Kutuzov, the man who from the beginning to the end of his command in 1812, from Borodino to Vilna, was never in one word or deed false to himself, presents an example exceptional in history of self-sacrifice and recognition in the present of the relative value of events in the future. Kutuzov is conceived of by the historians as a nondescript, pitiful sort of creature, and whenever they speak of him in the year 1812, they seem a little ashamed of him.
And yet it is difficult to conceive of an historical character whose energy could be more invariably directed to the same unchanging aim. It is difficult to imagine an aim more noble and more in harmony with the will of a whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find an example in history where the aim of any historical personage has been so completely attained as the aim towards which all Kutuzov’s efforts were devoted in 1812.
Kutuzov never talked of “forty centuries looking down from the Pyramids,” of the sacrifices he was making for the fatherland, of what he meant to do or had done. He did not as a rule talk about himself, played no sort of part, always seemed the plainest and most ordinary man, and said the plainest and most ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de Sta?l, read novels, liked the company of pretty women, made jokes with the generals, the officers, and the soldiers, and never contradicted the people, who tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rastoptchin galloped up to him at Yautsky bridge, and reproached him personally with being responsible for the loss of Moscow, and said: “Didn’t you promise not to abandon Moscow without a battle?” Kutuzov answered: “And I am not abandoning Moscow without a battle,” although Moscow was in fact already abandoned. When Araktcheev came to him from the Tsar to say that Yermolov was to be appointed to the command of the artillery, Kutuzov said: “Yes, I was just saying so myself,” though he had said just the opposite a moment before. What had he, the one man who grasped at the time all the vast issues of events, to do in the midst of that dull-witted crowd? What did he care whether Count Rastoptchin put down the disasters of the capital to him or to himself? Still less could he be concerned by the question which man was appointed to the command of the artillery.
This old man, who through experience of life had reached the conviction that the thoughts and words that serve as its expression are never the motive force of men, frequently uttered words, which were quite meaningless—the first words that occurred to his mind.
But heedless as he was of his words, he never once throughout all his career uttered a single word which was inconsistent with the sole aim for the attainment of which he was working all through the war. With obvious unwillingness, with bitter conviction that he would not be understood, he more than once, under the most different circumstances, gave expression to his real thought. His first differed from all about him after the battle of Borodino, which he alone persisted in calling a victory, and this view he continued to assert verbally and in reports and to his dying day. He alone said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In answer to the overtures for peace, his reply to Lauriston was: There can be no peace, for such is the people’s will. He alone during the retreat of the French said that all our man?uvres are unnecessary; that everything is being done of itself better than we could desire; that we must give the enemy a “golden bridge”; that the battles of Tarutino, of Vyazma, and of Krasnoe, were none of them necessary; that we must keep some men to reach the frontier with; that he wouldn’t give one Russian for ten Frenchmen. And he, this intriguing courtier, as we are told, who lied to Araktcheev to propitiate the Tsar, he alone dared to face the Tsar’s displeasure by telling him at Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier would be mischievous and useless.
But words alone would be no proof that he grasped the significance of events at the time. His actions—all without the slightest deviation— were directed toward the one threefold aim: first, to concentrate all his forces to strike a blow at the French; secondly, to defeat them; and thirdly, to drive them out of Russia, alleviating as far as was possible the sufferings of the people and the soldiers in doing so.
He, the lingerer Kutuzov, whose motto was always “Time and Patience,” the sworn opponent of precipitate action, he fought the battle of Borodino, and made all his preparations for it with unwonted solemnity. Before the battle of Austerlitz he foretold that it would be lost, but at Borodino, in spite of the conviction of the generals that the battle was a defeat, in spite of the fact, unprecedented in history, of his army being forced to retreat after the victory, he alone declared in opposition to all that it was a victory, and persisted in that opinion to his dying day. He was alone during the whole latter part of the campaign in insisting that there was no need of fighting now, that it was a mistake to cross the Russian frontier and to begin a new war. It is easy enough now that all the events with their consequences lie before us to grasp their significance, if only we refrain from attributing to the multitude the aims that only existed in the brains of some dozen or so of men.
