never before known. And this not only
stayed with him during the whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in
strength as the hardships of his position increased.
That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still
further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners
formed of him soon after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge
of languages, the respect shown him by the French, his simplicity, his
readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance
of three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength, which he
showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut; his
gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still and
thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them incomprehensible),
he appeared to them a rather mysterious and superior being. The very
qualities that had been a hindrance, if not actually harmful, to him in
the world he had lived in—his strength, his disdain for the comforts of
life, his absent-mindedness and simplicity—here among these people gave
him almost the status of a hero. And Pierre felt that their opinion
placed responsibilities upon him.
CHAPTER XIII
The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and seventh
of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts loaded, and troops
and baggage trains started.
At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing shakos
and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in front
of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses sounded all
along the lines.
In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only awaited
the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolóv, pale and thin with dark
shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot and not dressed.
His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his face, gazed inquiringly
at his comrades who were paying no attention to him, and he moaned
regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so much his sufferings that
caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as his fear and grief at being
left alone.
Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes Karatáev had
made for him from some leather a French soldier had torn off a tea chest
and brought to have his boots mended with, went up to the sick man and
squatted down beside him.
“You know, Sokolóv, they are not all going away! They have a hospital
here. You may be better off than we others,” said Pierre.
“O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!” moaned the man in a
louder voice.
“I’ll go and ask them again directly,” said Pierre, rising and going to
the door of the shed.
Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him a
pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal and
soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had metal
straps, and these changed their familiar faces.
The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The prisoners
had to be counted before being let out.
“Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?...” Pierre began.
But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal
he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that
moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of drums
was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre’s
words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door. The shed
became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two sides drowned
the sick man’s groans.
“There it is!... It again!...” said Pierre to himself, and an
involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal’s changed face,
in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise of the
drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which compelled
people against their will to kill their fellow men—that force the effect
of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or to try to
escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those who
served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now. One had to wait
and endure. He did not again go to the sick man, nor turn to look at
him, but stood frowning by the door of the hut.
When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one
another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed
his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal had
assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also in
marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which Pierre
had recognized in the corporal’s words and in the roll of the drums.
“Pass on, pass on!” the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and
looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.
Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.
“What now?” the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing
Pierre.
Pierre told him about the sick man.
“He’ll manage to walk, devil take him!” said the captain. “Pass on, pass
on!” he continued without looking at Pierre.
“But he is dying,” Pierre again began.
“Be so good...” shouted the captain, frowning angrily.
“Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam...” rattled the drums, and Pierre understood
that this mysterious force completely controlled these men and that it
was now useless to say any more.
The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to march
in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among them, and
about three hundred men.
The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all strangers to
Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at him and at his
shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him walked a fat major
with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing a Kazán dressing
gown tied round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of
his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in which he clasped his tobacco
pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing gown and held the stem of his
pipe firmly with the other. Panting and puffing, the major grumbled and
growled at everybody because he thought he was being pushed and that
they were all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry to and were
all surprised at something when there was nothing to be surprised at.
Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing
where they were now being taken and how far they would get that day. An
official in felt boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from
side to side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his
observations as to what had been burned down and what this or that part
of the city was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent
was a Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was
mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.
“What are you disputing about?” said the major angrily. “What does it
matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it’s burned
down, and there’s an end of it.... What are you pushing for? Isn’t the
road wide enough?” said he, turning to a man behind him who was not
pushing him at all.
“Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?” the prisoners on one side and another
were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. “All beyond the
river, and Zúbova, and in the Krémlin.... Just look! There’s not half of
it left. Yes, I told you—the whole quarter beyond the river, and so it
is.”
“Well, you know it’s burned, so what’s the use of talking?” said the
major.
As they passed near a church in the Khamóvniki (one of the few unburned
quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly started to one
side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.
“Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And
smeared with something!”
Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked these
exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the palings
surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw better
than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set upright
against the palings with its face smeared with soot.
“Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!...” the convoy
guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh virulence,
drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at
the dead man.
CHAPTER XIV
Through the cross streets of the Khamóvniki quarter the prisoners
marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons
belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they
came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with
private vehicles.
At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get across.
From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving baggage
trains before and behind them. To the right, where the Kalúga road turns
near Neskúchny, endless rows of troops and carts stretched away into
the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais’ corps which had started
before any of the others. Behind, along the riverside and across the
Stone Bridge, were Ney’s troops and transport.
Davout’s troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing the
Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kalúga road.
But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais’
train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kalúga road when
the vanguard of Ney’s army was already emerging from the Great Ordýnka
Street.
When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few steps
forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles and men
crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few hundred paces
that separated the bridge from the Kalúga road, taking more than an
hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the streets of the
Transmoskvá ward and the Kalúga road converge, and the prisoners jammed
close together had to stand for some hours at that crossway. From all
sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard the rattle of wheels, the
tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger and abuse. Pierre stood
pressed against the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise
which mingled in his imagination with the roll of the drums.
