War and Peace (204 page)

To form an idea of the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army, one need only grasp clearly what is meant by the fact that while losing no more than five thousand killed and wounded, and not a hundred prisoners,
the Russian army, which had left Tarutino a hundred thousand strong, numbered only fifty thousand on reaching Krasnoe.

The rapidity of the Russian pursuit had as disintegrating an effect on the Russian army as the flight of the French had on their army. The only difference was that the Russian army moved at its own will, free from the menace of annihilation that hung over the French, and that the sick and stragglers of the French were left in the hands of their enemy, while Russian stragglers were at home among their own people. The chief cause of the wasting of Napoleon’s army was the rapidity of its movements, and an indubitable proof of that is to be seen in the corresponding dwindling of the Russian army.

Just as at Tarutino and at Vyazma, all Kutuzov’s energies were directed to preventing—so far as it lay in his power—any arrest of the fatal flight of the French from being checked (as the Russian generals in Petersburg, and also in the army, wished it to be). He did all he could to urge on the flight of the French, and to slacken the speed of his own army.

In addition to the exhaustion of the men, and the immense losses due to the rapidity of their movements, Kutuzov saw another reason for slackening the pace, and not being in a hurry. The object of the Russian army was the pursuit of the French. The route of the French was uncertain, and therefore the more closely our soldiers followed the heels of the French, the greater the distances they had to traverse. It was only by following at a considerable distance that they could take advantage of short cuts across the zig-zags made by the French in their course. All the skilful manœuvres suggested by the generals were based on forced marches at accelerated speed, while the only rational object to be aimed at was the diminution of the strain put on the men. And this was the object to which all Kutuzov’s efforts were directed during the whole campaign from Moscow to Vilna,—not casually, not fitfully, but so consistently that he never once lost sight of it.

Not through reason, not by science, but with all his Russian heart and soul, Kutuzov felt and knew, as every Russian soldier felt it, that the French were vanquished, that their foes were in flight, and that they must see them off. But at the same time he felt with his soldiers, as one man, all the sufferings of that march, unheard of at such speed and in such weather.

But the generals, especially those not Russian, burning to distinguish themselves, to dazzle people, to take some duke or king prisoner for
some incomprehensible reason—those generals thought that then, when any battle was sickening and meaningless, was the very time for fighting battles and conquering somebody. Kutuzov simply shrugged his shoulders when they came to him one after another with projects of manœuvres with the ill-shod, half-clothed, and half-starved soldiers, whose numbers had in one month dwindled to one-half without a battle, and who would even, under the most favourable circumstances, have a longer distance to traverse before they reached the frontier than they had come already.

This desire on the part of the generals to distinguish themselves, to execute manœuvres, to attack, and to cut off the enemy, was particularly conspicuous whenever the Russian army did come into contact with the French.

So it was at Krasnoe, where they had expected to find one of the three columns of the French, and stumbled upon Napoleon himself with sixteen thousand troops. In spite of all Kutuzov’s efforts to avoid this disastrous engagement, and to keep his men safe for three days at Krasnoe, there was a slaughter of the disordered bands of the French by the exhausted soldiers of the Russian army.

Toll wrote out a disposition: first column to advance to this spot, and so on. And as always, what was done was not at all in accordance with that disposition. Prince Eugene of Würtemberg kept up a fire from the hills on the mob of French as they raced by, and asked for reinforcements, which did not come. In the nights the French dispersed to get round the Russians, hid themselves in the woods, and all that could struggled on again.

Miloradovitch, who declared that he had no wish to know anything about the commissariat arrangements of his detachment, who could never be found when he was wanted, that
chevalier sans peur et sans reproche
, as he called himself, always eager for parleys with the French, sent messengers to demand their surrender, wasted time, and did not carry out the orders given him.

“I make you a present of that column, lads,” he said to his men, pointing out the French to his cavalry. And the cavalry, with spur and sabre, urged their broken-down horses into a trot, and with immense effort reached the column he had bestowed on them, that is to say, a mob of frozen, numb, and starving Frenchmen. And the column laid down their weapons and surrendered, which was what they had been longing to do for weeks past.

At Krasnoe there were taken twenty-six thousand prisoners, a hundred cannons, a stick of some sort, which was promptly dubbed a “marshal’s baton.” And the generals disputed among themselves who had gained most distinction in the action, and were delighted at it, though they were full of regret at not having captured Napoleon or some marshal and hero, and blamed one another, and above all Kutuzov, for failing to do so.

These men, drawn on by their own passions, were but the blind instruments of the most melancholy law of necessity; but they believed themselves heroes, and imagined that what they were doing was the noblest and most honourable achievement. They blamed Kutuzov, and declared from the very beginning of the campaign he had prevented them from conquering Napoleon; that he thought of nothing but his own sensual gratifications, and would not advance out of Polotnyany Zavody because he was comfortable there; that he had checked the advance at Krasnoe; that he had completely lost his head when he heard Napoleon was near; that one might really suppose he had a secret understanding with Napoleon, that he had been bought over by him, and so on and so on.

And not only contemporaries, misled by their own passions, have spoken thus. Posterity and history have accepted Napoleon as
grand
, while foreign writers
¹
have called Kutuzov a crafty, dissolute, weak, intriguing old man; and Russians have seen in him a nondescript being, a sort of puppet, only of use owing to his Russian name …

In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blunders. The Tsar was dissatisfied with him. And in a recent history
²
inspired by promptings from the highest quarters, Kutuzov is spoken of as a designing, intriguing schemer, who was panic-stricken at the name of Napoleon, and guilty through his blunders at Krasnoe and Berezina of robbing the Russian army of the glory of complete victory over the French. Such is the lot of men not recognised by Russian intelligence as “great men,”
grands hommes
; such is the destiny of those rare and always solitary men who divining the will of Providence submit their personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd is the punishment of such men for their comprehension of higher laws.

