These words first showed Pierre clearly that the French certainly would enter Moscow. In the second placard it was announced that our headquarters were at Vyazma, that Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that since many of the inhabitants of Moscow were desirous of arming themselves, weapons had been provided to meet their wishes in the arsenal; swords, pistols, and guns could all be procured there at a low rate.
The tone of this notice was not as jocose as the former supposed discourses of Tchigirin. The two placards made Pierre ponder. It was evident to him that the menacing storm cloud, for the advent of which his whole soul longed, though it roused an involuntary thrill of horror, it was evident that that cloud was coming closer.
“Shall I enter the service and join the army or wait here?” Pierre thought, a question he had put to himself a hundred times already. He took up a pack of cards that lay on the table to deal them for a game of patience.
“If I succeed in this game of patience,” he said to himself, shuffling the pack as he held it in his hand and looked upwards; “if I succeed, it means … what does it mean?” … He had not time to decide this question when he heard at the door of his study the voice of the eldest princess, asking whether she might come in. “Then it will mean that I must set off to join the army,” Pierre told himself. “Come, come in,” he said to the princess.
The eldest of his cousins, the one with the long waist and the stony face, was the only one still living in Pierre’s house; the two younger sisters had both married.
“Excuse my coming to you, cousin,” she said in a tone of reproach and excitement. “Some decision really must be come to, you know. What is going to happen? Every one has left Moscow, and the populace are becoming unruly. Why are we staying on?”
“On the contrary, everything seems going on satisfactorily, ma cousine,” said Pierre in the habitually playful tone he had adopted with his cousin, to carry off the embarrassment he always felt at being in the position of a benefactor to her.
“Oh, yes, satisfactorily … highly satisfactory, I dare say. Varvara Ivanovna told me to-day how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It is certainly a credit to them. And the populace, too, is in complete revolt, they won’t obey any one now; even my maid has begun to be insolent. If it goes on like this, they will soon begin killing us. One can’t walk about the streets. And the worst of it is, in another day or two the French will be here. Why are we waiting for them? One favour I beg of you, mon cousin,” said the princess, “give orders for me to be taken to Petersburg; whatever I may be, any way I can’t live under Bonaparte’s rule.”
“But what nonsense, ma cousine! where do you get your information from? On the contrary …”
“I’m not going to submit to your Napoleon. Other people may do as they like.… If you won’t do this for me …”
“But I will, I’ll give orders for it at once.”
The princess was obviously annoyed at having no one to be angry with. Muttering something, she sat down on the edge of the chair.
“But you have been incorrectly informed,” said Pierre. “All’s quiet in the town, and there’s no sort of danger. See I have just read …” Pierre showed the princess the placards. “The count writes that he will stake his life on it that the enemy will never be in Moscow.”
“Ah, your count,” the princess began spitefully, “he’s a hypocrite, a miscreant who has himself stirred the mob on to disorder. Didn’t he write in his idiotic placards that they were to take anybody whoever it might be and drag by the hair to the lock-up (and how silly it is!). Honour our and glory, says he, to the man who does so. And this is what he has brought us to. Varvara Ivanovna told me the mob almost killed her for speaking French.”
“Oh, well, well … You take everything too much to heart,” said Pierre, and he began dealing out the patience.
Although he did succeed in the game, Pierre did not set off to join the army, but stayed on in Moscow, now rapidly emptying, and was still in the same agitation, uncertainty and alarm, and, at the same time, joyful expectation of something awful.
Next day the princess set off in the evening, and Pierre’s head-steward came to inform him that it was impossible to raise the money he required for the equipment of his regiment unless he sold one of his estates. The head-steward impressed on Pierre generally that all this regimental craze would infallibly bring him to ruin. Pierre could hardly conceal a smile as he listened to the head-steward.
“Well, sell it then,” he said. “There’s no help for it, I can’t draw back now!”
The worse the position of affairs, and especially of his own affairs, the better pleased Pierre felt, and the more obvious it was to him that the catastrophe he expected was near at hand. Scarcely any of Pierre’s acquaintances were left in the town. Julie had gone, Princess Marya had gone. Of his more intimate acquaintances the Rostovs were the only people left; but Pierre did not go to see them.
