War And Peace

‘They want to run off and watch him die. Better to wait and see. Nothing but new manœuvres, new attacks . . .’ he thought. ‘And what’s it all for? Anything to cover themselves with glory. As if it’s fun to go out fighting. They’re like children who won’t tell you what really happened because they all want to show themselves off as the best fighters. And that’s not the point now. Oh, and what wonderful manœuvres these people keep coming out with! They think when they’ve thought about two or three contingencies (he had in mind the general plan sent down from Petersburg) there aren’t any more to think about. But there’s no end to them!’

The open question of whether the wound administered at Borodino was or was not a mortal wound had been hanging over Kutuzov’s head for a whole month. On the one hand, the French had taken possession of Moscow. On the other hand, it was surely beyond doubt, and Kutuzov felt this with every fibre of his being, that the terrible blow that he had summoned all his strength to administer, along with all the Russians, must have been a deadly one. But in the last analysis proof was needed, and he had been waiting for it for a whole month, getting more and more impatient as time went by. As he lay there night after night unable to sleep he did the very thing these whipper-snapper generals were always doing, the very thing he criticized them for. He kept going over all the possible ways in which Napoleon’s downfall might come about, given that his downfall was now a certainty, even a fait accompli. He ran through them, just as the younger generation did, but with two provisos: he refused to draw any conclusions from these suppositions, and he saw the possible contingencies not in twos or threes, but in thousands. The more he thought about them, the more he saw. He imagined Napoleon’s army making all sorts of movements, acting as a whole or dividing into sections, marching on Petersburg, or against him, or right round him. He also imagined the possibility (and this scared him most of all) that Napoleon might fight against him with his own weapons, that he would stay on in Moscow and wait for him to make a move. Kutuzov even imagined Napoleon’s army marching back via Medyn and Yukhnova. The one thing he could not have foreseen was what actually happened, the crazy, lurching stampede of Napoleon’s army during the first eleven days of its march from Moscow, a stampede that raised a possibility Kutuzov had never dared to dream of, the complete annihilation of the French. Dorokhov’s report on Broussier’s division, the news brought in by guerrillas about the miseries suffered by Napoleon’s army, rumours of preparations being made for the evacuation of Moscow, everything confirmed the idea that the French army was beaten and getting ready to go. But it was no more than supposition, and however important it was to the youngsters, it cut no ice with Kutuzov. With sixty years’ experience behind him he knew how much weight to attach to rumours, he knew that men who want something are only too ready to arrange all the evidence to suit their wishful thinking and willingly exclude anything that contradicts it. And the more Kutuzov wanted it to be true, the less he allowed himself to believe it. This question had been absorbing all his spiritual energy. And everything else was everyday routine. Everyday routine took in conversations with his staff-officers, letters written from Tarutino to Madame de Staël, reading novels, bestowing honours on people, correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But the destruction of the French, foreseen by him alone, was the one desire of his heart.

On the night of the 11th of October he was lying there leaning on one arm, thinking about that very thing.

There was a stir in the next room, and he heard the approaching footsteps of Toll, Konovnitsyn and Bolkhovitinov.

‘Who’s that then? Come on in, come on in! Anything new to report?’ the commander-in-chief called out.

While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll put him in the picture.

‘Who brought this news?’ asked Kutuzov. As the candle flared up Toll saw a face that impressed him by its cold severity.

‘There’s no doubt about it, your Highness.’

‘Get him. Bring him in!’

Kutuzov sat there with one leg out of bed and his big belly flopping down all over the other leg that was still bent under him. He screwed up his one good eye to get a better view of the messenger, as if he was hoping to read in his features the one thing that was on his mind.

‘My dear fellow, tell me the whole story,’ he said to Bolkhovitinov in his weak old man’s voice, pulling his shirt together where it had fallen open over his chest. ‘Come on. Come a bit nearer. So what’s all this news about? Eh? Napoleon’s left Moscow, has he? Has he really? Eh?’

Bolkhovitinov went through every detail of what he had been told to say.

‘Come on, get on with it. Don’t leave me in agony,’ Kutuzov interrupted him.