But how came that old man, alone in opposition to the opinion of all, to gauge so truly the importance of events from the national standard, so that he never once was false to the best interests of his country?
The source of this extraordinary intuition into the significance of contemporary events lay in the purity and fervour of patriotic feeling in his heart.
It was their recognition of this feeling in him that led the people in such a strange manner to pick him out, an old man out of favour, as the chosen leader of the national war, against the will of the Tsar. And this feeling alone it was to which he owed his exalted position, and there he exerted all his powers as commander-in-chief not to kill and maim men, but to save them and have mercy on them.
This simple, modest, and therefore truly great figure, could not be cast into the false mould of the European hero, the supposed leader of men, that history has invented.
To the flunkey no man can be great, because the flunkey has his own flunkey conception of greatness.
Chapter 6
THE 5TH of November was the first day of the so-called battle of Krasnoe.
Many had been the blunders and disputes among the generals, who had not reached their proper places, many the contradictory orders carried to them by adjutants, but towards evening it was clear that the enemy were everywhere in flight, and that there would not and could not be a battle. In the evening Kutuzov set out from Krasnoe towards Dobroe, to which place the headquarters had that day been removed.
It had been a clear, frosty day. Kutuzov, mounted on his fat, white little horse, was riding towards Dobroe, followed by an immense suite of generals, whispering their dissatisfaction behind his back. Seven thousand French prisoners had been taken that day, and all along the road they met parties of them, crowding to warm themselves round the camp-fires. Not far from Dobroe they heard a loud hum of talk from an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, bandaged and wrapped up in rags of all sorts, standing in the road near a long row of unharnessed French cannons. At the approach of the commander-in-chief the buzz of talk died away, and all eyes were fixed upon Kutuzov, who moved slowly along the road, wearing a white cap with a red band, and a wadded overcoat, that set in a hunch on his round shoulders. One of the generals began explaining to Kutuzov where the prisoners and the guns had been taken.
Kutuzov seemed absorbed in anxious thought, and did not hear the general’s words. He screwed up his eyes with an air of displeasure, and gazed intently at the figures of the prisoners, who presented a particularly pitiable appearance. The majority of the French soldiers were disfigured by frost-bitten cheeks and noses, and almost all of them had red, swollen, and streaming eyes.
One group of Frenchmen was standing close by the road, and two soldiers, one with his face covered with sores, were tearing at a piece of raw meat with their hands. There was something bestial and horrible in the cursory glance they cast on the approaching generals, and the frenzied expression with which the soldier with the sore face, after a glance at Kutuzov, turned away and went on with what he was doing.
Kutuzov looked a long while intently at these two soldiers; frowning more than before, he half-closed his eyelids, and shook his head thoughtfully. Further on, he noticed a Russian soldier, who was saying something friendly to a French prisoner, laughing and clapping him on the shoulder. Kutuzov shook his head again with the same expression.
“What do you say?” he asked the general, who was trying to draw the commander-in-chief’s attention to the French flags, that were set up in front of the Preobrazhensky regiment.
“Ah, the flags!” said Kutuzov, rousing himself with evident difficulty from the subject absorbing his thoughts. He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were gazing at him from all sides, waiting for his words.
He came to a standstill before the Preobrazhensky regiment, sighed heavily and closed his eyes. One of the suite beckoned to the soldiers holding the flags to come up and set up the flagstaffs around the commander-in-chief. Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds. Then with obvious reluctance, yielding to the obligations of his position, he raised his head and began to speak. Crowds of officers gathered round him. He scanned the circle of officers with an attentive eye, recognising some of them.
“I thank you all!” he said, addressing the soldiers, and then again turning to the officers. In the deep stillness that prevailed all round him, his slowly articulated words were distinctly audible: “I thank you all for your hard and faithful service. The victory is complete, and Russia will not forget you. Your glory will be for ever!” He paused, looking about him.
