'One word from me, one wave of my arm, and the ancient capital of the Tsars would be no more. But my clemency is ever ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But no, it isn't true - I am not yet in Moscow,' he suddenly realized. 'Still, here she lies at my feet with her golden domes and crosses glinting and shimmering in the sun. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I shall inscribe great words of justice and mercy . . . That will hurt Alexander more than anything else. I know him.' (Napoleon seemed to think that amidst all these events the most important thing was the rivalry between him and Alexander.) 'From the heights of the Kremlin - yes, there it is, the Kremlin, yes - I shall give them the laws of justice, I shall teach them the meaning of true civilization, I shall make generations of boyars2 speak their conqueror's name with love. I shall tell their deputation that I have not sought, and do not seek, war; my war has been waged against the dishonest policy of their court; I love and respect Alexander, and in Moscow I shall accept terms of peace worthy of myself and my peoples. I have no wish to use the fortunes of war to humiliate a monarch deserving of respect. "Boyars," I shall say to them, "I have no desire for war. I desire peace and prosperity for all my subjects." And I know I can count on being inspired by their very presence, and I shall speak to them as I always do, clearly but solemnly, like a great man. But am I really in Moscow? Yes, there she is!'
'Bring me the boyars,' he said to his entourage. Immediately a general galloped off with his own brilliant suite to fetch the boyars.
Two hours passed. Napoleon took lunch, and returned to the same spot on Poklonny hill, waiting for the deputation to arrive. His speech to the boyars had by now taken definite shape in his mind. It was a speech full of dignity and majesty, as seen by Napoleon.
Napoleon was carried away by the attitude of magnanimity which he had every intention of striking in Moscow. In his own mind he had already scheduled certain days for assemblies in the Tsars' palace at which the great Russian nobles would mingle with the courtiers of the French Emperor. Mentally he saw himself appointing a governor capable of winning the hearts of the people. Having heard that Moscow was full of religious institutions, he imagined himself showering them with blessings. As he saw it, when he had been in Africa he had had to sit in a mosque wearing one of their capes, and now in Moscow he must be like the Tsars and show mercy. And since, like all Frenchmen, he couldn't conceive of anything at all emotional without some reference to his poor mother sweet and tender, he decided to have an inscription put on all these charitable foundations in capital letters saying: THIS ESTABLISHMENT IS DEDICATED TO MY DEAR MOTHER or simply MY MOTHER'S HOUSE. 'Am I really in Moscow? Yes, there she is lying before me. But why is the deputation from the city taking so long?' he wondered.
Meanwhile at the rear of the suite heated exchanges were going on in whispers between the generals and marshals. The adjutants that had gone to fetch the deputation had come back with the news that Moscow was empty; whether they had driven off or just walked away, everybody had gone. The faces of those conferring looked pale and worried. It wasn't the fact that Moscow had been abandoned by its inhabitants (bad enough in itself) that alarmed them; it was the prospect of having to tell the Emperor, and how to tell him. Without putting his Majesty into the terrible situation that the French see as being 'open to ridicule', how could they tell him that it had been a waste of time waiting for the boyars, and there was nobody left in Moscow apart from a few drunken mobs? Some of them said come what may they would have to scrape up some kind of deputation; others said no, the Emperor must be properly prepared by skilful persuasion, and then told the truth.
'We'll have to tell him eventually,' said some members of the entourage . . . 'But gentlemen . . .'
The situation was made worse by the fact the Emperor, thoroughly absorbed in his magnanimous plans, was strolling patiently to and fro in front of the city map, shading his eyes now and then to look down the Moscow road, with a proud and happy smile on his face.
'It can't be done . . .' the gentlemen-in-waiting kept repeating with a shrug. They couldn't bring themselves to utter the terrible words that haunted all their minds: 'open to ridicule . . .'
