War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [569]
Every Russian, looking at Moscow, feels that she is a mother; every foreigner, looking at her and not knowing her maternal significance, must feel the feminine character of this city, and Napoleon felt it.
“Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables églises, Moscou la sainte. La voilà donc enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il était temps,”*540 said Napoleon and, getting off his horse, he ordered a map of this Moscou spread out before him and summoned the interpreter Lelorgne d’Ideville. “Une ville occupée par l’ennemi ressemble à une fille qui a perdu son honneur,”†541 he thought (as he had also said to Tuchkov in Smolensk). And from that point of view he looked for the first time upon the Oriental beauty lying before him. It was strange for him that his long-standing wish, which had seemed impossible, had finally been fulfilled. In the clear morning light he looked now at the city, now at the map, checking the details of the city, and the certainty of possession excited and awed him.
“But how could it be otherwise?” he thought. “Here it is, this capital, at my feet, awaiting her destiny. Where is Alexander now, and what is he thinking? A strange, beautiful, majestic city! And a strange and majestic moment! In what light do they see me?” he thought of his troops. “Here it is, the reward for all those of little faith,” he thought, looking at his retinue and at the troops approaching and forming up. “One word from me, one movement of my hand, and this ancient capital des Czars is destroyed. Mais ma clémence est toujours prompte à descendre sur les vaincus.*542 I must be magnanimous and truly great…But no, it’s not true that I’m in Moscow” suddenly came into his head. “Yet here she is lying at my feet, her golden cupolas and crosses playing and glittering in the sunlight. But I will spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism, I will write great words of justice and mercy…Alexander will take precisely that most painfully of all—I know him.” (It seemed to Napoleon that the main significance of what was happening lay in his personal struggle with Alexander.) “From the heights of the Kremlin—yes, yes, that’s the Kremlin—I will give them the laws of justice, I will show them the meaning of true civilization; I will make the generations of boyars14 remember the name of their conqueror with love. I will tell their deputation that I did not and do not want war, that I have waged war only with the faulty policy of their court, that I love and respect Alexander, and that I will accept conditions of peace in Moscow which are worthy of me and of my people. I do not want to use the fortunes of war to humiliate a respected sovereign. ‘Boyars,’ I will say to them, ‘I do not want war, I want peace and the well-being of all my subjects.’ However, I know that their presence will inspire me, and I will speak to them as I always do: clearly, solemnly, and grandly. But can it be true that I’m in Moscow? Yes, there she is!”
“Qu’on m’amène les boyards,”†543 he turned to his suite. A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once for the boyars.
Two hours went by. Napoleon had lunch and again stood in the same place on Poklonnaya Hill, waiting for the deputation. His speech to the boyars had already taken clear shape in his imagination. This speech was filled with dignity and with grandeur as Napoleon understood it.
He himself was carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended to employ in Moscow. In his imagination, he appointed days for the réunion dans le palais des Czars,‡544 where Russian dignitaries would get together with the dignitaries