To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the wall of
the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.
“What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They’ve loaded goods even on
the cannon! Look there, those are furs!” they exclaimed. “Just see what
the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one has behind
in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by
heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has loaded
himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they’ve even grabbed those
chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks.... Heavens!
They’re fighting.”
“That’s right, hit him on the snout—on his snout! Like this, we
shan’t get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be
Napoleon’s own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown! It’s
like a portable house.... That fellow’s dropped his sack and doesn’t see
it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking either!
Yes, I dare say, that’s the way they’ll let you pass.... Just look,
there’s no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In
carriages—see how comfortably they’ve settled themselves!”
Again, as at the church in Khamóvniki, a wave of general curiosity
bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to
his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted their
curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts, closely
squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in glaring
colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.
From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious
force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful: neither the corpse
smeared with soot for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned
ruins of Moscow. All that he now witnessed scarcely made an impression
on him—as if his soul, making ready for a hard struggle, refused to
receive impressions that might weaken it.
The women’s vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts, soldiers,
wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers, ammunition carts,
more soldiers, and now and then women.
Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.
All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some invisible
power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came flowing from
the different streets with one and the same desire to get on quickly;
they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white
teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse flew from
side to side, and all the faces bore the same swaggeringly resolute
and coldly cruel expression that had struck Pierre that morning on the
corporal’s face when the drums were beating.
It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the escort
collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way in among
the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged
onto the Kalúga road.
They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun
began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men
began to prepare for their night’s rest. They all appeared angry and
dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could
be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran
into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole. Several
soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat the
carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others fought among
themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly wounded on the head
by a sword.
It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid fields
in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same
feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on
that had seized them at the start. Once at a standstill they all seemed
to understand that they did not yet know where they were going, and that
much that was painful and difficult awaited them on this journey.
During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than they
had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the first time
received horseflesh for their meat ration.
From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what seemed like
personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to
their former friendly relations.
This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of
prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one Russian
soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw
a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from
the road, and heard his friend the captain reprimand and threaten to
court-martial a noncommissioned officer on account of the escape of the
Russian. To the noncommissioned officer’s excuse that the prisoner was
ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order was to shoot
those who lagged behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force which had
crushed him during the executions, but which he had not felt during his
imprisonment, now again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but
he felt that in proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush
him, there grew and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent
of it.
He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with his
comrades.
Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen in
Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of the
order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in reaction
against the worsening of their position they were all particularly
animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences, of amusing
scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and avoided all talk of
their present situation.
The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in the
sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon from the
rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray
haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night had not yet
come. Pierre got up and left his new companions, crossing between the
campfires to the other side of the road where he had been told the
common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On
the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered him back.
Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him and
dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the
cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly he
burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured laughter, so loud that
men from various sides turned with surprise to see what this strange and
evidently solitary laughter could mean.
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: “The soldier
did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive.
What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!...” and he laughed
till tears started to his eyes.
A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing at
all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther away from
the inquisitive man, and looked around him.
The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the
crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the
red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light
sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen
before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond
those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance
lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling
stars in its faraway depths. “And all that is me, all that is within me,
and it is all I!” thought Pierre. “And they caught all that and put it
into a shed boarded up with planks!” He smiled, and went and lay down to
sleep beside his companions.
CHAPTER XV
In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutúzov with a letter
from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow, though
Napoleon was already not far from Kutúzov on the old Kalúga road.
Kutúzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one formerly
brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no question of peace.
Soon after that a report was received from Dórokhov’s guerrilla
detachment operating to the left of Tarútino that troops of Broussier’s
division had been seen at Formínsk and that being separated from the
rest of the French army they might easily be destroyed. The soldiers and
officers again demanded action. Generals on the staff, excited by the
memory of the easy victory at Tarútino, urged Kutúzov to carry out
Dórokhov’s suggestion. Kutúzov did not consider any offensive necessary.
The result was a compromise which was inevitable: a small detachment was
sent to Formínsk to attack Broussier.
By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhtúrov—that same modest
little Dokhtúrov whom no one had described to us as drawing up plans
of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering crosses on
batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was spoken of as
undecided and undiscerning—but whom we find commanding wherever the
position was most difficult all through the Russo-French wars from
Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he remained last at the
Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what was possible when all
were flying and perishing and not a single general was left in the rear
guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolénsk with twenty thousand men
to defend the town against Napoleon’s whole army. In Smolénsk, at the
Malákhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he
was awakened by the bombardment of the town—and Smolénsk held out all
day long. At the battle of Borodinó, when Bagratión was killed and nine
tenths of the men of our left flank had fallen and the full force of the
French artillery fire was directed against it, the man sent there was
this same irresolute and undiscerning Dokhtúrov—Kutúzov hastening to
rectify a mistake he had made by sending someone else there first.
