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While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already
passed Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow.
Napoleon's historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying
to justify his hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow
against his will. He is as right as other historians who look
for the explanation of historic events in the will of one man;
he is as right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon
was drawn to Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here
besides the law of retrospection, which regards all the past as
a preparation for events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity
comes in, confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer having
lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from
a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the opening, but
forgets that at each stage of the game there were similar mistakes
and that none of his moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake
to which he pays attention, because his opponent took advantage
of it. How much more complex than this is the game of war, which
occurs under certain limits of time, and where it is not one will
that manipulates lifeless objects, but everything results from
innumerable conflicts of various wills!
After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh
at Vyazma, and then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but it happened that
owing to a conjunction of innumerable circumstances the Russians
could not give battle till they reached Borodino, seventy miles
from Moscow. From Vyazma Napoleon ordered a direct advance on
Moscow.
Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville
sacree des peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises
en forme de pagodes chinoises,* this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination
no rest. On the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode
his light bay bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his
bodyguard, his pages, and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of
staff, dropped behind to question a Russian prisoner captured
by the cavalry. Followed by Lelorgne d'Ideville, an interpreter,
he overtook Napoleon at a gallop and reined in his horse with
an amused expression.
*"Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the
sacred city of Alexander's people, Moscow with its innumerable
churches shaped like Chinese pagodas."
"Well?" asked Napoleon.
"One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is
joining up with the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed
commander in chief. He is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow."
Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse
and bring the man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several
adjutants galloped off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf
Denisov had handed over to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's
jacket and on a French cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy
face. Napoleon told him to ride by his side and began questioning
him.
"You are a Cossack?"
"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."
"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for
Napoleon's plain appearance had nothing about it that would reveal
to an Oriental mind the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme
familiarity of the incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating
this episode. In reality Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before
and left his master dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the
village in quest of chickens, where he engaged in looting till
the French took him prisoner. Lavrushka was one of those coarse,
bare-faced lackeys who have seen all sorts of things, consider
it necessary to do everything in a mean and cunning way, are ready
to render any sort of service to their master, and are keen at
guessing their master's baser impulses, especially those prompted
by vanity and pettiness.
Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity
he had easily and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the
least abashed but merely did his utmost to gain his new master's
favor.
He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence
could no more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's
with the rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either
the sergeant major or Napoleon could deprive him of.
So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among
the orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether
the Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka
screwed up his eyes and considered.
In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type
see cunning in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.
"It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if
there's a battle soon, yours will win. That's right. But if three
days pass, then after that, well, then that same battle will not
soon be over."
Lelorgne d'Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon
thus: "If a battle takes place within the next three days
the French will win, but if later, God knows what will happen."
Napoleon did not smile, though he was evidently in high good humor,
and he ordered these words to be repeated.
Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending
not to know who Napoleon was, added:
"We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten
everybody in the world, but we are a different matter..."-
without knowing why or how this bit of boastful patriotism slipped
out at the end.
The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase,
and Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty
interlocutor smile," says Thiers. After riding a few paces
in silence, Napoleon turned to Berthier and said he wished to
see how the news that he was talking to the Emperor himself, to
that very Emperor who had written his immortally victorious name
on the Pyramids, would affect this enfant du Don.*
*"Child of the Don."
The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.
Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him
and that Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his
new masters promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck,
opened his eyes wide, and assumed the expression he usually put
on when taken to be whipped. "As soon as Napoleon's interpreter
had spoken," says Thiers, "the Cossack, seized by amazement,
did not utter another word, but rode on, his eyes fixed on the
conqueror whose fame had reached him across the steppes of the
East. All his loquacity was suddenly arrested and replaced by
a naive and silent feeling of admiration. Napoleon, after making
the Cossack a present, had him set free like a bird restored to
its native fields."
Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed
to his imagination, and "the bird restored to its native
fields" galloped to our outposts, inventing on the way all
that had not taken place but that he meant to relate to his comrades.
What had really taken place he did not wish to relate because
it seemed to him not worth telling. He found the Cossacks, inquired
for the regiment operating with Platov's detachment and by evening
found his master, Nicholas Rostov, quartered at Yankovo. Rostov
was just mounting to go for a ride round the neighboring villages
with Ilyin; he let Lavrushka have another horse and took him along
with him.
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