War and Peace (157 page)

They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who, on the pretext of a fresh inspection of the position, was engaged in finishing his luxurious dinner. They waited for him from four to six o’clock, and all that time did not enter on their deliberations, but talked of extraneous matters in subdued tones.

Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut, Kutuzov moved out of his
corner and came up to the table, but sat there so that his face did not come within the light of the candles on it.

Bennigsen opened the council by the question: Whether to abandon the holy and ancient capital of Russia, or to defend it?

A prolonged silence followed. Every face was knitted, and in the stillness Kutuzov could be heard angrily coughing and clearing his throat. All eyes were fixed on him. Malasha too gazed at “Granddad.”

She was nearest of all to him, and saw that his face was working; he seemed to be going to cry. But that did not last long.

“The holy and ancient capital of Russia!”
he cried suddenly, in a wrathful voice, repeating Bennigsen’s words, and thereby underlining the false note in them. “Allow me to tell your excellency that that question has no meaning to a Russian.” (He lurched his unwieldy figure forward.) “Such a question cannot be put; there is no sense in such a question. The question I have asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is the question of the war. The question is: The safety of Russia lies in her army. Is it better to risk the loss of the army and of Moscow by giving battle, or to abandon Moscow without a battle? That is the question on which I desire to learn your opinion.” He lurched back into his low chair again.

A debate began. Bennigsen did not yet consider that the game was lost. Overruled by the opinion of Barclay and others in admitting the impossibility of maintaining a defensive position at Fili, he proceeded to prove his Russian patriotism and devotion to Moscow by proposing to move the army during the night from the right to the left flank of the position, and to aim a blow at the French right flank next day. Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced for and against this project. Yermolov, Dohturov, and Raevsky sided with Bennigsen. Led by a feeling that a sacrifice was called for before abandoning the city, and by other personal considerations, these generals seemed unable to grasp that the council then sitting could not affect the inevitable course of events, and that Moscow was already in effect abandoned. The other generals understood this, and leaving the question of Moscow on one side, talked of the direction the army ought to take in retreating.

Malasha, who kept her eyes fixed on what was passing before her, saw the council in quite a different light. It seemed to her that the whole point at issue was a personal struggle between “Granddad” and “Longcoat,” as she called Bennigsen to herself. She saw that they were angry when they spoke to one another, and in her heart she was on
“Granddad’s” side. In the middle of the conversation, she caught the swift, subtle glance that “Granddad” gave Bennigsen, and immediately after she noted with glee that “Granddad’s” words had put “Longcoat” down. Bennigsen suddenly flushed, and strode angrily across the room. The words that had thus affected Bennigsen were Kutuzov’s quietly and softly uttered comment on his proposal to move the troops from the right to the left flank in the night in order to attack the French right.

“I cannot approve of the count’s plan, gentlemen,” said Kutuzov. “Movements of troops in close proximity to the enemy are always risky, and military history affords many examples of disasters arising from them. For instance …” (Kutuzov seemed to ponder, seeking an example, and then looking with a frank, naïve expression at Bennigsen) … “well, the battle of Friedland, which, as I have no doubt the count remembers, was not … completely successful owing to the change of the position of the troops in too close proximity to the enemy …”

A momentary silence followed that seemed lengthy to all.

The debate was renewed; but pauses often interrupted it, and it was felt that there was nothing to talk about.

In one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a heavy sigh, as though preparing to speak. All looked round at him.

“Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the broken pots,” he said. And slowly rising from his seat, he walked up to the table. “Gentlemen, I have heard your opinions. Some of you will not agree with me. But I” (he stopped), “by the authority intrusted me by my Tsar and my country, give the order to retire.”

After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and circumspect taciturnity with which people separate after a funeral. Several of the generals made some communication to the commander-in-chief in a low voice, pitched in quite a different scale from that in which they had been talking at the council.