And the quiet little Dokhtúrov rode thither, and Borodinó became the
greatest glory of the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to
us in verse and prose, but of Dokhtúrov scarcely a word has been said.
It was Dokhtúrov again whom they sent to Formínsk and from there to
Málo-Yaroslávets, the place where the last battle with the French was
fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army began;
and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of the
campaign, but of Dokhtúrov nothing or very little is said and that
dubiously. And this silence about Dokhtúrov is the clearest testimony to
his merit.
It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a
machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance
and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most
important part. The man who does not understand the construction of
the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which
revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine, and
not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.
On the tenth of October when Dokhtúrov had gone halfway to Formínsk and
stopped at the village of Aristóvo, preparing faithfully to execute the
orders he had received, the whole French army having, in its convulsive
movement, reached Murat’s position apparently in order to give
battle—suddenly without any reason turned off to the left onto the new
Kalúga road and began to enter Formínsk, where only Broussier had
been till then. At that time Dokhtúrov had under his command, besides
Dórokhov’s detachment, the two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and
Seslávin.
On the evening of October 11 Seslávin came to the Aristóvo headquarters
with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner said that the
troops that had entered Formínsk that day were the vanguard of the whole
army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army had left Moscow four
days previously. That same evening a house serf who had come from
Bórovsk said he had seen an immense army entering the town. Some
Cossacks of Dokhtúrov’s detachment reported having sighted the French
Guards marching along the road to Bórovsk. From all these reports it was
evident that where they had expected to meet a single division there
was now the whole French army marching from Moscow in an unexpected
direction—along the Kalúga road. Dokhtúrov was unwilling to undertake
any action, as it was not clear to him now what he ought to do. He had
been ordered to attack Formínsk. But only Broussier had been there at
that time and now the whole French army was there. Ermólov wished to act
on his own judgment, but Dokhtúrov insisted that he must have Kutúzov’s
instructions. So it was decided to send a dispatch to the staff.
For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovítinov, was chosen, who
was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering
a written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovítinov, having received the
dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff
accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.
CHAPTER XVI
It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four days.
Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour and a
half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovítinov reached Litashëvka after
one o’clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle fence
hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he entered
a dark passage.
“The general on duty, quick! It’s very important!” said he to someone
who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.
“He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third night
he has not slept,” said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper. “You should
wake the captain first.”
“But this is very important, from General Dokhtúrov,” said
Bolkhovítinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in
the dark.
The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.
“Your honor, your honor! A courier.”
“What? What’s that? From whom?” came a sleepy voice.
“From Dokhtúrov and from Alexéy Petróvich. Napoleon is at Formínsk,”
said Bolkhovítinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but
guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnítsyn.
The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.
“I don’t like waking him,” he said, fumbling for something. “He is very
ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor.”
“Here is the dispatch,” said Bolkhovítinov. “My orders are to give it at
once to the general on duty.”
“Wait a moment, I’ll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you
always hide it?” said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,
to the orderly. (This was Shcherbínin, Konovnítsyn’s adjutant.) “I’ve
found it, I’ve found it!” he added.
The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbínin was fumbling for
something on the candlestick.
“Oh, the nasty beasts!” said he with disgust.
By the light of the sparks Bolkhovítinov saw Shcherbínin’s youthful face
as he held the candle, and the face of another man who was still asleep.
This was Konovnítsyn.
When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned
up, first blue and then red, Shcherbínin lit the tallow candle, from
the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were
running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovítinov was bespattered
all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it with his sleeve.
“Who gave the report?” inquired Shcherbínin, taking the envelope.
“The news is reliable,” said Bolkhovítinov. “Prisoners, Cossacks, and
the scouts all say the same thing.”
“There’s nothing to be done, we’ll have to wake him,” said Shcherbínin,
rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay covered by a
greatcoat. “Peter Petróvich!” said he. (Konovnítsyn did not stir.) “To
the General Staff!” he said with a smile, knowing that those words would
be sure to arouse him.
And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On
Konovnítsyn’s handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,
there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote
from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face assumed
its habitual calm and firm appearance.
“Well, what is it? From whom?” he asked immediately but without hurry,
blinking at the light.
While listening to the officer’s report Konovnítsyn broke the seal and
read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his legs in
their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began putting on his
boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair over his temples,
and donned his cap.
“Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness.”
Konovnítsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of great
importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or ask
himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest him. He
regarded the whole business of the war not with his intelligence or his
reason but by something else. There was within him a deep unexpressed
conviction that all would be well, but that one must not trust to this
and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one’s own work.
And he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task.