Meanwhile, the Emperor was getting tired of waiting in vain, and his strong histrionic sense told him that the magnificent moment, by going on too long, was beginning to lose its magnificence, so he gave a sign to his men. A solitary cannon boomed out the signal, and the occupying army marched into Moscow from several sides at once, through the Tver, Kaluga and Dorogomilov gates. In they went, faster and faster, falling over each other, accelerating to a quick trot, occupying troops disappearing in their own clouds of dust and filling the air with their ringing, deafening shouts.
Drawn on by the forward movement of the army, Napoleon himself went as far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there he came to a halt, got off his horse and took a long stroll under the Kamer-Kollezhsky rampart, still waiting for the deputation to arrive.
CHAPTER 20
Meanwhile Moscow was empty. Some people were still there - up to one in fifty of the inhabitants had stayed behind - but in essence it was empty.
It was as empty as a dying beehive with no queen.
All life has gone from a hive without a queen. Yet a superficial glance at that kind of hive suggests it has as much life as any other.
Under the hot rays of the midday sun the bees circulate just as happily round a queenless hive as they do round other hives that still have life; at a distance it still smells of honey, and the bees fly in and out just the same. Yet you only have to watch it for a while to see there is no life there. The flight of the bees is not the same as in living hives; the beekeeper is met with a smell and sounds that are different. When the beekeeper taps on the wall of a sick hive, instead of getting an immediate and unanimous response in the ominous lifting of stings and the buzzing of bees in their tens of thousands as they fan their racing wings into a healthy, living roar, he is greeted by a desultory buzzing from odd corners of an empty hive. The entrance no longer gives off a heady whiff of sweet-smelling honey and venom; there is no smell of fulness from within. The scent of honey intermingles with an odour of emptiness and decay. There are no guards round the entrance raising their stings, sounding the alarm, ready to die in defence of the hive. Gone is the low, even tenor of toil that sounds like water on the boil; all you hear is the broken, desultory noisiness of nothing. Long, black, honey-smeared scavenger-bees fly in and out, timid and shifty; instead of stinging they sneak away at the first sight of danger. Where once they flew in with nectar and flew out empty, now they fly out with honey. The beekeeper opens the lowest section and peers into the bottom of the hive. Instead of clusters of fat black bees clinging to each other's legs, subdued by their hard toil and hanging down to the floor while they work away with a ceaseless murmur to draw out the wax, sleepy, desiccated bees listlessly roam the roof and walls of the hive. What should have been a floor nicely polished with glue and swept clean by bees' wings is now a spattering of wax, excrement, bees in their last throes waggling their legs, and dead bees that haven't been cleared away.
The beekeeper opens the top section of the hive and examines the super. Instead of tightly packed rows of bees sealing every gap in the combs and keeping the brood warm, he sees the cunning complexity of the combs themselves, without the virginal purity of their earlier days. It is a picture of filthy neglect. Black scavenger-bees buzz around busily looking for plunder while the home bees, a desiccated, shrunken, shrivelled up and listless lot, old before their time, drag themselves about, putting up no opposition, having lost all desire and any sense of being alive. Drones, hornets, bumblebees and butterflies flit about aimlessly, their wings tapping against the walls of the hive. Now and then the cells containing the dead brood and honey are stirred by an angry buzzing; somewhere a couple of bees have reverted to their old ways without knowing why and started cleaning the hive, straining every nerve to drag away dead bees and bumblebee
s, and it is all beyond their strength. In a different corner another pair of old bees are going through the motions of fighting or cleaning themselves or feeding each other, though they don't know whether they are taking on friends or enemies. Somewhere else a crowd of bees squeezes up close together and picks on a victim, beating it and smothering it. The victim, dead or dying, then drops slowly down, light as a feather, on to a pile of corpses. The beekeeper parts the two centre frames to look in on the nursery. Instead of seeing thousands of black bees sitting back to back in tightly packed rings guarding the lofty mysteries of generation, all he sees are miserable shells, a few hundred somnolent bees more dead than alive. Almost all of them have died unawares, sitting there in the sanctuary which was once theirs to guard but has now ceased to exist. They reek of death and decay. One or two of them manage to stir themselves and rise up to fly across feebly and settle on the hand of the invader, but they lack the will to sting him and die. The rest are dead; they flutter down as airy as fish-scales. The beekeeper closes the section and puts a chalk-mark on the hive; in his own good time he will return to break it open and burn it out.