To divert his mind that day, Pierre drove out to the village of Vorontsovo, to look at a great air balloon which was being constructed by Leppich to use against the enemy, and the test balloon which was to be sent up the following day. The balloon was not yet ready; but as Pierre learned, it was being constructed by the Tsar’s desire. The Tsar had written to Count Rastoptchin about it in the following terms:
“As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew for his car consisting of thoroughly trustworthy and intelligent men, and send a courier to General Kutuzov to prepare him for it. I have mentioned it to him. Impress upon Leppich, please, to take careful note where he descends the first time, that he may not go astray and fall into the hands of the enemy. It is essential that he should regulate his movements in accordance with the movements of the commander-in-chief.”
On his way home from Vorontsovo, Pierre drove through Bolotny Square, and seeing a crowd at Lobnoye Place, stopped and got out of his chaise. The crowd were watching the flogging of a French cook, accused of being a spy. The flogging was just over, and the man who had administered it was untying from the whipping-post a stout, red-whiskered man in blue stockings and a green tunic, who was groaning piteously. Another victim, a thin, pale man, was standing by. Both, to judge by their faces, were Frenchmen. With a face of sick dread like that of the thin Frenchman, Pierre pushed his way in among the crowd.
“What is it? Who are they? What for?” he kept asking. But the attention of the crowd—clerks, artisans, shopkeepers, peasants, women in pelisses and jackets—was so intently riveted on what was taking place on the Lobnoye Place that no one answered. The stout man got up, shrugged his shoulders frowning, and evidently trying to show fortitude, began putting on his tunic without looking about him. But all at once his lips quivered and to his own rage he began to cry, as grown-up men of sanguine temperament do cry. The crowd began talking loudly, to drown a feeling of pity in themselves, as it seemed to Pierre.
“Some prince’s cook. …”
“Eh, monsieur, Russian sauce is a bit strong for a French stomach … sets the teeth on edge,” said a wrinkled clerk standing near Pierre, just when the Frenchman burst into tears. The clerk looked about him for signs of appreciation of his jest. Several persons laughed, but some were still gazing in dismay at the man who was undressing the second Frenchman and about to flog him.
Pierre choked, scowled, and turning quickly, went back to his chaise, still muttering something to himself as he went, and took his seat in it. During the rest of the way he several times started, and cried out so loudly that the coachman at last asked him what he desired.
“Where are you driving?” Pierre shouted to the coachman as he drove to Lubyanka.
“You told me to drive to the governor’s,” answered the coachman.
“Fool! dolt!” shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman, a thing he very rarely did. “I told you home; and make haste, blockhead! This very day I must set off,” Pierre said to himself.
At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd round the Lobnoye Place, Pierre had so unhesitatingly decided that he could stay no longer in Moscow, and must that very day set off to join the army, that it seemed to him either that he had told the coachman so, or that the coachman ought to know it of himself.
On reaching home Pierre told his omniscient and omnipotent head-coachman, Yevstafitch, who was known to all Moscow, that he was going to drive that night to Mozhaisk to the army, and gave orders for his saddle horses to be sent on there. All this could not be arranged in one day, and therefore by Yevstafitch’s representations Pierre was induced to defer his departure till next day to allow time for relays of horses to be sent on ahead.
The 24th was a bright day after a spell of bad weather, and after dinner on that day Pierre set out from Moscow. Changing horses in the night at Perhushkovo, Pierre learned that a great battle had been fought that evening. He was told that the earth had been vibrating there at Perhushkovo from the cannon. No one could answer Pierre’s question whether the battle was a victory or a defeat. This was the battle of the 24th at Shevardino. Towards dawn Pierre approached Mozhaisk.
Troops were quartered in all the houses in Mozhaisk, and at the inn, where Pierre was met by his coachman and postillion, there was not a room to spare; the whole place was full of officers.
From Mozhaisk onwards troops were halting or marching everywhere. Cossacks, foot soldiers, horse soldiers, waggons, gun-carriages, and cannons were everywhere.