Peter Petróvich Konovnítsyn, like Dokhtúrov, seems to have been included
merely for propriety’s sake in the list of the so-called heroes of
1812—the Barclays, Raévskis, Ermólovs, Plátovs, and Milorádoviches. Like
Dokhtúrov he had the reputation of being a man of very limited capacity
and information, and like Dokhtúrov he never made plans of battle but
was always found where the situation was most difficult. Since his
appointment as general on duty he had always slept with his door open,
giving orders that every messenger should be allowed to wake him up. In
battle he was always under fire, so that Kutúzov reproved him for it and
feared to send him to the front, and like Dokhtúrov he was one of those
unnoticed cogwheels that, without clatter or noise, constitute the most
essential part of the machine.
Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnítsyn
frowned—partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at the
unpleasant thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest of
influential men on the staff would be stirred up by this news,
especially Bennigsen, who ever since Tarútino had been at daggers
drawn with Kutúzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel, issue
orders, and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him
though he knew it could not be helped.
And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news, immediately
began to expound his plans to a general sharing his quarters, until
Konovnítsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded him that they must
go to see his Highness.
CHAPTER XVII
Kutúzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often fell
asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his bed
without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.
So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred head on
his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and peering into the
darkness.
Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more
influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him, Kutúzov
was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his troops being
obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The lesson of the
Tarútino battle and of the day before it, which Kutúzov remembered with
pain, must, he thought, have some effect on others too.
“They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive.
Patience and time are my warriors, my champions,” thought Kutúzov. He
knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall
of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree
is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an experienced sportsman
he knew that the beast was wounded, and wounded as only the whole
strength of Russia could have wounded it, but whether it was mortally
wounded or not was still an undecided question. Now by the fact of
Lauriston and Barthélemi having been sent, and by the reports of the
guerrillas, Kutúzov was almost sure that the wound was mortal. But he
needed further proofs and it was necessary to wait.
“They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall
see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!” thought he. “What for?
Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are
like children from whom one can’t get any sensible account of what has
happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But
that’s not what is needed now.
“And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to
them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies” (he
remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) “they have
foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless.”
The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodinó was
mortal or not had hung over Kutúzov’s head for a whole month. On the one
hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutúzov felt assured
with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and all the
Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal. But in any
case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for them and grew
more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed during those
sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those younger generals
for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible contingencies, just like
the younger men, but with this difference, that he saw thousands of
contingencies instead of two or three and based nothing on them. The
longer he thought the more contingencies presented themselves. He
imagined all sorts of movements of the Napoleonic army as a whole or
in sections—against Petersburg, or against him, or to outflank him.
He thought too of the possibility (which he feared most of all) that
Napoleon might fight him with his own weapon and remain in Moscow
awaiting him. Kutúzov even imagined that Napoleon’s army might turn back
through Medýn and Yukhnóv, but the one thing he could not foresee was
what happened—the insane, convulsive stampede of Napoleon’s army during
its first eleven days after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made
possible what Kutúzov had not yet even dared to think of—the complete
extermination of the French. Dórokhov’s report about Broussier’s
division, the guerrillas’ reports of distress in Napoleon’s army, rumors
of preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that
the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were
only suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not to
Kutúzov. With his sixty years’ experience he knew what value to attach
to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group all news
so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew how readily
in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary. And the more
he desired it the less he allowed himself to believe it. This question
absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to him only life’s
customary routine. To such customary routine belonged his conversations
with the staff, the letters he wrote from Tarútino to Madame de Staël,
the reading of novels, the distribution of awards, his correspondence
with Petersburg, and so on. But the destruction of the French, which he
alone foresaw, was his heart’s one desire.
On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm and
thinking of that.
There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll,
Konovnítsyn, and Bolkhovítinov.
“Eh, who’s there? Come in, come in! What news?” the field marshal called
out to them.
While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the substance
of the news.
“Who brought it?” asked Kutúzov with a look which, when the candle was
lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.
“There can be no doubt about it, your Highness.”
“Call him in, call him here.”
Kutúzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big paunch
resting against the other which was doubled under him. He screwed up his
seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more carefully, as if wishing to
read in his face what preoccupied his own mind.
“Tell me, tell me, friend,” said he to Bolkhovítinov in his low, aged
voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his chest,
“come nearer—nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That Napoleon
has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?”
Bolkhovítinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he had
been told to report.
“Speak quicker, quicker! Don’t torture me!” Kutúzov interrupted him.
Bolkhovítinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting
instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutúzov checked
him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered and
wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side of
the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.
“O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer...” said he in a
tremulous voice with folded hands. “Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O
Lord!” and he wept.
CHAPTER XVIII
From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all
Kutúzov’s activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by
authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks,
maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhtúrov went to
Málo-Yaroslávets, but Kutúzov lingered with the main army and gave
orders for the evacuation of Kalúga—a retreat beyond which town seemed
to him quite possible.
Everywhere Kutúzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for his
retreat fled in the opposite direction.
Napoleon’s historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tarútino
and Málo-Yaroslávets, and make conjectures as to what would have
happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern
provinces.
