Soon after the Tsar's arrival Prince Vasily was deep in conversation about the progress of the war at Anna Pavlovna's, and he came out strongly against Barclay de Tolly, adding that he could not make up his mind who should be given overall command. One of the guests, acknowledged as 'a man of real ability' (and they said that in French), told them he had seen the newly elected commander of the Petersburg militia, Kutuzov, presiding that very day over the enrolment of new recruits at the Treasury, and he would go so far as to suggest with all due caution that Kutuzov might be the man to satisfy all requirements.
Anna Pavlovna gave a lugubrious smile, and observed that Kutuzov had caused the Tsar nothing but trouble.
'I've said it time and again in the Assembly of the Nobility,' Prince Vasily put in, 'but nobody listens. I said that electing him to the command of the militia wouldn't find favour with his Majesty. They don't listen.
'It's this mania for dissent,' he went on. 'Don't ask me why they do it. It's all because we are trying to ape the stupid effusions of Moscow,' said Prince Vasily, losing the thread for a moment and forgetting that the effusions in question should be ridiculed at Helene's, not at Anna Pavlovna's, where the right thing to do was admire them. He was quick to put himself in the right. 'Is it decent for Kutuzov, the oldest general in Russia, to be presiding in those chambers? It won't get him anywhere! You can't have a man like him as commander-in-chief. He can't ride a horse, he falls asleep at meetings, and he's completely immoral! He earned a marvellous reputation in Bucharest! Never mind his qualities as a general, at a time like this how can we appoint a man who's on his last legs and blind? Yes, blind! What a splendid idea - a blind general! He can't see a thing. All right for a spot of blind-man's buff! . . .'
No one dissented.
On the 24th of July this was a perfectly correct thing to say. But on the 29th Kutuzov received the title of prince. This ennoblement might have been a signal for him to be put out to grass, so Prince Vasily's judgement was still a perfectly correct thing to say, though now he was in no great hurry to say it. But on the 8th of August a committee was convened, consisting of Field-Marshal Saltykov, Arakcheyev, Vyazmitinov, Lopukhin and Kochubey, to discuss the progress of the war. This committee decided that the various failures had been caused by high-level dissension, and, although the committee members were aware that the Tsar was not well-disposed towards Kutuzov, they didn't take long to propose his appointment as overall commander. Before the day was out Kutuzov had been appointed commander-in-chief of all military forces, and plenipotentiary in charge of the whole occupied region.
On the 8th of August Prince Vasily came across the 'man of real ability' once again at Anna Pavlovna's. The 'man of real ability' was making a great fuss of Anna Pavlovna herself, with a view to using her influence to get himself appointed as chief administrator in one of the Empress Maria's institutions of female education. Prince Vasily strode into the room with the air of a conquering hero, a man who has just achieved his life's ambition.
'Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov is our field-marshal! No more dissension. I am so pleased, absolutely delighted!' said Prince Vasily. 'A real man at last!' he declared with a knowing look and a forbidding glare at everyone in the room. For all his desire to secure the job, the 'man of real ability' could not resist the impulse to remind Prince Vasily about his earlier judgement. (This was a double faux pas, in relation to Prince Vasily in Anna Pavlovna's drawing-room, and also to Anna Pavlovna herself, because she had received the news with no less delight - but he couldn't resist it.)
'But, Prince, they say he's blind,' he said, reminding Prince Vasily of his own words.
'Get away with you. He can see well enough,' growled Prince Vasily, speaking quickly with the deep voice and intermittent cough that he always used to sweep away difficulties. 'He can see well enough,' he repeated. 'And what pleases me,' he went on, 'is that the Emperor has given him unlimited authority over all the forces and all the region - that's something no other commander-in-chief has ever had. That makes two autocrats,' he concluded with a triumphant smile.
'I hope so in God's name,' said Anna Pavlovna.
The 'man of real ability', still a novice in court society, was keen to ingratiate himself with Anna Pavlovna, so he wanted to protect her original stance on this issue.
'They say the Emperor was reluctant to appoint Kutuzov,' he commented. 'They say he blushed like a young lady listening to the naughty bits of La Fontaine when he heard the Tsar say, "Your sovereign and your country bestow this honour upon you."'
