War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [534]
De retour en France, au sein de la patrie, grande, forte, magnifique, tranquille, glorieuse, j’eusse proclamé ses limites immuables, toute guerre future, purement défensive; tout agrandissement nouveau antinational. J’eusse associé mon fils à l’Empire; ma dictature eût fini, et son règne constitutionnel eût commencé…
Paris eût été la capitale du monde, et les Français l’envie des nations!…
Mes loisirs ensuite et mes vieux jours eussent été consacrés, en compagnie de l’impératrice et durant l’apprentissage royal de mon fils, à visiter lentement et en vrai couple campagnard, avec nos propres chevaux, tous les recoins de l’Empire, recevant les plaintes, redressant les torts, semant de toutes parts et partout les monuments et les bienfaits.37
He, predestined by Providence for the sad, unfree role of executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the goal of his actions was the good of the peoples, and that he could govern the destinies of millions and by means of power be their benefactor!
He wrote further of the Russian war:
Des 400,000 hommes qui passèrent la Vistule, la moitié était Autrichiens, Prussiens, Saxons, Polonais, Bavarois, Wurtembergeois, Mecklembourgeois, Espagnols, Italiens, Napolitains. L’armée impériale, proprement dit, était pour un tiers composée de Hollandais, Belges, habitants des bords du Rhin, Piémontais, Suisses, Génevois, Toscans, Romains, habitants de la 32e division militaire, Brême, Hambourg, etc.; elle comptait à peine 140,000 hommes parlant français. L’expédition de Russie coûta moins de 50,000 hommes à la France actuelle; l’armée russe dans la retraite de Wilna à Moscou, dans les différentes batailles, a perdu quatre fois plus que l’armée française; l’incendie de Moscou a coûté la vie à 100,000 Russes, morts de froid et de misère dans les bois; enfin dans sa marche de Moscou à l’Oder, l’armée russe fut aussi atteinte par l’intempérie de la saison; elle ne comptait à son arrivée à Wilna que 50,000 hommes, et à Kalisch moins de 18,000.*509
He imagined that the war with Russia had came about by his will, and the horror of what happened did not strike his soul. He boldly took upon himself all responsibility for the event, and his darkened reason saw his justification in the fact that among the hundreds of thousands of men who perished, there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians.
XXXIX
Several tens of thousands of men lay dead in various positions and uniforms in the fields and meadows that belonged to the Davydov family and to crown peasants, on fields and meadows where for hundreds of years peasants of the villages of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and Semyonovskoe had at the same time gathered crops and pastured cattle. At the dressing stations, the grass and soil were soaked with blood over the space of three acres. Crowds of wounded and unwounded men of various units, with frightened faces, trudged on the one side back to Mozhaisk and on the other side back to Valuevo. Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, led by their commanders, moved forward. Still others stayed put and went on shooting.
Over the whole field, once so gaily beautiful, with its gleaming bayonets and puffs of smoke in the morning sun, there now hung the murk of dampness and smoke and the strangely acidic smell of saltpeter and blood. Small clouds gathered and rain began to sprinkle on the dead, the wounded, the frightened, and on the exhausted, and on the doubtful men. It was as if it were saying: “Enough, enough, men. Stop now…Come to your senses. What are you doing?”
Exhausted men on both sides, without food and rest, began alike to doubt whether they had to go on exterminating each other, hesitation was seen on all faces, and in every soul alike the question arose: “Why, for whom, should I kill and be killed? You kill whomever you like, do whatever