Malasha, who had long been expected in the other room to supper, dropped backwards down from the stove, her bare toes clinging to the projections of the stove, and slipping between the generals’ legs, she darted out at the door.

After dismissing the generals, Kutuzov sat a long while with his elbows on the table, pondering that terrible question: “When, when had it become inevitable that Moscow should be abandoned? When was the thing done that made it inevitable, and who is to blame for it?”

“This I did not expect!” he said to the adjutant, Schneider, who came in to him late at night; “this I did not expect! This I never thought of!”

“You must rest, your highness,” said Schneider.

“Yes; but they shall eat horse-flesh like the Turks!” Kutuzov cried, not heeding him, as he brought his podgy fist down on the table. “They too, shall eat it, if only …!”

Meanwhile, in an event of even greater importance than the retreat of the army without a battle, in the abandonment and burning of Moscow, Count Rastoptchin, whom we conceive as taking the lead in that event, was acting in a very different manner from Kutuzov.

This event—the abandonment and burning of Moscow—was, after the battle of Borodino, as inevitable as the retreat of the army without fighting.

Every Russian could have foretold what happened, not as a result of any train of intellectual deductions, but from the feeling that lies at the bottom of our hearts, and lay at the bottom of our fathers’!

In every town and village on Russian soil, from Smolensk onwards, without the assistance of Count Rastoptchin and his placards, the same thing took place as happened in Moscow. The people awaited the coming of the enemy without disturbance; did not display excitement; tore nobody to pieces, but calmly awaited their fate, feeling in themselves the power to find what they must do in the moment of difficulty.

And as soon as the enemy came near, the wealthier elements of the population went away, leaving their property behind; the poorer remained, and burnt and destroyed all that was left.

The sense that this would be so, and always would be so, lay, and lies at the bottom of every Russian’s heart. And a sense of this, and more, a foreboding that Moscow would be taken by the enemy, lay in the Russian society of Moscow in 1812. Those who had begun leaving Moscow in July and the beginning of August had shown that they expected it. Those who left the city with what they could carry away, abandoning their houses and half their property, did so in consequence of that latent patriotism, which finds expression, not in phrases, not in giving one’s children to death for the sake of the fatherland, and such
unnatural exploits, but expresses itself imperceptibly in the most simple, organic way, and so always produces the most powerful results.

“It’s a disgrace to fly from danger; only the cowards are flying from Moscow,” they were told. Rastoptchin, in his placards, urged upon them that it was base to leave Moscow. They were ashamed at hearing themselves called cowards; they were ashamed of going away; but still they went away, knowing that it must be so. Why did they go away? It cannot be supposed that Rastoptchin had scared them with tales of the atrocities perpetrated by Napoleon in the countries he conquered. The first to leave were the wealthy, educated people, who knew very well that Vienna and Berlin remained uninjured, and that the inhabitants of those cities, when Napoleon was in occupation of them, had spent their time gaily with the fascinating Frenchmen, of whom all Russians, and especially the ladies, had at that period been so fond.

They went away because to Russians the question whether they would be comfortable or not under the government of the French in Moscow could never occur. To be under the government of the French was out of the question; it was worse than anything. They were going away even before Borodino, and still more rapidly after Borodino; regardless of the calls to defend the city, regardless of the proclamations of the governor of Moscow; of his intention of going with the Iversky Virgin into battle, and of the air-balloons which were to demolish the French, and all the nonsense with which Rastoptchin filled his placards. They knew that it was for the army to fight, and if the army could not, it would be of no use to rush out with young ladies and house-serfs to fight Napoleon on the Three Hills, and so they must make haste and get away, sorry as they were to leave their possessions to destruction. They drove away without a thought of the vast consequences of this immense wealthy city being abandoned by its inhabitants, and being inevitably thereby consigned to the flames. To abstain from destroying and burning empty houses would never occur to the Russian peasantry. They drove away, each on his own account, and yet it was only in consequence of their action that the grand event came to pass that is the highest glory of the Russian people. The lady who in June set off with her Negroes and her buffoons from Moscow for her Saratov estates, with a vague feeling that she was not going to be a servant of Bonaparte’s, and a vague dread that she might be hindered from going by Rastoptchin’s orders, was simply and genuinely doing the great deed that saved Russia.

