While all this was going on in Petersburg the French had gone straight through Smolensk and were closing in on Moscow. Adolphe Thiers is one Napoleonic historian among many who has sought to justify his hero by asserting that Napoleon was brought to the walls of Moscow against his will. He is no less correct than any other historian who attributes historical events to the will of a single man, and no less correct than Russian historians who assert that Napoleon was brought to Moscow by the skills of our Russian generals. Apart from the law of retrospective vision (or hindsight) which makes everything in the past seem like a preparation for eventual developments, there is here another complicating factor – the question of interaction. A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced that he lost because he made a mistake, and he goes back to the opening gambits to find what the mistake was, forgetting that his every move throughout the whole game involved similar errors, no move being perfect. The mistake that he concentrates on attracts his attention only because it was exploited by his opponent. How much more complex than this is the game of war, which has to be played out within specific time-limits, and where there is no question of one man’s will directing events through his control of soulless machinery, because everything develops from the interplay of infinitely varied and arbitrary twists and turns!
After Smolensk Napoleon tried to force a battle east of Dorogobuzh, just outside Vyazma, then again at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but as it happened through the interplay of infinitely varied circumstances the Russians were not able to stand and fight until Borodino, about seventy miles short of Moscow. After Vyazma Napoleon had given the order for a direct advance on Moscow.
Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the sacred city of the peoples of Alexander, Moscow, with its countless churches built like Chinese pagodas!
This Moscow gave Napoleon’s imagination no rest. Along the road from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche Napoleon was riding his bob-tailed light bay ambler, flanked by guardsmen, bodyguards, pages and aides-de-camp. His chief of staff, Berthier, had dropped back to interrogate a Russian prisoner taken by the cavalry. Now, taking the interpreter, Lelorgne d’Ideville, with him, he galloped after Napoleon, caught him up and reined in looking very pleased with himself.
‘Well?’ said Napoleon.
‘He’s one of Platov’s Cossacks. He says his detachment is joining the main army, and Kutuzov has been appointed commander-in-chief. He’s a bright fellow and very talkative!’
Napoleon smiled, and bade them give the Cossack a horse and bring him along. He wanted to talk to him himself. Several adjutants galloped away, and within an hour Denisov’s serf Lavrushka, who had been handed on to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon on a French cavalry saddle, wearing his orderly’s jacket, with the merry, mischievous air of a man who has had a few drinks. Napoleon bade him ride alongside and asked him some questions.
‘Are you a Cossack?’
‘Yes, sir, your Honour.’
Thiers’ version of events goes as follows: ‘The Cossack, unaware of the company he was keeping, since Napoleon’s ordinary appearance contained nothing that might suggest to the Oriental mind the presence of a monarch, was extremely outspoken in what he said about his experience of war on the ground.’
The real version is this: Lavrushka had got blind drunk the night before and left his master without dinner, so he had been thrashed on the spot and sent to the village to get some chickens, only to be distracted by a little looting, whereupon he had been caught by the French. Lavrushka was one of those rough and ready, insolent lackeys who have seen a thing or two and feel obliged to do everything in a mean, underhand way; they would do anything to keep on the right side of their masters, and they are especially good at sniffing out any baser instincts such as vanity and meanness. When brought to Napoleon Lavrushka recognized him immediately, without any doubt; he was not the least bit intimidated and did everything he could to win over his new masters.
He knew full well that this was Napoleon, and he was no more intimidated by Napoleon than by that Rostov or the sergeant-major with his whip, because there was nothing that either of them, sergeant-major or Napoleon, could have taken away from him.
He rattled away with all the latest gossip among the orderlies. Much of it was true. But when Napoleon asked him whether or not the Russians were expecting to defeat Napoleon, Lavrushka screwed up his eyes and thought about it.
He saw this as a trick question – people like Lavrushka see trickery round every corner – so he knitted his brows, and for a while he didn’t respond.
