the veil that had till then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt as if powers till then
confined within him had been liberated, and that strange
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lightness did not again leave him.
When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the
divan, Natasha went up and asked him what was the matter.
He did not answer and looked at her strangely, not understanding.
That was what had happened to him two days before
Princess Mary’s arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting fever assumed a malignant character,
but what the doctor said did not interest Natasha, she saw
the terrible moral symptoms which to her were more convincing.
From that day an awakening from life came to Prince
Andrew together with his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration of life it did not seem to him slower
than an awakening from sleep compared to the duration of
a dream.
There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow awakening.
His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple
way. Both Princess Mary and Natasha, who did not leave
him, felt this. They did not weep or shudder and during
these last days they themselves felt that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left them)
but on what reminded them most closely of himhis body.
Both felt this so strongly that the outward and terrible side
of death did not affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment their grief. Neither in his presence nor out of
it did they weep, nor did they ever talk to one another about
him. They felt that they could not express in words what
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they understood.
They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly,
deeper and deeper, away from them, and they both knew
that this had to be so and that it was right.
He confessed, and received communion: everyone came
to take leave of him. When they brought his son to him, he
pressed his lips to the boy’s and turned away, not because
he felt it hard and sad (Princess Mary and Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it was all that was
required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy,
he did what was demanded and looked round as if asking
whether there was anything else he should do.
When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving, occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were
present.
‘Is it over?’ said Princess Mary when his body had for
a few minutes lain motionless, growing cold before them.
Natasha went up, looked at the dead eyes, and hastened to
close them. She closed them but did not kiss them, but clung
to that which reminded her most nearly of himhis body.
‘Where has he gone? Where is he now?..’
When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin
on a table, everyone came to take leave of him and they all
wept.
Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful perplexity. The countess and Sonya cried from pity for
Natasha and because he was no more. The old count cried
because he felt that before long, he, too, must take the same
terrible step.
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Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their own personal grief; they wept with a reverent
and softening emotion which had taken possession of their
souls at the consciousness of the simple and solemn mystery
of death that had been accomplished in their presence.
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BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812
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Chapter I
Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their
completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without considering the multiplicity
and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken
separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the first
approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and
says: ‘This is the cause!’ In historical events (where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the first and
most primitive approximation to present itself was the will
of the gods and, after that, the will of those who stood in the
most prominent positionthe heroes of history. But we need
only penetrate to the essence of any historic eventwhich lies
in the activity of the general mass of men who take part in
itto be convinced that the will of the historic hero does not
control the actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may seem to be a matter of indifference whether
we understand the meaning of historical events this way or
that; yet there is the same difference between a man who
says that the people of the West moved on the East because
Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this happened
because it had to happen, as there is between those who declared that the earth was stationary and that the planets
moved round it and those who admitted that they did not
know what upheld the earth, but knew there were laws di
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recting its movement and that of the other planets. There
is, and can be, no cause of an historical event except the
one cause of all causes. But there are laws directing events,
and some of these laws are known to us while we are conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery of
these laws is only possible when possible when we have
quite abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will of
some one man, just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was possible only when men abandoned
the conception of the fixity of the earth.
The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its
destruction by fire, the most important episode of the war
of 1812 was the movement of the Russian army from the
Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino campthe
so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River.
They ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men and dispute as to whom the honor is due. Even
foreign historians, including the French, acknowledge the
genius of the Russian commanders when they speak of that
flank march. But it is hard to understand why military writers, and following them others, consider this flank march
to be the profound conception of some one man who saved
Russia and destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to
understand where the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to see that
the best position for an army when it is not being attacked is
where there are most provisions; and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best position for an army
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after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on the Kaluga
road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoning
the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver was
a profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand
just why they think that this maneuver was calculated to
save Russia and destroy the French; for this flank march,
had it been preceded, accompanied, or followed by other
circumstances, might have proved ruinous to the Russians
and salutary for the French. If the position of the Russian
army really began to improve from the time of that march,
it does not at all follow that the march was the cause of it.
That flank march might not only have failed to give any
advantage to the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its destruction. What would have
happened had Moscow not burned down? If Murat had not
lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given
battle as Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have
happened had the French attacked the Russians while they
were marching beyond the Pakhra? What would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had attacked
the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown
when he attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the French moved on Petersburg?… In any of
these eventualities the flank march that brought salvation
might have proved disastrous.
The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank
march cannot be attributed to any one man, that no one
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ever foresaw it, and that in reality, like the retreat from Fili,
it did not suggest itself to anyone in its entirety, but resultedmoment by moment, step by step, event by eventfrom
an endless number of most diverse circumstances and was
only seen in its entirety when it had been accomplished and
belonged to the past.
At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds
of the Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, a direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In
proof of this there is the fact that the majority of the council
voted for such a retreat, and above all there is the well-known
conversation after the council, between the commander in
chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the commissariat department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chief
that the army supplies were for the most part stored along
the Oka in the Tula and Ryazan provinces, and that if they
retreated on Nizhni the army would be separated from its
supplies by the broad river Oka, which cannot be crossed
early in winter. This was the first indication of the necessity
of deviating from what had previously seemed the most natural coursea direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod. The army
turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer
to its supplies. Subsequently the in activity of the French
(who even lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the
safety of the arsenal at Tula, and especially the advantages
of drawing nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn
still further south to the Tula road. Having crossed over,
by a forced march, to the Tula road beyond the Pakhra, the
Russian commanders intended to
