*Knight without fear and without reproach.
‘I give you that column, lads,’ he said, riding up to the
troops and pointing out the French to the cavalry.
And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could scarcely move, trotted with much effort to
the column presented to themthat is to say, to a crowd of
Frenchmen stark with cold, frost-bitten, and starvingand
the column that had been presented to them threw down its
arms and surrendered as it had long been anxious to do.
At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners,
several hundred cannon, and a stick called a ‘marshal’s
staff,’ and disputed as to who had distinguished himself and
were pleased with their achievementthough they much regretted not having taken Napoleon, or at least a marshal or
a hero of some sort, and reproached one another and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.
These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind
tools of the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered
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themselves heroes and imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable deed. They blamed Kutuzov
and said that from the very beginning of the campaign he
had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought
nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance
from the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there,
that at Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning
that Napoleon was there he had quite lost his head, and that
it was probable that he had an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.
Not only did his contempories, carried away by their
passions, talk in this way, but posterity and history have
acclaimed Napoleon as grand, while Kutuzov is described
by foreigners as a crafty, dissolute, weak old courtier, and
by Russians as something indefinitea sort of puppet useful
only because he had a Russian name.
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In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a
history recently written by order of the Highest Authorities
it is said that Kutuzov was a cunning court liar, frightened
of the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian army of the
glory of complete victory over the French.*
*History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and
reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at
Krasnoe, by Bogdanovich.
Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom
the Russian mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare
and always solitary individuals who, discerning the will of
Providence, submit their personal will to it. The hatred and
contempt of the crowd punish such men for discerning the
higher laws.
For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleonthat most insignificant tool of history who never
anywhere, even in exile, showed human dignityNapoleon
is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he is grand. But
Kutuzovthe man who from the beginning to the end of his
activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or deed from
Borodino to Vilna, presented an example exceptional in
history of self-sacrifice and a present conciousness of the
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future importance of what was happeningKutuzov seems
to them something indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year 1812 they always seem a little
ashamed.
And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose activity was so unswervingly directed to a single
aim; and it would be difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the will of the whole people.
Still more difficult would it be to find an instance in history
of the aim of an historical personage being so completely
accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov’s efforts were directed in 1812.
Kutuzov never talked of ‘forty centuries looking down
from the Pyramids,’ of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what he intended to accomplish or had
accomplished; in general he said nothing about himself, adopted no prose, always appeared to be the simplest and most
ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most ordinary
things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de
Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested
with generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who tried to prove anything to him. When Count
Rostopchin at the Yauza bridge galloped up to Kutuzov
with personal reproaches for having caused the destruction
of Moscow, and said: ‘How was it you promised not to abandon Moscow without a battle?’ Kutuzov replied: ‘And I shall
not abandon Moscow without a battle,’ though Moscow was
then already abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him
from the Emperor, said that Ermolov ought to be appointed
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chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied: ‘Yes, I was just saying
so myself,’ though a moment before he had said quite the
contrary. What did it matter to himwho then alone amid
a senseless crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what was happeningwhat did it matter to him
whether Rostopchin attributed the calamities of Moscow to
him or to himself? Still less could it matter to him who was
appointed chief of the artillery.
Not merely in these cases but continually did that old
manwho by experience of life had reached the conviction
that thoughts and the words serving as their expression
are not what move peopleuse quite meaningless words that
happened to enter his head.
But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent
with the single aim toward which he moved throughout the
whole war. Obviously in spite of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his real thoughts with
the bitter conviction that he would not be understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his
disagreement with those about him began, he alone said
that the battle of Borodino was a victory, and repeated this
both verbally and in his dispatches and reports up to the
time of his death. He alone said that the loss of Moscow is
not the loss of Russia. In reply to Lauriston’s proposal of
peace, he said: There can be no peace, for such is the people’s will. He alone during the retreat of the French said that
all our maneuvers are useless, everything is being accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy
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must be offered ‘a golden bridge”; that neither the Tarutino,
the Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that
we must keep some force to reach the frontier with, and that
he would not sacrifice a single Russian for ten Frenchmen.
And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to
Arakcheev to please the Emperor, he aloneincurring thereby the Emperor’s displeasuresaid in Vilna that to carry the
war beyond the frontier is useless and harmful.
Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the
meaning of the events. His actionswithout the smallest deviationwere all directed to one and the same threefold end:
(1) to brace all his strength for conflict with the French, (2)
to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the sufferings of our people and of
our army.
This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was ‘Patience
and Time,’ this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at
Borodino, investing the preparations for it with unparalleled
solemnity. This Kutuzov who before the battle of Austerlitz
began said that it would be lost, he alone, in contradiction
to everyone else, declared till his death that Borodino was a
victory, despite the assurance of generals that the battle was
lost and despite the fact that for an army to have to retire
after winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during
the whole retreat insisted that battles, which were useless
then, should not be fought, and that a new war should not
be begun nor the frontiers of Russia crossed.
It is easy now to understand the significance of these
eventsif only we abstain from attributing to the activity of
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the mass aims that existed only in the heads of a dozen individualsfor the events and results now lie before us.
But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the
general opinion, so truly discern the importance of the people’s view of the events that in all his activity he was never
once untrue to it?
The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating
the meaning of the events then occuring lay in the national
feeling which he possessed in full purity and strength.
Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this
feeling caused the people in so strange a manner, contrary
to the Tsar’s wish, to select himan old man in disfavorto be
their representative in the national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest human pedestal from which
he, the commander in chief, devoted all his powers not to
slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing pity
on them.
That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure
could not be cast in the false mold of a European herothe
supposed ruler of menthat history has invented.
To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own
conception of greatness.
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Chapter VI
The fifth of November was the first day of what is called
the battle of Krasnoe. Toward eveningafter much disputing
and many mistakes made by generals who did not go to their
proper places, and after adjutants had been sent about with
counterorderswhen it had become plain that the enemy was
everywhere in flight and that there could and would be no
battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither
his headquarters had that day been transferred.
The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on
his plump little white horse, followed by an enormous suite
of discontented generals who whispered among themselves
behind his back. All along the road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them)
were crowding to warm themselves at campfires. Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with
talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they had been
able to get hold of, were standing in the road beside a long
row of unharnessed French guns. At the approach of