Strange and terrible to say, Napoleon, the most insignificant tool of history, who never even in exile displayed one trait of human dignity, is the subject of the admiration and enthusiasm of the Russian historians; in their eyes he is a
grand homme
.

Kutuzov, the man who from the beginning to the end of his command in 1812, from Borodino to Vilna, was never in one word or deed false to himself, presents an example exceptional in history of self-sacrifice and recognition in the present of the relative value of events in the future. Kutuzov is conceived of by the historians as a nondescript, pitiful sort of creature, and whenever they speak of him in the year 1812, they seem a little ashamed of him.

And yet it is difficult to conceive of an historical character whose energy could be more invariably directed to the same unchanging aim. It is difficult to imagine an aim more noble and more in harmony with the will of a whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find an example in history where the aim of any historical personage has been so completely attained as the aim towards which all Kutuzov’s efforts were devoted in 1812.

Kutuzov never talked of “forty centuries looking down from the Pyramids,” of the sacrifices he was making for the fatherland, of what he meant to do or had done. He did not as a rule talk about himself, played no sort of part, always seemed the plainest and most ordinary man, and said the plainest and most ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de Staël, read novels, liked the company of pretty women, made jokes with the generals, the officers, and the soldiers, and never contradicted the people, who tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rastoptchin galloped up to him at Yautsky bridge, and reproached him personally with being responsible for the loss of Moscow, and said: “Didn’t you promise not to abandon Moscow without a battle?” Kutuzov answered: “And I am not abandoning Moscow without a battle,” although Moscow was in fact already abandoned. When Araktcheev came to him from the Tsar to say that Yermolov was to be appointed to the command of the artillery, Kutuzov said: “Yes, I was just saying so myself,” though he had said just the opposite a moment before. What had he, the one man who grasped at the time all
the vast issues of events, to do in the midst of that dull-witted crowd? What did he care whether Count Rastoptchin put down the disasters of the capital to him or to himself? Still less could he be concerned by the question which man was appointed to the command of the artillery.

This old man, who through experience of life had reached the conviction that the thoughts and words that serve as its expression are never the motive force of men, frequently uttered words, which were quite meaningless—the first words that occurred to his mind.

But heedless as he was of his words, he never once throughout all his career uttered a single word which was inconsistent with the sole aim for the attainment of which he was working all through the war. With obvious unwillingness, with bitter conviction that he would not be understood, he more than once, under the most different circumstances, gave expression to his real thought. His first differed from all about him after the battle of Borodino, which he alone persisted in calling a victory, and this view he continued to assert verbally and in reports and to his dying day. He alone said that
the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia
. In answer to the overtures for peace, his reply to Lauriston was:
There can be no peace, for such is the people’s will
. He alone during the retreat of the French said that
all our manœuvres are unnecessary; that everything is being done of itself better than we could desire; that we must give the enemy a “golden bridge”; that the battles of Tarutino, of Vyazma, and of Krasnoe, were none of them necessary; that we must keep some men to reach the frontier with; that he wouldn’t give one Russian for ten Frenchmen
. And he, this intriguing courtier, as we are told, who lied to Araktcheev to propitiate the Tsar, he alone dared to face the Tsar’s displeasure by telling him at Vilna that
to carry the war beyond the frontier would be mischievous and useless
.

But words alone would be no proof that he grasped the significance of events at the time. His actions—all without the slightest deviation—were directed toward the one threefold aim: first, to concentrate all his forces to strike a blow at the French; secondly, to defeat them; and thirdly, to drive them out of Russia, alleviating as far as was possible the sufferings of the people and the soldiers in doing so.

He, the lingerer Kutuzov, whose motto was always “Time and Patience,” the sworn opponent of precipitate action, he fought the battle of Borodino, and made all his preparations for it with unwonted solemnity. Before the battle of Austerlitz he foretold that it would be lost, but at Borodino, in spite of the conviction of the generals that the
battle was a defeat, in spite of the fact, unprecedented in history, of his army being forced to retreat after the victory, he alone declared in opposition to all that it was a victory, and persisted in that opinion to his dying day. He was alone during the whole latter part of the campaign in insisting that there was no need of fighting now, that it was a mistake to cross the Russian frontier and to begin a new war. It is easy enough now that all the events with their consequences lie before us to grasp their significance, if only we refrain from attributing to the multitude the aims that only existed in the brains of some dozen or so of men.

But how came that old man, alone in opposition to the opinion of all, to gauge so truly the importance of events from the national standard, so that he never once was false to the best interests of his country?

The source of this extraordinary intuition into the significance of contemporary events lay in the purity and fervour of patriotic feeling in his heart.

It was their recognition of this feeling in him that led the people in such a strange manner to pick him out, an old man out of favour, as the chosen leader of the national war, against the will of the Tsar. And this feeling alone it was to which he owed his exalted position, and there he exerted all his powers as commander-in-chief not to kill and maim men, but to save them and have mercy on them.

This simple, modest, and therefore truly great figure, could not be cast into the false mould of the European hero, the supposed leader of men, that history has invented.

To the flunkey no man can be great, because the flunkey has his own flunkey conception of greatness.

The 5th of November was the first day of the so-called battle of Krasnoe.

Many had been the blunders and disputes among the generals, who had not reached their proper places, many the contradictory orders carried to them by adjutants, but towards evening it was clear that the enemy were everywhere in flight, and that there would not and could not be a battle. In the evening Kutuzov set out from Krasnoe towards Dobroe, to which place the headquarters had that day been removed.