Count Rastoptchin at one time cried shame on those who were going, then removed all the public offices, then served out useless weapons to the drunken rabble, then brought out the holy images, and prevented Father Augustin from removing the holy relics and images, then got hold of all the private conveyances that were in Moscow, then in one hundred and thirty-six carts carried out the air-balloon made by Leppich, at one time hinted that he should set fire to Moscow, at one time described how he had burnt his own house, and wrote a proclamation to the French in which he solemnly reproached them for destroying the home of his childhood. He claimed the credit of having set fire to Moscow, then disavowed it; he commanded the people to capture all spies, and bring them to him, then blamed the people for doing so; he sent all the French residents out of Moscow, and then let Madame Aubert-Chalmey, who formed the centre of French society in Moscow, remain. For no particular reason he ordered the respected old postmaster, Klucharov, to be seized and banished. He got the people together on the Three Hills to fight the French, and then, to get rid of them, handed a man over to them to murder, and escaped himself by the back door. He vowed he would never survive the disaster of Moscow, and later on wrote French verses in albums on his share in the affair.
¹

This man had no inkling of the import of what was happening. All he wanted was to do something himself, to astonish people, to perform some heroic feat of patriotism, and, like a child, he frolicked about the grand and inevitable event of the abandonment and burning of Moscow, trying with his puny hand first to urge on, and then to hold back, the tide of the vast popular current that was bearing him along with it.

Ellen had accompanied the court on its return from Vilna to Petersburg, and there found herself in a difficult position.

In Petersburg Ellen had enjoyed the special patronage of a great personage,
who occupied one of the highest positions in the government. In Vilna she had formed a liaison with a young foreign prince.

When she returned to Petersburg the prince and the great dignitary were both in that town; both claimed their rights, and Ellen was confronted with a problem that had not previously arisen in her career—the preservation of the closest relations with both, without giving offence to either.

What might have seemed to any other woman a difficult or impossible task never cost a moment’s thought to Countess Bezuhov, who plainly deserved the reputation she enjoyed of being a most intelligent woman. Had she attempted concealment; had she allowed herself to get out of her awkward position by subterfuges, she would have spoilt her own case by acknowledging herself the guilty party. But like a truly great man, who can always do everything he chooses, Ellen at once assumed the rectitude of her own position, of which she was indeed genuinely convinced, and the guilty responsibility of every one else concerned.

The first time the young foreign prince ventured to reproach her, she lifted her beautiful head, and, with a haughty tone towards him, said firmly:

“This is the egoism and the cruelty of men. I expected nothing else. Woman sacrifices herself for you; she suffers, and this is her reward. What right have you, your highness, to call me to account for my friendships, my affections? He is a man who has been more than a father to me!”

The prince would have said something. Ellen interrupted him.

“Well, yes, perhaps he has sentiments for me other than those of a father, but that is not a reason I should shut my door on him. I am not a person to be ungrateful. Know, your highness, that in all that relates to my private sentiments I will account only to God and to my conscience!” she concluded, laying her hand on her beautiful, heaving bosom, and looking up to heaven.

“But listen to me, in God’s name!” …

“Marry me, and I will be your slave!”

“But it is impossible.”

“You do not deign to stoop to me, you …” Ellen burst into tears.

The prince attempted to console her. Ellen, as though utterly distraught, declared through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying; that there were precedents (they were but few at that time, but Ellen quoted the case of Napoleon and some other persons of
exalted rank); that she had never been a real wife to her husband; that she had been dragged an unwilling victim into the marriage.