Relations between the two commanders were further poisoned by the swarm of Bronnitskys, Wintzengerodes, and their like, so there was now less unity than ever. Preparations were made to attack the French outside Smolensk. A general was sent to take stock of the situation. This general, detesting Barclay, went to see a friend of his, a corps commander, spent a day with him and came back to condemn point by point a proposed battlefield that he hadn’t even seen.
In the midst of these arguments and all this intrigue over a proposed battlefield, while we were looking round frantically for the enemy, having somehow lost his location, the French happened upon Neverovsky’s division and soon found themselves at the very walls of Smolensk.
We were surprised into sudden action at Smolensk to save our lines of communication. Battle was joined, with thousands of deaths on both sides.
Contrary to the wishes of the Tsar and all his people Smolensk was abandoned. But Smolensk was set on fire by its own inhabitants, who had been let down by their governor, and these ruined people set an example for the rest of Russia to follow by transferring themselves to Moscow obsessed with all that they had lost and seething with hatred of the enemy. On went Napoleon, with us in retreat, and
CHAPTER 2
The day after his son’s departure Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky sent for Princess Marya.
‘Well, I hope you’re satisfied,’ he said to her. ‘Causing a row between me and my son! Does that satisfy you? Just what you wanted! I hope you’re satisfied . . . It hurts me, hurts me a lot. I’m old and weak, but you’ve got what you wanted. Well, that’s it. I don’t blame you for gloating . . .’ And after that Princess Marya didn’t see her father again for a week. He was ill and never came out of his study.
Princess Marya was surprised to see that during this illness the old prince even excluded Mademoiselle Bourienne from his room. Tikhon was the only person who attended him.
A week later the prince re-emerged and resumed his old way of life, getting closely involved in the new buildings and the gardens, and severing relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His tone was frigid and he adopted a funny attitude to Princess Marya that seemed to say, ‘Look, you made up stories about me, you lied to Prince Andrey about my relations with that Frenchwoman, and you caused a row between us. Well, now you can see – I can do without the pair of you, you and that Frenchwoman.’
Princess Marya spent half the day with little Nikolay, following his progress, teaching him Russian and music, and talking to Dessalles. The rest of the day she spent in her rooms, reading or passing the time with her old nurse and her ‘Servants of God’, who came up the back stairs to see her now and then.
Princess Marya’s attitude to the war was that of all women. She feared for her brother who was out there fighting, and she was horrified at the unbelievable cruelty that led men to go out and kill each other. She could make nothing of this war, which seemed just like all the others. She could make nothing of it despite the efforts of Dessalles, her constant companion, who followed the war with a keen interest and did his best to put over his version of events, and her ‘Servants of God’, who had their own hair-raising way of reporting rumours among the peasantry about an invasion by the Antichrist, and even though Julie, now Princess Drubetskoy, had started writing again and was sending a stream of patriotic letters from Moscow. One of them read like a literal translation from the French:
I am writing to you in Russian, my good friend, because I have a hatred for all the French people and equally for their language that I cannot support to hear spoken . . . In Moscow we are all excited through enthusiasm for our adored Emperor.
My poor husband is enduring travail and hunger in horrible Jewish taverns, but the news that I have only enthuses me even more.
You have doubtless heard of the heroic action of Rayevsky, who has embraced his two sons and said, ‘I shall die at their side, but we shall not yield!’ And although the enemy was twice as strong, indeed we did not yield. We pass the time here as best we can, but in war, as in war! Princess Alina and Sophie spend entire days with me, and we, the unhappy widows of living husbands, have delightful conversations while we make lint. We want only for you, my darling . . .
and so on.
But the main reason why Princess Marya could make nothing of the war was that the old prince never mentioned it, refused to acknowledge its existence, and laughed in Dessalles’ face when he brought the subject up over dinner. The prince spoke with such easy assurance that Princess Marya suspended judgement and believed what he said.