Moscow was as empty as this, and Napoleon, weary, restless and scowling, could be seen pacing up and down under the Kamer-Kollezhsky rampart as he waited to perform that purely formal but (to his mind) very necessary ritual - the receiving of a deputation.
There were still a few people stirring themselves in odd corners of Moscow, aimlessly reverting to their old ways without knowing what they were doing.
When, with all due delicacy, Napoleon was informed that Moscow was empty, he glared at his informant, turned his back on him and went on pacing up and down in silence.
'My carriage,' he said.
He got in beside the duty adjutant, and drove through into the suburbs.
'Moscow deserted! What an incredible thing to happen!' he said to himself.
Instead of driving straight into town he put up at an inn in the Dorogomilov suburb.
His coup de theatre had not come off.
CHAPTER 21
The long march of the Russian troops through Moscow went on from two o'clock at night to two o'clock the following afternoon, and they took with them the last departing citizens and the wounded soldiers.
The greatest crush during the troop movement took place on the Kamenny, Moskva and Yauza bridges. With the troops dividing into two streams to go round the Kremlin and backing up from the Moskva and Kamenny bridges, a huge number of soldiers took advantage of the hold-up and congestion to turn back, steal past St Basil's and through the Borovitsky gate, and sneak uphill into Red Square, where instinct told them there would be easy pickings. It was like sale-time at the Gostiny Bazaar with every aisle and alley swarming with crowds. But there were none of the usual honeyed voices tempting and cajoling the passer-by, no hawkers, no crowds of brightly dressed women shoppers - just uniforms and greatcoats everywhere (no guns), as the soldiers went in empty-handed and came back out tight-lipped and loaded with plunder. The traders and salesmen (what few there were) wandered among the soldiers in a kind of daze, opening their stalls, relocking them, even helping the war heroes to carry things away. Outside in the square a military drummer summoned them to muster. But the drum-roll did not affect the rampaging soldiers as once it had; instead of bringing them in it made them run away. Dotted among the soldiers in the shops and aisles were some men with the grey coats and shaven heads of convicts. Two officers, one with a scarf over his uniform, astride a scraggy dark grey horse, the other on foot, dressed in a military overcoat, stood talking on the Ilyinka corner. A third officer rode up.
'Orders from the general. Whatever we do, we've got to get them moving. It's outrageous! Half the men have run away.'
'Hey you! And you two! Where do you think you're going?' he shouted to three unarmed infantrymen who were sneaking past into the bazaar, holding up the skirts of their greatcoats. 'Stop, you swine!'
'Well, you try rounding them up,' answered another officer. 'It can't be done. All we can do is push on faster so the last ones don't scarper!'
'Push on? They're stuck there up on the bridge. Nobody's moving. Could we cordon them in? Might stop them running away.'
'Well go on in there! Get them out!' shouted the senior officer.
The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer and went with him into the arcade. There was surge of running soldiers. A shopkeeper with red pimples on his cheeks near his nose, and something on his well-fed face that spoke of steady determination in the pursuit of profit, came bustling up to the officer waving his arms in a great display of anxiety.
'Your Honour!' said he. 'We need your protection. We can be quite generous . . . any little thing that catches your eye . . . our pleasure! Hang on, I'll fetch you a nice piece of cloth - a couple of nice pieces for a gentleman like you, sir. Our pleasure! We do understand, you know, but this is daylight robbery! Please, your Honour! Put somebody on guard . . . Give us a chance to lock up, at least . . .'
More shopkeepers crowded round.
'No good moaning about it,' said one of them, a thin man with a stern face. 'When your head's chopped off you don't worry about your hairstyle. Let 'em have what they want!' And he turned away with a great sweep of his arm.
