War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [505]
“So as not to devastate the country we were abandoning to the enemy,” Prince Andrei said with spiteful mockery. “It’s very sound: troops shouldn’t be allowed to pillage the countryside and get accustomed to looting. And in Smolensk he also reasoned correctly that the French might outflank us and that they had the greater force. But he could not understand,” Prince Andrei cried in a high voice, as if suddenly bursting out, “he could not understand that there it was the first time we were fighting for Russian soil, that the spirit in the troops was such as I’ve never seen, that we beat back the French for two days in a row, and that that success increased our strength ten times. He ordered a retreat, and all our efforts and losses went for nothing. He wasn’t thinking of treason, he was trying to do everything in the best possible way, he thought it all over: but that is why he’s unfit. He’s unfit now precisely because he thinks everything over very thoroughly and precisely, as every German ought to do. How shall I put it…Well, say your father has a German valet, and he’s an excellent valet and will satisfy all his needs better than you, so let him serve; but if your father’s mortally ill, you’ll send the valet away and take care of your father with your unaccustomed, clumsy hands and comfort him better than any skillful stranger. That’s what’s been done with Barclay. As long as Russia was healthy, a stranger could serve her and be an excellent minister, but once she’s in danger, she needs her own man, one of the family. But in your club you came up with the idea that he was a traitor! The only result of that slander will be that later, feeling ashamed of your own false reproach, you’ll turn him from a traitor suddenly into a hero or a genius, which will be still more incorrect. He’s an honest and very precise German…”
“However, they say he’s a skilled commander,” said Pierre.
“I don’t understand what is meant by a skilled commander,” Prince Andrei said mockingly.
“A skilled commander,” said Pierre, “well, he’s one who has foreseen all possibilities…well, who has guessed the thoughts of his adversary.”
“That’s impossible,” said Prince Andrei, as if the matter had long been decided.
Pierre looked at him in astonishment.
“However,” he said, “they do say that war is like a game of chess.”
“Yes,” said Prince Andrei, “only with this small difference, that in chess you can think over each move as long as you like, you’re outside the conditions of time, and with this difference, too, that a knight is always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while in war one battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes weaker than a company. Nobody can know the relative strength of the troops. Believe me,” he said, “if anything depended on instructions from the staff, I’d be there giving instructions, but instead I have the honor of serving here in the regiment, with these gentlemen, and I think it’s really on us that tomorrow depends, not on them…Success never did and never will depend on position, or on ammunition, or even on numbers; but least of all on position.”
“But on what, then?”
“On the feeling that’s in me, in him,” he pointed to Timokhin, “in every soldier.”
Prince Andrei glanced at Timokhin, who was looking fearfully and perplexedly at his commander. In contrast to his former restrained taciturnity, Prince Andrei now seemed excited. He clearly could not keep from expressing these thoughts, which came to him unexpectedly.
“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? The French losses were almost equal to ours, but we said to ourselves early on that we had lost the battle—and so we lost it. We said that because there was no need for us to fight: we wanted to leave the battlefield as soon as we could. ‘We’ve lost—well, let’s run for it!’ And we ran. If we hadn’t said it by evening, God knows what would have happened. But tomorrow we won’t say it. You say: our position, the left flank is weak, the right is overextended,