________________________________________________
_ This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which
they did all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they
turned onto the Kaluga road to the day their leader fled from the
army, none of the movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might
have thought that regarding this period of the campaign the
historians, who attributed the actions of the mass to the will of
one man, would have found it impossible to make the story of the
retreat fit their theory. But no! Mountains of books have been written
by the historians about this campaign, and everywhere are described
Napoleon's arrangements, the maneuvers, and his profound plans which
guided the army, as well as the military genius shown by his marshals.
The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free road into a
well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along
which Kutuzov afterwards pursued him- this unnecessary retreat along a
devastated road- is explained to us as being due to profound
considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for his
retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is
described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle
and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick
and said:
"J'ai assez fait l'empereur; il est temps de faire le general,"* but
nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the
scattered fragments of the army he left behind.
*"I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act the
general."
Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals,
especially of Ney- a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he
made his way by night around through the forest and across the Dnieper
and escaped to Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths
of his men.
And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic
army is presented to us by the historians as something great and
characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in
ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child is
taught to be ashamed of- even that act finds justification in the
historians' language.
When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of
historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly
contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians
produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems,
excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing
is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed.
"C'est grand!"* say the historians, and there no longer exists
either good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good,
not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of
some special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a
warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his
comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que
c'est grand,*[2] and his soul is tranquil.
*"It is great."
*[2] That it is great.
"Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n'y
a qu'un pas,"* said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been
repeating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule
il n'y a qu'un pas.
*"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."
And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not
commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to
admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no
human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where
simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent. _
Read next: Book Fourteen: 1812: Chapter 19
Read previous: Book Fourteen: 1812: Chapter 17
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