'Perhaps his heart wasn't really in it,' said Anna Pavlovna.
'No, no, no,' Prince Vasily protested with some vigour. Kutuzov was now second to none. In his eyes, Kutuzov, as well as being a good man in himself, was worshipped by all and sundry. 'No, that cannot be right. The Tsar has always had a high opinion of him,' he added.
'In God's name I hope Prince Kutuzov will take full control,' said Anna Pavlovna, 'and not let anybody put a spoke in his wheel.'
Prince Vasily soon cottoned on: he knew what 'anybody' meant. He spoke in a whisper.
'I know for a fact that Kutuzov made one stipulation: the Tsarevich must not go with the army. Do you know what he said to his Majesty?' And Prince Vasily trotted out certain words attributed Kutuzov: 'I can neither punish him if he gets things wrong nor reward him if he does well. Oh! He's got his head screwed on has old Kutuzov. What a character! I've known him for ages.'
'They do say,' observed the 'man of real ability', who had yet to acquire the diplomatic skills of a courtier, 'that his Excellency even stipulated that the Emperor himself was not to go with the army.'
The words were hardly out of his mouth when Anna Pavlovna and Prince Vasily spun on their heels, looked sadly at each other and sighed at his simple-mindedness.
CHAPTER 7
While all this was going on in Petersburg the French had gone straight through Smolensk and were closing in on Moscow. Adolphe Thiers is one Napoleonic historian among many who has sought to justify his hero by asserting that Napoleon was brought to the walls of Moscow against his will. He is no less correct than any other historian who attributes historical events to the will of a single man, and no less correct than Russian historians who assert that Napoleon was brought to Moscow by the skills of our Russian generals. Apart from the law of retrospective vision (or hindsight) which makes everything in the past seem like a preparation for eventual developments, there is here another complicating factor - the question of interaction. A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced that he lost because he made a mistake, and he goes back to the opening gambits to find what the mistake was, forgetting that his every move throughout the whole game involved similar errors, no move being perfect. The mistake that he concentrates on attracts his attention only because it was exploited by his opponent. How much more complex than this is the game of war, which has to be played out within specific time-limits, and where there is no question of one man's will directing events through his control of soulless machinery, because everything develops from the interplay of infinitely varied and arbitrary twists and turns!
After Smolensk Napoleon tried to force a battle east of Dorogobuzh, just outside Vyazma, then again at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but as it happened through the interplay of infinitely varied circumstances the Russians were not able to stand and fight until Borodino, about seventy miles short of Moscow. After Vyazma Napoleon had given the order for a direct advance on Moscow.
Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the sacred city of the peoples of Alexander, Moscow, with its countless churches built like Chinese pagodas!
This Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no rest. Along the road from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche Napoleon was riding his bob-tailed light bay ambler, flanked by guardsmen, bodyguards, pages and aides-de-camp. His chief of staff, Berthier, had dropped back to interrogate a Russian prisoner taken by the cavalry. Now, taking the interpreter, Lelorgne d'Ideville, with him, he galloped after
Napoleon, caught him up and reined in looking very pleased with himself.
'Well?' said Napoleon.
'He's one of Platov's Cossacks. He says his detachment is joining the main army, and Kutuzov has been appointed commander-in-chief. He's a bright fellow and very talkative!'
Napoleon smiled, and bade them give the Cossack a horse and bring him along. He wanted to talk to him himself. Several adjutants galloped away, and within an hour Denisov's serf Lavrushka, who had been handed on to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon on a French cavalry saddle, wearing his orderly's jacket, with the merry, mischievous air of a man who has had a few drinks. Napoleon bade him ride alongside and asked him some questions.
'Are you a Cossack?'
'Yes, sir, your Honour.'
Thiers' version of events goes as follows: 'The Cossack, unaware of the company he was keeping, since Napoleon's ordinary appearance contained nothing that might suggest to the Oriental mind the presence of a monarch, was extremely outspoken in what he said about his experience of war on the ground.'
