War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [414]
The sixth, the Bennigsenists, said, on the contrary, that all the same there was no one more practical and experienced than Bennigsen, and that, however you twisted and turned, all the same you would come to him. And the people of this party kept maintaining that our whole withdrawal to the Drissa was a most disgraceful defeat and an unbroken series of errors. “The more errors they make the better,” they said, “at least they’ll understand sooner that it can’t go on like this. And what’s needed is not some sort of Barclay, but a man like Bennigsen, who already showed himself in 1807, who was even given credit by Napoleon himself—a man whose authority would be willingly recognized, and the only such man is Bennigsen.”
The seventh were persons who always exist, especially around young sovereigns, and who were especially numerous around the emperor Alexander: generals and imperial adjutants who were passionately devoted to the sovereign, not as an emperor but as a man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as Rostov had adored him in 1805, and who saw in him not only all virtues, but all human qualities. These persons, while admiring the modesty of the sovereign in refusing to take command of the army, also disapproved of this excessive modesty and wished for and insisted upon only one thing, that the adored sovereign, abandoning his excessive distrust of himself, would openly announce that he was placing himself at the head of the army, would assemble around him the headquarters of a commander in chief, and, asking advice whenever necessary from experienced theoreticians and practicians, would himself lead his troops, whom this alone would bring to the state of highest inspiration.
The eighth and largest group of people, which was so enormous that it outnumbered the others ninety-nine to one, consisted of people who desired neither peace nor war, neither an offensive movement nor a defensive camp in Drissa, or wherever it might be, neither Barclay nor the sovereign, neither Pfuel nor Bennigsen, but who desired only one thing, and that the most essential: the greatest benefit and pleasure for themselves. In those muddy waters of crisscrossing and entangled intrigues that swirled about the sovereign’s headquarters, one could succeed in a great deal that would have been unthinkable at another time. One, wishing only to hold on to his advantageous position, agreed with Pfuel today, with his adversary tomorrow, and two days later maintained that he had no opinion on the subject, only so as to avoid responsibility and please the sovereign. Another, in his wish to gain some advantage, drew the sovereign’s attention to himself, loudly repeating what the sovereign had alluded to the day before, arguing and shouting at the council, beating his breast and challenging those who disagreed to a duel, thus demonstrating that he was prepared to be a victim for the common good. A third, between two councils and in the absence of his enemies, simply solicited a reward for his faithful service, knowing that there would be no time to bother with a refusal. A fourth kept trying to catch the sovereign’s eye as if by chance, as one burdened by his labors. A fifth, in order to achieve a long-desired goal—dinner with the sovereign—fiercely insisted on the rightness or wrongness of a newly emerged opinion and to that end put forth more or less forceful and correct arguments.
All the people in this party were pursuing roubles, crosses, ranks, and in this pursuit merely followed where the weathervane of the tsar’s favor pointed, and as soon as they noticed the weathervane turning in a certain direction, all this drone population of the army began to blow in the same direction, so that it was harder for the sovereign to change it for another. Amidst the uncertainty of the situation,