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There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll, Konovntsyn, and Bolkhovtinov.
“Eh, who’s there? Come in, come in! What news?” the field marshal called out to them.
While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the substance of the news.
“Who brought it?” asked Kutzov with a look which, when the candle was lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.
“There can be no doubt about it, your Highness.”
“Call him in, call him here.”
Kutzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big paunch resting against the other which was doubled under him. He screwed up his seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more carefully, as if wishing to read in his face what preoccupied his own mind.
“Tell me, tell me, friend,” said he to Bolkhovtinov in his low, aged voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his chest, “come nearer—nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That Napoleon has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?”
Bolkhovtinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he had been told to report.
“Speak quicker, quicker! Don’t torture me!” Kutzov interrupted him.
Bolkhovtinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutzov checked him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered and wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side of the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.
“O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer...” said he in a tremulous voice with folded hands. “Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O Lord!” and he wept.
From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all Kutzov’s activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhtrov went to Mlo-Yaroslvets, but Kutzov lingered with the main army and gave orders for the evacuation of Kalga—a retreat beyond which town seemed to him quite possible.
Everywhere Kutzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for his retreat fled in the opposite direction.
Napoleon’s historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tartino and Mlo-Yaroslvets, and make conjectures as to what would have happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern provinces.
But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from advancing into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did not bar his way), the historians forget that nothing could have saved his army, for then already it bore within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How could that army—which had found abundant supplies in Moscow and had trampled them underfoot instead of keeping them, and on arriving at Smolnsk had looted provisions instead of storing them—how could that army recuperate in Kalga province, which was inhabited by Russians such as those who lived in Moscow, and where fire had the same property of consuming what was set ablaze?
That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodin and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were, the chemical elements of dissolution.
The members of what had once been an army—Napoleon himself and all his soldiers fled—without knowing whither, each concerned only to make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.
So it came about that at the council at Mlo-Yaroslvets, when the generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all recognized.
But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away, there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this shock came in due time. It was what the French called “le hourra de l’Empereur.”
The day after the council at Mlo-Yaroslvets Napoleon rode out early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks on the prowl for booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly captured him. If the Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what saved him was the very thing that was destroying the French army, the booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tartino they went after plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed after the plunder and Napoleon managed to escape.
When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor himself in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible along the nearest, familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old stomach understood that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and under the influence of the fright the Cossacks had given him he at once agreed with Mouton and issued orders—as the historians tell us—to retreat by the Smolnsk road.
That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated, does not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces which influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozhysk (that is, the Smolnsk) road acted simultaneously on him also.
A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a promised land to have the strength to move.
The promised land for the French during their advance had been Moscow, during their retreat it was their native land. But that native land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to himself: “Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and spend the night,” and during the first day’s journey that resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are always magnified in a crowd.
For the French retreating along the old Smolnsk road, the final goal—their native land—was too remote, and their immediate goal was Smolnsk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolnsk, nor that they were told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this alone could give them strength to move on and endure their present privations. So both those who knew and those who did not know deceived themselves, and pushed on to Smolnsk as to a promised land.
