and genius give him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance
all men, not only the French but all Europeexcept England
which does not take part in the events about to happendespite their former horror and detestation of his crimes, now
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recognize his authority, the title he has given himself, and
his ideal of grandeur and glory, which seems excellent and
reasonable to them all.
As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming
movement, the western forces push toward the east several
times in 1805, 1806, 1807, and 1809, gaining strength and
growing. In 1811 the group of people that had formed in
France unites into one group with the peoples of Central
Europe. The strength of the justification of the man who
stands at the head of the movement grows with the increased size of the group. During the ten-year preparatory
period this man had formed relations with all the crowned
heads of Europe. The discredited rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate Napoleonic ideal
of glory and grandeur. One after another they hasten to display their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia
sends his wife to seek the great man’s mercy; the Emperor of Austria considers it a favor that this man receives a
daughter the Caesars into his bed; the Pope, the guardian
of all that the nations hold sacred, utilizes religion for the
aggrandizement of the great man. It is not Napoleon who
prepares himself for the accomplishment of his role, so
much as all those round him who prepare him to take on
himself the whole responsibility for what is happening and
has to happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud he
commits, which in the mouths of those around him is not
at once represented as a great deed. The most suitable fete
the Germans can devise for him is a celebration of Jena and
Auerstadt. Not only is he great, but so are his ancestors, his
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brothers, his stepsons, and his brothers-in-law. Everything
is done to deprive him of the remains of his reason and to
prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so
too are the forces.
The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goalMoscow. That city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier
losses than the opposing armies had suffered in the former
war from Austerlitz to Wagram. But suddenly instead of
those chances and that genius which hitherto had so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of successes to
the predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of inverse
chances occurfrom the cold in his head at Borodino to the
sparks which set Moscow on fire, and the frostsand instead
of genius, stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident.
The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are now not for Napoleon but always against him.
A countermovement is then accomplished from east
to west with a remarkable resemblance to the preceding
movement from west to east. Attempted drives from east
to westsimilar to the contrary movements of 1805, 1807,
and 1809precede the great westward movement; there is the
same coalescence into a group of enormous dimensions; the
same adhesion of the people of Central Europe to the movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same increasing
rapidity as the goal is approached.
Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government and army are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no
longer of any account; all his actions are evidently pitiful
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and mean, but again an inexplicable chance occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they regard as the cause of their
sufferings. Deprived of power and authority, his crimes and
his craft exposed, he should have appeared to them what
he appeared ten years previously and one year lateran outlawed brigand. But by some strange chance no one perceives
this. His part is not yet ended. The man who ten years before and a year later was considered an outlawed brigand is
sent to an island two days’ sail from France, which for some
reason is presented to him as his dominion, and guards are
given to him and millions of money are paid him.
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Chapter IV
The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal
channels. The waves of the great movement abate, and on
the calm surface eddies are formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have caused the floods
to abate.
But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed.
The diplomatists think that their disagreements are the
cause of this fresh pressure of natural forces; they anticipate
war between their sovereigns; the position seems to them
insoluble. But the wave they feel to be rising does not come
from the quarter they expect. It rises again from the same
point as beforeParis. The last backwash of the movement
from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the
apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the
military movement of that period of history.
The man who had devastated France returns to France
alone, without any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any
guard might arrest him, but by strange chance no one does
so and all rapturously greet the man they cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.
This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.
That act is performed.
The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and
wash off his powder and paint: he will not be wanted any
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more.
And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful
comedy to himself in solitude on his island, justifying his
actions by intrigues and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to the whole world what it was
that people had mistaken for strength as long as an unseen
hand directed his actions.
The manager having brought the drama to a close and
stripped the actor shows him to us.
‘See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that
it was not he but I who moved you?’
But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people understood this.
Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life
of Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from east to west.
What was needed for him who, overshadowing others,
stood at the head of that movement from east to west?
What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy
with European affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled
by petty interests; a moral superiority over those sovereigns
of the day who co-operated with him; a mild and attractive
personality; and a personal grievance against Napoleon.
And all this was found in Alexander I; all this had been
prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life: his
education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded him, and by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.
During the national war he was inactive because he was
not needed. But as soon as the necessity for a general Eu2146
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ropean war presented itself he appeared in his place at the
given moment and, uniting the nations of Europe, led them
to the goal.
The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander
possesses all possible power. How does he use it?
Alexander Ithe pacifier of Europe, the man who from
his early years had striven only for his people’s welfare, the
originator of the liberal innovations in his fatherlandnow
that he seemed to possess the utmost power and therefore
to have the possibility of bringing about the welfare of his
peoplesat the time when Napoleon in exile was drawing up
childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made
mankind happy had he retained powerAlexander I, having
fulfilled his mission and feeling the hand of God upon him,
suddenly recognizes the insignificance of that supposed
power, turns away from it, and gives it into the hands of
contemptible men whom he despises, saying only:
‘Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!… I too am
a man like the rest of you. Let me live like a man and think
of my soul and of God.’
As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete
in itself, and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too
immense for man to comprehend, so each individual has
within himself his own aims and yet has them to serve a
general purpose incomprehensible to man.
A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child
is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people.
A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower
and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A bee
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keeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry
it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey. Another
beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely
says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees
and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race.
A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a
male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this
the purpose of the bee’s existence. Another, observing the
migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work,
and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the
ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the
second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery
of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.
All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of
the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the
purpose of historic characters and nations.
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Chapter V
Natasha’s wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in
1813, was the last happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov died that same year and, as always
happens, after the father’s death the family group broke up.
The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow
and the flight from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha’s
despair, Petya’s death, and the old
