War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [737]
As if trying themselves out and preparing for the coming movement, the forces of the west, in 1805, ’06, ’07, ’09, repeatedly push eastward, gaining strength and growing in numbers. In 1811, the group of people formed in France merges into one huge group with the peoples of the center. Along with the ever-increasing group of people, the power of justification of the man who stands at the head of the movement also develops further. During the ten-year preparatory period preceding the big movement, this man is brought together with all the crowned heads of Europe. The unmasked rulers of the world cannot oppose any intelligent ideal to Napoleon’s ideal of glory and greatness, which has no meaning. One after another, they rush to demonstrate their nonentity to him. The king of Prussia sends his wife to seek favor with the great man; the emperor of Austria considers it a favor that this man receives a daughter of the Caesars in his bed; the pope, guardian of what the peoples hold sacred, lets his religion serve the great man’s rise. It is not so much Napoleon himself who prepares for the fulfilling of his role, as everything around him prepares him to take upon himself all responsibility for what is being performed and is to be performed. There is no action, no villainy or petty deception committed by him that is not reflected at once, on the lips of those around him, in the form of a great deed. The best celebration the Germans can think up for him is to celebrate Jena and Auerstädt. Not only is he great, but his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, his brothers-in-law are great. Everything is done to deprive him of the last powers of reason and prepare him for his terrible role. And when he is ready, the forces are ready as well.
The invasion pushes eastward; it reaches its final goal—Moscow. The capital is taken; the Russian army is annihilated more than any enemy armies were ever annihilated in previous wars from Austerlitz to Wagram. But suddenly, instead of the chances and genius that up to now have led him so consistently through an unbroken series of successes to the appointed goal, there appear a countless number of reverse chances, from a head cold at Borodino to the frosts and the spark that sets fire to Moscow; and instead of genius there appears an unexampled stupidity and baseness.
The invasion flees, returns, flees again, and now all the chances are constantly not for but against him.
A countermovement is performed from east to west, which remarkably resembles the preceding movement from west to east. As in 1805, 1807, 1809, the same attempts at movement from east to west precede the big movement; there is the same merging into a group of huge dimensions; the same joining of peoples of the center to the movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same swiftness as they near the goal.
Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government and army are destroyed. Napoleon himself no longer has any meaning; all his actions are obviously pathetic and vile; but again an inexplicable chance occurs: the allies hate Napoleon, in whom they see the cause of their calamities; deprived of strength and power, exposed in his villainies and perfidies, he ought to appear to them as he appeared ten years earlier and one year later—as a bandit and outlaw. But by some strange chance no one sees it. His role is not finished yet. The man who ten years earlier and