The real version is this: Lavrushka had got blind drunk the night before and left his master without dinner, so he had been thrashed on the spot and sent to the village to get some chickens, only to be distracted by a little looting, whereupon he had been caught by the French. Lavrushka was one of those rough and ready, insolent lackeys who have seen a thing or two and feel obliged to do everything in a mean, underhand way; they would do anything to keep on the right side of their masters, and they are especially good at sniffing out any baser instincts such as vanity and meanness. When brought to Napoleon Lavrushka recognized him immediately, without any doubt; he was not the least bit intimidated and did everything he could to win over his new masters.
He knew full well that this was Napoleon, and he was no more intimidated by Napoleon than by that Rostov or the sergeant-major with his whip, because there was nothing that either of them, sergeant-major or Napoleon, could have taken away from him.
He rattled away with all the latest gossip among the orderlies. Much of it was true. But when Napoleon asked him whether or not the Russians were expecting to defeat Napoleon, Lavrushka screwed up his eyes and thought about it.
He saw this as a trick question - people like Lavrushka see trickery round every corner - so he knitted his brows, and for a while he didn't respond.
'It's like this,' he said thoughtfully, 'if it comes to a battle pretty soon your lot will win. But you wait a couple of days and if there's a battle then, it'll go on a bit.' A beaming Lelorgne d'Ideville gave the following translation: 'If battle is engaged within three days the French would win, but if it was later God knows what would come of it.' Napoleon was not beaming, though he did seem to be in the highest of spirits, and he had the words repeated.
This did not escape Lavrushka, who decided to provide further amusement by pretending not to know who he was talking to.
'We know you've got your Bonaparte and he's beaten everybody in the world, but we're a different kettle of fish . . .' he said, without knowing how and why this bit of chauvinism slipped into his concluding words. The interpreter translated his speech, omitting the last bit, and Bonaparte gave a smile. 'The young Cossack brought a smile to the lips of his all-powerful interlocutor,' says Thiers. Napoleon rode on a few paces in silence, then turned to Berthier and said he wanted to see what effect it would have on 'this son of the Don' when he found out that the man who the son of the Don was talking to was the Emperor himself, the man who had carved his victorious name on the Pyramids for all time.
The news was broken.
Lavrushka could tell this was being done to fox him and Napoleon expected him to be in a state of panic, so he tried to please his new masters by putting on a great show of dumbfounded amazement and stupefaction, with much rolling of the eyes, and the kind of face he always pulled whenever he was being taken away for a thrashing. 'The word were scarcely out of the interpreter's mouth,' Thiers informs us, 'when the Cossack was so stricken with amazement that he did not utter another word, but rode on with his eyes glued on this conqueror, whose fame had reached him across the steppes of the Orient. All his loquacity was suddenly stemmed and replaced by a simple-minded and reverent silence. Napoleon gave him a reward and ordered him to be set free like a bird returned to the fields that witnessed its birth.'
Napoleon rode on, dreaming of Moscow, his obsession, while the bird returning to the fields that had witnessed his birth galloped back to our outposts, working out in advance a version of events that had not taken place but could be told to his comrades. He wasn't keen on the idea of telling them what had really happened, for the simple reason that it didn't seem worth talking about. He rode back to the Cossacks, asked where he could find his regiment, now part of Platov's detachment, and by evening he had found his master, Nikolay Rostov, encamped at Yankovo. Rostov had just got on his horse to ride round the local villages with Ilyin. He gave Lavrushka another horse and took him along too.
CHAPTER 8
Prince Andrey was wrong in thinking that Princess Marya was in Moscow and out of danger.
After Alpatych's return from Smolensk, the old prince began to behave as if he had suddenly woken up. He gave orders for the militia to be called up from the villages and supplied with arms, then he wrote to the commander-in-chief informing him that he had every intention of staying on at Bald Hills and defending himself to the last; it was for the commander-in-chief to decide whether or not steps should be taken for the defence of Bald Hills, where one of the oldest surviving Russian generals would soon be taken prisoner or die. He announced to his household that he was staying on at Bald Hills.