But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from advancing
into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did not bar his
way), the historians forget that nothing could have saved his army, for
then already it bore within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How
could that army—which had found abundant supplies in Moscow and had
trampled them underfoot instead of keeping them, and on arriving at
Smolénsk had looted provisions instead of storing them—how could that
army recuperate in Kalúga province, which was inhabited by Russians such
as those who lived in Moscow, and where fire had the same property of
consuming what was set ablaze?
That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodinó
and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were, the
chemical elements of dissolution.
The members of what had once been an army—Napoleon himself and all his
soldiers--fled without knowing whither, each concerned only to make his
escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of
which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.
So it came about that at the council at Málo-Yaroslávets, when the
generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all
mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier
Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing
needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not
even Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all
recognized.
But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away, there
still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must flee. An
external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this shock came in
due time. It was what the French called “le hourra de l’Empereur.”
The day after the council at Málo-Yaroslávets Napoleon rode out early in
the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of marshals and
an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the
previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks on the prowl for
booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly captured him. If the
Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what saved him was the very
thing that was destroying the French army, the booty on which the
Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarútino they went after plunder, leaving the
men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed after the plunder and Napoleon
managed to escape.
When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor himself
in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was nothing for it but
to fly as fast as possible along the nearest, familiar road. Napoleon
with his forty-year-old stomach understood that hint, not feeling his
former agility and boldness, and under the influence of the fright
the Cossacks had given him he at once agreed with Mouton and issued
orders—as the historians tell us—to retreat by the Smolénsk road.
That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated, does
not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces which
influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozháysk (that is,
the Smolénsk) road acted simultaneously on him also.
CHAPTER XIX
A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to go
a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the
end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a promised
land to have the strength to move.
The promised land for the French during their advance had been Moscow,
during their retreat it was their native land. But that native land
was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely
necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to himself: “Today I
shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and
spend the night,” and during the first day’s journey that resting place
eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires. And
the impulses felt by a single person are always magnified in a crowd.
For the French retreating along the old Smolénsk road, the final
goal—their native land—was too remote, and their immediate goal
was Smolénsk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously
intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that
much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolénsk, nor that they were
told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon himself,
knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this alone could
give them strength to move on and endure their present privations. So
both those who knew and those who did not know deceived themselves, and
pushed on to Smolénsk as to a promised land.
Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising energy
and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on. Besides the
common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French into one mass and
supplied them with a certain energy, there was another cause binding
them together—their great numbers. As with the physical law of gravity,
their enormous mass drew the individual human atoms to itself. In their
hundreds of thousands they moved like a whole nation.
Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner
to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force
of this common attraction to Smolénsk, their goal, drew each of them in
the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender
to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every
convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the
slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur. Their
very numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived them of that
possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the
Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all
their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical disruption of the
body could hasten the process of decomposition.
A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a certain
limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt the snow. On
the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the remaining snow
becomes.
Of the Russian commanders Kutúzov alone understood this. When the flight
of the French army along the Smolénsk road became well defined, what
Konovnítsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of October began
to occur. The superior officers all wanted to distinguish themselves,
to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to overthrow the French, and all
clamored for action.
Kutúzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited in the
case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.
He could not tell them what we say now: “Why fight, why block the road,
losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate wretches? What
is the use of that, when a third of their army has melted away on the
road from Moscow to Vyázma without any battle?” But drawing from his
aged wisdom what they could understand, he told them of the golden
bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him, flinging themselves on,
rending and exulting over the dying beast.
Ermólov, Milorádovich, Plátov, and others in proximity to the French
near Vyázma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up two
French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutúzov they
sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.
And try as Kutúzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,
trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to the
attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost thousands
of men.
But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,
closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily melting
away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolénsk.
BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812
CHAPTER I
The Battle of Borodinó, with the occupation of Moscow that followed it
and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is one of the
most instructive phenomena in history.
All historians agree that the external activity of states and nations
in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars, and that as a
direct result of greater or less success in war the political strength
of states and nations increases or decreases.
Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or emperor,
having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his enemy’s
army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten thousand men, and
subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all
the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of the
statement that the greater or lesser success of one army against another
is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of an increase or
decrease in the strength of the nation—even though it is unintelligible
why the defeat of an army—a hundredth part of a nation—should oblige
that whole nation to submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the
rights of the conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the
defeated. An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its
rights in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army
suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.
So according to history it has been found from the most ancient times,
and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon’s wars serve to confirm this
rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army Austria loses
its rights, and the rights and the strength of France increase. The
victories of the French at Jena and Auerstädt destroy the independent
existence of Prussia.
But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow is
taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia that
ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and
then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of
history: to say that the field of battle at Borodinó remained in the
hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles
that destroyed Napoleon’s army, is impossible.