“Lower; bow his head lower,” he said to the soldier, who was holding the French eagle, and had accidentally lowered it before the Preobrazhensky standard.
“Lower, lower, that’s it. Hurrah, lads!” he said, his chin moving quickly as he turned to the soldiers.
“Hurrah-rah-rah!” thousands of voices roared.
While the soldiers were shouting, Kutuzov, bending forward in his saddle, bowed his head, and his eyes gleamed with a mild and, as it were, ironical light.
“And now, brothers …” he said, when the shouts had died away.
And all at once his face and expression changed: it was not the commander-in-chief speaking now, but a simple, aged man, who plainly wanted to say something most important now to his comrades.
“And now, brothers. I know it’s hard for you, but there’s no help for it! Have a little patience; it won’t last much longer. We will see our visitors off, and then we will rest. The Tsar won’t forget your services. It’s hard for you, but still you are at home; while they—you see what they have come to,” he said, pointing to the prisoners. “Worse than the lowest beggars. While they were strong, we did not spare ourselves, but now we can even spare them. They too are men. Eh, lads?”
He looked about him. And in the unflinching, respectfully wondering eyes staring persistently at him, he read sympathy with his words. His face grew brighter and brighter with the gentle smile of old age, that brought clusters of wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and his eyes. He paused and dropped his head, as though in doubt.
“But after all is said and done, who asked them to come here? It serves them right, the b— b—” he said suddenly, lifting his head. And swinging his riding-whip, he rode off at a gallop, accompanied for the first time during the whole campaign by gleeful guffaws and roars of hurrah from the men as they moved out of rank.
The words uttered by Kutuzov were hardly understood by the soldiers. No one could have repeated the field-marshal’s speech at first of such solemnity, and towards the end of such homely simplicity. But the meaning at the bottom of his words, they understood very well, and the same feeling of solemn triumph in their victory, together with pity for the enemy and the sense of the justice of their cause—expressed, too, with precisely the same homely coarseness—lay at the bottom of every soldier’s heart, and found a vent in delighted shouts, that did not cease for a long while. When one of the generals addressed the commander-in-chief after this, asking whether he desired his carriage, Kutuzov broke into a sudden sob in replying. He was evidently deeply moved.
Chapter 7
IT was getting dusk on the 8th of November, the last day of the battle of Krasnoe, when the soldiers reached their halting-place for the night. The whole day had been still and frosty, with now and then a few light flakes of snow. Towards evening the sky began to grow clearer. Through the snowflakes could be seen a dark, purplish, starlit sky, and the frost was growing more intense.
A regiment of musketeers, which had left Tarutino three thousand strong, but had now dwindled to nine hundred, was among the first to reach the halting-place, a village on the high road. The quartermasters, on meeting the regiment, reported that all the cottages were full of sick and dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and staff-officers. There was only one cottage left for the colonel of the regiment.
The colonel went on to his cottage. The regiment passed through the village, and stacked their guns up at the furthest cottages along the road.
Like a huge, many-legged monster, the regiment set to work preparing its food and lodging for the night. One party of soldiers trudged off, knee-deep in the snow, into the birch copse, on the right of the village, and the ring of axes and cutlasses, the crash of breaking branches, and the sounds of merry voices were immediately heard coming thence. Another group were busily at work all round the regimental baggage-waggons, which were drawn up all together. Some fed the horses, while others got out cooking-pots and biscuits. A third section dispersed about the village, getting the cottages ready for the staff-officers, carrying out the dead bodies of the French lying in the huts, and dragging away boards, dry wood, and straw from the thatch roofs, to furnish fuel for their fires and materials for the shelters they rigged up.
Behind the huts at the end of the village fifteen soldiers were trying with merry shouts to pull down the high wattle wall of a barn from which they had already removed the roof.
“Now then, a strong pull, all together!” shouted the voices; and in the dark the huge, snow-sprinkled boards of the wall began to give. The lower stakes of the wattle cracked more and more often, and at last the wattle wall heaved over, together with the soldiers, who were hanging onto it. A loud shout and the roar of coarse merriment followed.
