War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [706]
Kutuzov never spoke of forty centuries looking down from the pyramids, of the sacrifices he was making for the fatherland, of what he intended to accomplish or had accomplished: he generally said nothing about himself, did not play any role, always seemed a most simple and ordinary man, and said the most simple and ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Mme de Staël, read novels, enjoyed the society of beautiful women, joked with generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted people who wanted to prove something to him. When Count Rastopchin galloped up to Kutuzov on the Yauza bridge with personal reproaches, blaming him for the destruction of Moscow, and said, “Didn’t you promise not to abandon Moscow without giving battle?”—Kutuzov replied: “And I won’t abandon Moscow without a battle,” though by then Moscow had already been abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him from the sovereign, said that Ermolov must be appointed commander of the artillery, Kutuzov said, “Yes, I just said the same thing”—though the moment before he had said something quite different. What did he care, who, amidst the muddleheaded crowd around him, alone then understood all the immense meaning of the event, what did he care if Count Rastopchin attributed the calamity of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could he be concerned about who was appointed commander of the artillery.
Not only in these cases, but constantly, this old man, who, through the experience of life, had reached the conviction that thoughts and the words which serve to express them are not what move people, spoke completely meaningless words—the first that came to his head.
But this same man, so heedless of his words, never once in all his activity spoke a single word that was not consistent with the one goal towards the attainment of which he went during the whole time of the war. Obviously unwillingly, with the painful certainty that he would not be understood, he voiced his thought more than once in the most varied circumstances. Starting from the battle of Borodino, when his dissension with his entourage began, he alone said that the battle of Borodino was a victory, and he repeated it orally, and in reports, and in dispatches till the day he died. He alone said that the loss of Moscow was not the loss of Russia. In response to Lauriston’s proposal of peace, he replied that there could be no peace, because such was the will of the people; he alone, during the French retreat, said that all our maneuvers are unnecessary, that everything was getting done by itself, better than we could wish, that the enemy should be given a golden bridge, that the battles of Tarutino, Vyazma, and Krasnoe were unnecessary, that they had to have some men left when they got to the border, that he would not give up one Russian even for ten Frenchmen.
And he alone, this courtier, as they portray him for us, the man who lied to Arakcheev in order to curry favor with the sovereign—he alone, this courtier, says in Vilno, thereby earning disgrace from the sovereign, that a further war beyond the border is harmful and useless.
But words alone would not prove that he then understood the significance of the event. His actions—all without the least deviation—were directed towards one and the same goal, which was made up of three things: (1) to strain all his forces in the clash with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out of Russia, alleviating, as far as possible, the distress of the people and the army.
He, this temporizer Kutuzov, whose motto is “patience and time,” the enemy of decisive actions, gives battle at Borodino, clothing the preparations for it in unparalleled solemnity. He, this Kutuzov, who, before the battle of Austerlitz begins, says it will be lost, at Borodino, despite the assurances of the generals that the battle has been lost, despite the example unheard-of in history of an army having to retreat after winning a battle, he alone, contradicting everyone, maintains till his dying day that