Pierre pushed on as fast as possible, and the further he got and the more deeply he plunged into this ocean of soldiers, the stronger became the thrill of uneasiness and of a new pleasurable sensation. It was a feeling akin to what he had felt at the Slobodsky Palace on the Tsar’s visit, a sense of the urgent necessity of taking some step and making some sacrifice. He was conscious now of a glad sense that all that constitutes the happiness of life, comfort, wealth, even life itself, were all dust and ashes, which it was a joy to fling away in comparison with something else. … What that something else was Pierre could not have said, and indeed he did not seek to get a clear idea, for whose sake and for what object he found such peculiar joy in sacrificing all. He was not interested in knowing the object of the sacrifice, but the sacrifice itself afforded him a new joyful sensation.
Chapter 19
ON THE 24th was fought the battle before the redoubt of Shevardino; on the 25th not a shot was fired on either side; on the 26th was fought the battle of Borodino.
How and with what object were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino fought? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not the slightest sense in it, either for the French or for the Russians. The immediate result of it was, and was bound to be, for the Russians, that we were brought nearer to the destruction of Moscow (the very thing we dreaded above everything in the world); and for the French, that they were brought nearer to the destruction of their army (which they, too, dreaded above everything in the world). That result was at the time perfectly obvious, and yet Napoleon offered battle, and Kutuzov accepted it.
If military leaders were guided by reasonable considerations only, it would seem that it must have been clear to Napoleon that in advancing two thousand versts into the heart of the country and giving battle, with the probable contingency of losing a quarter of his men, he was going to certain destruction; and that it must have been equally clear to Kutuzov that in accepting that battle and risking the loss of a fourth of his army, he would infallibly lose Moscow. For Kutuzov this was mathematically clear, as clear as it is at chess, that if I have one piece less than my adversary and I exchange pieces, I am certain to be a loser by it, and therefore must avoid exchanging pieces. When my adversary has sixteen pieces and I have fourteen, I am only one-eighth weaker than he; but when we have exchanged thirteen pieces, he is three times as strong as I am.
Up to the battle of Borodino our forces were approximately five-sixths of the French, but after that battle they were only one-half—that is, before the battle a hundred thousand against a hundred and twenty thousand, and after the battle fifty thousand against a hundred thousand. And yet the shrewd and experienced Kutuzov fought the battle. Napoleon, a military genius, as he is called, gave battle, losing a fourth of his army and drawing his line of communications out further than ever. If we are told that he expected the taking of Moscow to complete the campaign, as the taking of Vienna had done, we may say that there are many evidences to the contrary. Napoleon’s historians themselves tell us that he wanted to halt as soon as he reached Smolensk; that he knew the danger of his extended line, and that he knew that the taking of Moscow would not be the end of the campaign, because from Smolensk he had learned in what condition the towns were left when abandoned to him, and he had not received a single reply to his reiterated expressions of a desire to open negotiations.
In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov and Napoleon acted without design or rational plan. After the accomplished fact historians have brought forward cunningly devised evidences of the foresight and genius of the generals, who of all the involuntary instruments of the world’s history were the most slavish and least independent agents.
The ancients have transmitted to us examples of epic poems in which the whole interest of history is concentrated in a few heroic figures; and under their influence we are still unable to accustom our minds to the idea that history of that kind is meaningless at our stage in the development of humanity.
In answer to the next question, how the battles of Borodino and Shevardino came to be fought, we have also a very definite, well-known, and utterly false account. All the historians describe the affair thus:
The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk sought out the best position for a general engagement, and such a position they found in Borodino. The Russians, they say, fortified the position beforehand, to the left of the road (from Moscow to Smolensk) at right angles to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where the battle was fought.
In front of this position, they tell us, a fortified earthwork was thrown up on the Shevardino redoubt as an outpost for observation of the enemy’s movements.
On the 24th, we are told, Napoleon attacked this redoubt, and took it. On the 26th he attacked the whole Russian army, which had taken up its position on the plain of Borodino.
This is what we are told in the histories, and all that is perfectly incorrect, as any one may easily see who cares to go into the matter.