'It's all right for you, Ivan Sidorych!' The first shopkeeper turned on him angrily. 'Your Honour, please.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' shouted the thin man. 'I've got three shops - goods worth a hundred thousand. How can you guard that lot when the army's gone? Listen everybody. God's will is with us still!'
'Please, your Honour,' said the first shopkeeper with a polite bow.
The officer was taken aback; it was obvious from his face that he didn't know what to do. 'What's it got to do with me?' he cried suddenly, and strode off rapidly down one of the aisles. In one open shop he heard people fighting and swearing, and as the officer got near a man in a grey overcoat with a shaven head was bundled out of the door.
This man squeezed down and slipped past the shopkeepers and the officer. The officer pounced on the soldiers who were still in the shop. But then the most awful shouting and screaming came from a huge crowd down near the Moskva bridge, and the officer ran out into the square.
'What is it? What's happening?' he asked, but his comrade was already riding off in the direction the screams were coming from, beyond St Basil's. He got on his horse and followed. When he reached the bridge he saw two cannons ready for firing, the infantry marching across, one or two broken-down wagons, some frightened faces and some soldiers roaring with laughter. Near the cannons stood a wagon with a pair of horses in harness. At the back behind the wheels huddled four borzois in collars. The wagon was piled high with goods and right on top, next to a little child's chair stowed upside down, sat a peasant woman at her wits' end, screaming. The officer learnt from his comrades that the roaring of the crowd and the woman's shrieks were due to the fact that General Yermolov had come across this crowd, and when he found out the soldiers were wandering off into the shops and crowds of citizens were blocking the bridge, he had ordered the cannons down from their carriages so they could go through the motions of firing at the bridge. The crowd had surged forward, overturning wagons, trampling one another and yelling desperately in the crush, but the bridge had been cleared and the troops had moved on.
CHAPTER 22
Meanwhile the city itself was deserted. There was virtually no one out on the streets. All the gates and shops were closed; only the odd drinking-house rang with solitary shouts or drunken singing. No one was out driving and there was hardly a footstep to be heard. Povarsky Street stood silent and deserted. The vast courtyard of the Rostovs' house was littered with a few bits of straw and some dung left behind by horses; not a soul was to be seen. Inside the Rostovs' house, now abandoned with all its contents, there were two people in the great drawing-room: the porter, Ignat, and the page-boy, Mishka, Vasilich's grandson, who had stayed on with his grandfather. Mishka had opened the clavichord and w
as picking out notes with one finger. The porter was standing hands on hips in front a huge mirror with a huge grin on his face.
'Listen to me play, Uncle Ignat! Isn't that good?' said the little boy, thumping down on the keys with both hands.
'Get away with you!' answered Ignat, watching his own face with amazement as the grin on it stretched wider and wider.
'Oh, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves! You really should!' came a voice from behind them. Mavra had glided in silently. 'Look at old fat-face with his stupid grin! So this is what you get up to! And there's work to be done down there. Vasilich is dead on his feet. Just you wait!'
Ignat stopped grinning, hitched up his belt and looked down at the floor as he walked out, humiliated.
'Auntie, I was only having a little play . . .' said the boy.
'I'll give you having a little play, you little horror!' shouted Mavra, shaking her fist at him. 'Go and put the samovar on for your grandad.'
Wiping some dust away, she closed the clavichord, gave a sigh and walked out of the drawing-room, shutting the door behind her. Back down in the yard Mavra wondered what to do next: go and have a drink of tea in the lodge with Vasilich, or pop down to the store-room and tidy up some of the things that still needed putting away.
From the quiet street came the sound of rapid footsteps. They paused at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to open it.
Mavra went over.
'Who do you want?'
'The count, old Count Rostov.'
'And who might you be?'
'I'm an officer. I really would like to see him,' said a cheery voice, the voice of a Russian gentleman.
Mavra opened the gate, and in walked a round-faced officer, a boy of eighteen, with features not unlike the Rostovs'.
'They've gone away, sir. Went away last night, sir, their Honours did,' said Mavra welcomingly. The young officer stood there in the gateway and clicked his tongue as he wondered whether to come on in or stay where he was.