After the French victory at Borodinó there was no general engagement nor
any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist. What
does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of China,
we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is the
historians’ usual expedient when anything does not fit their standards);
if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which only a small number
of troops took part, we might treat it as an exception; but this event
occurred before our fathers’ eyes, and for them it was a question of the
life or death of their fatherland, and it happened in the greatest of
all known wars.
The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodinó to the
expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does not
produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of conquest;
it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples lies not in
the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in something else.
The French historians, describing the condition of the French army
before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army,
except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport—there was no forage
for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one could remedy,
for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather than let the
French have it.
The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the peasants
Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow drove in their
carts to pillage the town, and in general personally failed to manifest
any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable multitude of such
peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for the high price offered
them, but burned it instead.
Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with rapiers
according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The fencing has
gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants, feeling himself
wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his
life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first cudgel that comes to
hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine that the combatant who
so sensibly employed the best and simplest means to attain his end was
at the same time influenced by traditions of chivalry and, desiring to
conceal the facts of the case, insisted that he had gained his victory
with the rapier according to all the rules of art. One can imagine what
confusion and obscurity would result from such an account of the duel.
The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of fencing was
the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier and snatched up
the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to explain the matter
according to the rules of fencing are the historians who have described
the event.
After the burning of Smolénsk a war began which did not follow any
previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the
retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodinó and the renewed
retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the seizure of
transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures from the rules.
Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing
attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent’s rapier saw a cudgel
raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutúzov and to
the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to all
the rules—as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite of the
complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the rules, in
spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it seemed rather
disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to assume a pose en
quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and to make an adroit
thrust en prime, and so on—the cudgel of the people’s war was lifted
with all its menacing and majestic strength, and without consulting
anyone’s tastes or rules and regardless of anything else, it rose and
fell with stupid simplicity, but consistently, and belabored the French
till the whole invasion had perished.
And it is well for a people who do not—as the French did in 1813—salute
according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt of their
rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their magnanimous conqueror,
but at the moment of trial, without asking what rules others have
adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick up the first cudgel
that comes to hand and strike with it till the feeling of resentment and
revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and compassion.
CHAPTER II
One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the so-called
laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men pressed
together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that take on a
national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds opposing
each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when attacked by
stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers. This was done
by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in the Caucasus, and
by the Russians in 1812.
People have called this kind of war “guerrilla warfare” and assume that
by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a war does
not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known rule
of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That rule says that an
attacker should concentrate his forces in order to be stronger than his
opponent at the moment of conflict.
Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes
that rule.
This contradiction arises from the fact that military science assumes
the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. Military
science says that the more troops the greater the strength. Les gros
bataillons ont toujours raison. *
* Large battalions are always victorious.
For military science to say this is like defining momentum in mechanics
by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are equal or unequal
to each other simply because the masses involved are equal or unequal.
Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.
In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass
and some unknown x.
Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact
that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that
small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence
of this unknown factor and tries to discover it—now in a geometric
formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in the
genius of the commanders. But the assignment of these various meanings
to the factor does not yield results which accord with the historic
facts.
Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to gratify
the “heroes”) of the efficacy of the directions issued in wartime by
commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.
That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the
greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the men
composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are not,
fighting under the command of a genius, in two—or three-line formation,
with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a minute. Men
who want to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous
conditions for fighting.
The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass gives
the resulting force. To define and express the significance of this
unknown factor—the spirit of an army—is a problem for science.
This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to substitute
for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that force becomes
apparent—such as the commands of the general, the equipment employed,
and so on—mistaking these for the real significance of the factor,
and if we recognize this unknown quantity in its entirety as being
the greater or lesser desire to fight and to face danger. Only then,
expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative
significance of this factor, can we hope to define the unknown.
Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions, or
divisions, conquer—that is, kill or take captive—all the others, while
themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and on the other
fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to the fifteen, and
therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This equation does not
give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us a ratio between two
unknowns. And by bringing variously selected historic units (battles,
campaigns, periods of war) into such equations, a series of numbers
could be obtained in which certain laws should exist and might be
discovered.
The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when attacking, and
in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms the truth that the
strength of an army depends on its spirit. To lead men forward under
fire more discipline (obtainable only by movement in masses) is needed
than is needed to resist attacks. But this rule which leaves out of
account the spirit of the army continually proves incorrect and is in
particularly striking contrast to the facts when some strong rise or
fall in the spirit of the troops occurs, as in all national wars.
The French, retreating in 1812—though according to tactics they should
have separated into detachments to defend themselves—congregated into
a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen that only the mass
held the army together. The Russians, on the contrary, ought according
to tactics to have attacked in mass, but in fact they split up
into small units, because their spirit had so risen that separate
individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the French without needing
any compulsion to induce them to expose themselves to hardships and
dangers.
CHAPTER III
The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into
Smolénsk.
Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the
government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had
been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off
as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denís Davýdov,
with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the value of
this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of military science
destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit for taking the first
step toward regularizing this method of warfare.
On August 24 Davýdov’s first partisan detachment was formed and then
others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more
numerous these detachments became.
The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the
fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree—the
French army—and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October, when
the French were fleeing toward Smolénsk, there were hundreds of such
companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some that adopted
all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and the
comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were
also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of peasants and
landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which
captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and there
was Vasílisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew hundreds of the
French.
The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of
October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,
amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded
and captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,
hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the end
of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had become
clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what could
not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and moving
according to rules at a distance from the French, still regarded many
things as impossible. The small bands that had started their activities
long before and had already observed the French closely considered
things possible which the commanders of the big detachments did not dare
to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who crept in among the French
now considered everything possible.
On October 22, Denísov (who was one of the irregulars) was with his
group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early morning he
and his party had been on the move. All day long he had been watching
from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French convoy of
cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the rest of the
army, which—as was learned from spies and prisoners—was moving under a
strong escort to Smolénsk. Besides Denísov and Dólokhov (who also led
a small party and moved in Denísov’s vicinity), the commanders of some
large divisions with staffs also knew of this convoy and, as Denísov
expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for it. Two of the commanders
of large parties—one a Pole and the other a German—sent invitations
to Denísov almost simultaneously, requesting him to join up with their
divisions to attack the convoy.
“No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself,” said Denísov on reading
these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite his heartfelt
desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general, he had to forgo
that pleasure because he was already under the command of the Polish
general. To the Polish general he replied to the same effect, informing
him that he was already under the command of the German.
Having arranged matters thus, Denísov and Dólokhov intended, without
reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that
convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from
the village of Mikúlino to that of Shámshevo. To the left of the road
between Mikúlino and Shámshevo there were large forests, extending in
some places up to the road itself though in others a mile or more back
from it. Through these forests Denísov and his party rode all day,
sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to the very
edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That morning,
Cossacks of Denísov’s party had seized and carried off into the forest
two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck in the mud not
far from Mikúlino where the forest ran close to the road. Since then,
and until evening, the party had watched the movements of the French
without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach Shámshevo
quietly without alarming them and then, after joining Dólokhov who was
to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman’s hut in the forest
less than a mile from Shámshevo, to surprise the French at dawn, falling
like an avalanche on their heads from two sides, and rout and capture
them all at one blow.
In their rear, more than a mile from Mikúlino where the forest came
right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any fresh
columns of French should show themselves.
Beyond Shámshevo, Dólokhov was to observe the road in the same way, to
find out at what distance there were other French troops. They reckoned
that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denísov had two hundred, and
Dólokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of numbers did not
deter Denísov. All that he now wanted to know was what troops these were
and to learn that he had to capture a “tongue”—that is, a man from
the enemy column. That morning’s attack on the wagons had been made so
hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a
little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he
could tell them nothing definite about the troops in that column.
Denísov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of
putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tíkhon Shcherbáty, a
peasant of his party, to Shámshevo to try and seize at least one of the
French quartermasters who had been sent on in advance.
CHAPTER IV
It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both
the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and then
suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.
Denísov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain ran down
was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides. Like his horse,
which turned its head and laid its ears back, he shrank from the driving
rain and gazed anxiously before him. His thin face with its short, thick
black beard looked angry.
Beside Denísov rode an esaul, * Denísov’s fellow worker, also in felt
cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.
* A captain of Cossacks.
Esaul Lováyski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow,
pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm
self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to
say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first
glance at the esaul and Denísov one saw that the latter was wet and
uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the
esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always
and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was one
with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold strength.
A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and
wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.
A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghíz mount with an enormous
tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a blue
French overcoat.
Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and
blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on to the
hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed about him
with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that morning.
Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cut up forest road came hussars in
threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in French
greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The horses,
being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether chestnut or bay.
Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes, looked strangely
thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles, reins, were all wet,
slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the fallen leaves that strewed
the road. The men sat huddled up trying not to stir, so as to warm the
water that had trickled to their bodies and not admit the fresh cold
water that was leaking in under their seats, their knees, and at the
back of their necks. In the midst of the outspread line of Cossacks two
wagons, drawn by French horses and by saddled Cossack horses that had
been hitched on in front, rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and
splashed through the water that lay in the ruts.
Denísov’s horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and bumped
his rider’s knee against a tree.
“Oh, the devil!” exclaimed Denísov angrily, and showing his teeth he
struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his
comrades with mud.
Denísov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from hunger
(none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more because he
still had no news from Dólokhov and the man sent to capture a “tongue”
had not returned.
“There’ll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as today.
It’s too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it off till
another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will snatch the prey
from under our noses,” thought Denísov, continually peering forward,
hoping to see a messenger from Dólokhov.
