War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [696]
And, lastly, the final departure of the great emperor from his heroic army is presented to us by historians as something great and marked by genius. Even this final act of flight, known in human language as the final degree of baseness, which every child is taught to be ashamed of, even this act receives justification in the language of the historians.
Then, when it is no longer possible to stretch the so-elastic threads of historical discourse any further, when an action clearly contradicts all that mankind calls good and even just, historians resort to the saving notion of greatness. It is as if greatness excludes the possibility of the measure of good and bad. For the great man there is no bad. There is no horror that can be laid to the blame of someone who is great.
“C’est grand!”†737 say the historians, and then there is no longer any good or bad, but there is “grand” and “not grand.” Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand, to their minds, is the property of some sort of special animals known as heroes. And Napoleon, in his warm fur coat, clearing off for home from his perishing men, who are not only comrades, but (in his opinion) people he has brought there, feels que c’est grand, and his soul is at peace.
“Du sublime” (he sees something sublime in himself) “au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas,”‡738 he says. And for fifty years the whole world repeats: “Sublime! Grand! Napoléon le grand! Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.”
And it never enters anyone’s head that the recognition of a greatness not measurable by the measure of good and bad is only a recognition of one’s own insignificance and immeasurable littleness.
For us, with the measures of good and bad given us by Christ, nothing is immeasurable. And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth.
XIX
Who among Russian people, reading the descriptions of the last period of the campaign of 1812, has not experienced an oppressive feeling of vexation, dissatisfaction, and vagueness? Who has not asked himself the questions: why were all the French not captured, not destroyed, when three armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered French, starving and freezing, surrendered in masses, and when (as the historians tell us) the aim of the Russians consisted precisely in stopping, cutting off, and capturing all the French?
How did it happen that the Russian army, which, weaker in numbers than the French, gave battle at Borodino, how did it happen that this army, surrounding the French on three sides and having the aim of capturing them, failed to do so? Can it be that the French had such an enormous advantage over us that we, surrounding them with superior forces, could not beat them? How could that happen?
History (or what is called by that name), in answering these questions, says that this happened because Kutuzov, and Tormasov, and Chichagov, and so-and-so, and so-and-so did not execute such-and-such maneuvers.
But why did they not execute all these maneuvers? Why, if they were to blame for not achieving the intended aim—why were they not tried and executed? But, even if we allow that Kutuzov and Chichagov and so on were to blame for the failure of the Russians, it is impossible to understand why, in such conditions as the Russians were in at Krasnoe and the Berezina (in both cases the Russians had superior forces), why was the French army with its marshals, kings, and emperors not taken captive, if that was the aim of the Russians?
The explanation of this strange phenomenon as Russian military historians give it—that Kutuzov prevented the attack—is groundless, because we know that Kutuzov’s will could not keep the troops from attacking at Vyazma and Tarutino.
Why was the same Russian army, which with weaker forces could gain the victory at Borodino over an enemy in full force, defeated at Krasnoe and the Berezina,