But although he was determined to stay, the prince made arrangements for sending the princess, along with Dessalles and the little prince, first to Bogucharovo and then on to Moscow. Alarmed by her father's outburst of feverish, sleepless activity so soon after his earlier despondency, Princess Marya could not bring herself to leave him behind on his own, so for the first time in her life she made so bold as to disobey him. She refused to go, and brought down on her head a horrific storm of fire and fury. The prince raked up all his righteous grievances against her. He was full of accusations: she had tormented him, she had caused trouble between him and his son, she had harboured the vilest suspicions about him, she had made it her one goal in life to poison his existence. He drove her out of his study, telling her he didn't care one way or the other whether she stayed or went. He said he didn't want to know of her existence, and gave her fair warning to keep right out of his sight. This came as a relief to Princess Marya, because she had been afraid he would have her forcibly removed from Bald Hills, and all he had done was banish her from his sight. She knew the meaning of this: deep down in his heart he was secretly glad she was staying on and not going away.
The day after little Nikolay went off the old prince got up early and put on his full dress uniform, fully intending to go and see the commander-in-chief. The carriage stood ready. Princess Marya watched as he strode out in his uniform resplendent with all his medals, and went down the garden to inspect an armed guard of peasants and house serfs. She sat by the window listening to his voice floating in from the garden. Suddenly some men came running up from the avenue with a terrified look on their faces.
Princess Marya ran down the steps, along the path through the flower-beds and out on to the avenue. There, coming towards her, was a great crowd of militiamen and servants, and in the midst of the crowd several men were supporting a little old man in a uniform and medals and helping him along. Princess Marya ran towards him, but in the play of sunlight filtering down through the shady lime-trees in tiny round patches she could not quite make out whether there had been any change in the way he looked. The one thing she could see was that his earlier expression of grim determination had changed into shrinking submissiveness. When he caught sight of his daughter he tried to move his lifeless lips and he gave a hoarse croak. It wasn't clear what he wanted. He was lifted up, carried through into the stud
y and laid out on the dreaded couch that had bothered him so much in recent days.
A carriage was sent to fetch the doctor, who bled him that evening and diagnosed a stroke with right-side paralysis.
Bald Hills was becoming a more and more dangerous place to stay in, so next day they moved the prince to Bogucharovo. The doctor went with him.
By the time they got to Bogucharovo Dessalles had already gone to Moscow with the little prince.
For three weeks the old prince lay there paralysed in the new house built by Prince Andrey and his condition showed no change for better or worse. Comatose, grotesque and corpse-like, he kept muttering non-stop, his eyebrows and lips twitching, and there was no telling whether or not he recognized where he was. Only one thing was certain: he was suffering and he urgently wanted to say something. What it was no one could tell: some quirky idea in a sick, half-crazy mind, perhaps, or something to do with public affairs, or was it a family matter?
The doctor said that this restlessness didn't mean anything; it was pure physiology. But Princess Marya felt sure (and her suspicion was confirmed by the fact that her presence seemed to make things worse) that he wanted to tell her something. His sufferings were clearly both physical and mental.
There was no hope of recovery. He could not be moved. What if he died out on the road? 'Wouldn't it be better if it was all over and done with?' Princess Marya sometimes thought. She watched him day and night, almost without sleeping, and the awful thing was that she often watched him not looking for signs of recovery, but often longing for signs that the end was near.
It came as a shock for the princess to admit this to herself, but this is what she felt. And Princess Marya was troubled by something even more terrible, the fact that ever since her father's illness (if not before that, when she had decided to stay on in the vague expectation that something might happen) a series of long-forgotten hopes and desires slumbering within her had come to life again. Thoughts that had not entered her head for years - dreams of a new life free from the perpetual dread of her father, even of the possibility of love and a happy marriage - haunted her imagination like temptations of the devil. It was no good trying to banish these thoughts; her mind seethed with questions about the kind of life she would lead when it was all over. These were temptations sent by the devil, and Princess Marya knew it. She knew that the only weapon against him was prayer, and she tried to pray. She adopted a prayerful attitude, gazed at the holy icons, recited prayers, but she could not actually pray. She felt as if she had been transported into a new world of real life, hard work and freedom of movement, the complete opposite of the spiritual world where she had been incarcerated for so long with prayer as her only consolation. Prayers and tears were now beyond her, and her mind was full of practicalities.