War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [413]
The first party was Pfuel and his followers, military theorists, who believed that there was a science of war and that in this science there were immutable laws—the laws of the oblique movement, of outflanking, and so on. Pfuel and his followers called for retreat into the depths of the country, a retreat according to precise laws set down by the imaginary theory of war, and saw in every departure from that theory only barbarism, ignorance, or ill will. To this party belonged the German princes, Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and others, predominantly Germans.
The second party was the opposite of the first. As always happens, to one extreme corresponded representatives of the other extreme. The people of this party were those who, ever since Vilno, had been calling for an advance into Poland and freedom from all previously made plans. Along with being representatives of bold action, the people of this party were at the same time representatives of nationalism, which made them still more one-sided in dispute. These were Russians: Bagration, Ermolov, who was at the beginning of his rise, and others. At that time a well-known joke of Ermolov’s was spread, that he had supposedly asked the sovereign for just one favor—to promote him to German. The people of this party said, recalling Suvorov, that there was a need not to think, not to stick pins in the map, but to fight, to beat the enemy, not to let them into Russia, and not to let the troops lose heart.
To the third party, which the sovereign trusted most of all, belonged the courtiers who made little deals between these two tendencies. The people of this party, for the most part nonmilitary, and to whom Arakcheev belonged, thought and said what people usually say who have no convictions but wish to seem as if they do. They said that war, especially with such a genius as Bonaparte (he was again known as Bonaparte), undoubtedly called for the most profoundly pondered considerations, for a profound knowledge of science, and in this matter Pfuel was a genius; but along with that, one could not help admitting that theorists are often one-sided, and therefore one must not fully trust them, one must lend an ear to what Pfuel’s opponents and practical people, experienced in military affairs, have to say, and choose a middle course. The people of this party insisted on holding on to the Drissa camp, according to Pfuel’s plan, while changing the movements of the other armies. Though this course of action attained neither one goal nor the other, to the people of this party it seemed better that way.
The fourth tendency was the tendency of which the most conspicuous representative was the grand duke, the heir to the throne, who was unable to forget his disappointment at Austerlitz, where, as at a review, he had ridden out at the head of his guards in a casque and collet, counting on boldly crushing the French, and, ending up in the front line, had barely managed to escape amidst the general confusion. The people of this party had in their opinions both the merit and the defect of sincerity. They were afraid of Napoleon, saw strength in him and weakness in themselves, and said so outright. They said: “Nothing will come of it but shame, grief, and ruin! We abandoned Vilno, we abandoned Vitebsk, and we will abandon the Drissa. The one intelligent thing left for us to do is conclude a peace, and as soon as possible, before we’re driven out of Petersburg!”
This view of things, widely spread in the higher spheres of the army, found support both in Petersburg and in the chancellor Rumyantsev, who, for other reasons of state, was also for peace.
The fifth were adherents of Barclay de Tolly, not so much as a man but as a minister of war and commander in chief. They said: “Whatever else he may be” (they always began that way), “he’s an honest, practical man, and there’s nobody better. Give him real power, because war cannot proceed successfully without unity of command, and he will show what he can do, as he showed himself in Finland. If there