On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to the
right, Denísov stopped.
“There’s someone coming,” said he.
The esaul looked in the direction Denísov indicated.
“There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not presupposable
that it is the lieutenant colonel himself,” said the esaul, who was fond
of using words the Cossacks did not know.
The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer
visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary
gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and
drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,
standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young
lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denísov
and handed him a sodden envelope.
“From the general,” said the officer. “Please excuse its not being quite
dry.”
Denísov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.
“There, they kept telling us: ‘It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous,’”
said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denísov was reading the
dispatch. “But Komaróv and I”—he pointed to the Cossack—“were prepared.
We have each of us two pistols.... But what’s this?” he asked, noticing
the French drummer boy. “A prisoner? You’ve already been in action? May
I speak to him?”
“Wostóv! Pétya!” exclaimed Denísov, having run through the dispatch.
“Why didn’t you say who you were?” and turning with a smile he held out
his hand to the lad.
The officer was Pétya Rostóv.
All the way Pétya had been preparing himself to behave with Denísov as
befitted a grown-up man and an officer—without hinting at their previous
acquaintance. But as soon as Denísov smiled at him Pétya brightened
up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner he had been
rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already been in a battle
near Vyázma and how a certain hussar had distinguished himself there.
“Well, I am glad to see you,” Denísov interrupted him, and his face
again assumed its anxious expression.
“Michael Feoklítych,” said he to the esaul, “this is again fwom that
German, you know. He”—he indicated Pétya—“is serving under him.”
And Denísov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a
repetition of the German general’s demand that he should join forces
with him for an attack on the transport.
“If we don’t take it tomowwow, he’ll snatch it fwom under our noses,” he
added.
While Denísov was talking to the esaul, Pétya—abashed by Denísov’s
cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition of his
trousers—furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat so
that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air as
possible.
“Will there be any orders, your honor?” he asked Denísov, holding his
hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general for
which he had prepared himself, “or shall I remain with your honor?”
“Orders?” Denísov repeated thoughtfully. “But can you stay till
tomowwow?”
“Oh, please... May I stay with you?” cried Pétya.
“But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?” asked
Denísov.
Pétya blushed.
“He gave me no instructions. I think I could?” he returned, inquiringly.
“Well, all wight,” said Denísov.
And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting place
arranged near the watchman’s hut in the forest, and told the officer on
the Kirghíz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant) to go and
find out where Dólokhov was and whether he would come that evening.
Denísov himself intended going with the esaul and Pétya to the edge of
the forest where it reached out to Shámshevo, to have a look at the part
of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.
“Well, old fellow,” said he to the peasant guide, “lead us to
Shámshevo.”
Denísov, Pétya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and the
hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to the
edge of the forest.
CHAPTER V
The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from
the trees. Denísov, the esaul, and Pétya rode silently, following the
peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes
and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves,
silently led them to the edge of the forest.
He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to where
the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree that
had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to
them with his hand.
Denísov and Pétya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant was
standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, on a
downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep
ravine, was a small village and a landowner’s house with a broken roof.
In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well, by the pond,
over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill from the
bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred yards
away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist. Their
un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining uphill with the
carts, and their calls to one another, could be clearly heard.
“Bwing the prisoner here,” said Denísov in a low voice, not taking his
eyes off the French.
A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to Denísov.
Pointing to the French troops, Denísov asked him what these and those
of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and
lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denísov in affright, but in spite of
an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused answers, merely
assenting to everything Denísov asked him. Denísov turned away from him
frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his own conjectures to him.
Pétya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now
at Denísov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village and
along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.
“Whether Dólokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?” said Denísov with
a merry sparkle in his eyes.
“It is a very suitable spot,” said the esaul.
“We’ll send the infantwy down by the swamps,” Denísov continued.
“They’ll cweep up to the garden; you’ll wide up fwom there with the
Cossacks”—he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village—“and I
with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot...”
“The hollow is impassable—there’s a swamp there,” said the esaul. “The
horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left....”
While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded
from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, then
another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices
shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment Denísov and the
esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought they were the cause
of the firing and shouting. But the firing and shouting did not relate
to them. Down below, a man wearing something red was running through the
marsh. The French were evidently firing and shouting at him.
“Why, that’s our Tíkhon,” said the esaul.
“So it is! It is!”
“The wascal!” said Denísov.
“He’ll get away!” said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.
The man whom they called Tíkhon, having run to the stream, plunged in
so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared for an
instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on.
The French who had been pursuing him stopped.
“Smart, that!” said the esaul.
“What a beast!” said Denísov with his former look of vexation. “What has
he been doing all this time?”
“Who is he?” asked Pétya.
“He’s our plastún. I sent him to capture a ‘tongue.’”
“Oh, yes,” said Pétya, nodding at the first words Denísov uttered as if
he understood it all, though he really did not understand anything of
it.