‘Why, so as not to ravage the country we were leaving behind for the enemy,’ said Prince Andrey, a bitter and sardonic man. ‘It’s a matter of principle: never allow pillage or let your men get used to looting. Oh yes, Barclay was right about Smolensk as well, in his judgement that the French might outflank us – they were so much stronger. But what he could not see was this,’ yelled Prince Andrey in a voice grown suddenly strident as if he had lost control, ‘he just could not see that for the first time ever we were fighting for Russian soil, and there was a kind of spirit in the men that I’d never seen before, and we had held them off for two whole days, and the success of it had made us ten times stronger. But he ordered a retreat, and all our efforts and all our losses went for nothing. He had no thought of treachery. He was trying to do everything in the best possible way and he did think things through. But that’s precisely why he was no good. He’s no good now precisely because he thinks things through very carefully as a matter of principle, as befits a German. How can I put it? . . . Let’s say your father has a German valet, and he’s a first-rate valet who fulfils all his needs better than you could. Let him carry on the good work. But if your father falls ill and takes to his death-bed, you’ll send the valet packing and look after your father yourself with your own clumsy hands that are not used to doing things, and you’ll bring him more comfort than any stranger, however skilled. That’s what we’ve done with Barclay. While ever Russia was doing well she could be served by a stranger, and an excellent minister he was too, but the moment she’s in danger she needs her own flesh and blood. So, your people at the club have him down as a traitor! The fact that they are calling him a traitor now makes it all the more likely that later on they’ll feel ashamed of their false charges and then they’ll promote him from treachery to glory, honour and genius, and that would be an even greater injustice. He’s just an honest German, a stickler . . .’
‘They say he’s a clever general, though,’ said Pierre.
‘I don’t know what you mean by a clever general,’ said Prince Andrey, flashing a smile.
‘A clever general . . .’ said Pierre, ‘well, it’s somebody who foresees every contingency . . . who can read the enemy’s mind.’
‘Oh, that’s impossible,’ said Prince Andrey, as if this were a long-established certainty. Pierre looked at him in surprise.
‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘They do say war is a bit like playing chess.’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Prince Andrey, ‘but there’s one little difference. In chess you can take as long as you want over every move. You’re beyond the limits of time. Oh, there is one other difference: a knight is always stronger than a pawn and two pawns are always stronger than one, whereas in war a battalion can sometimes be stronger than a division, and sometimes weaker than a company. You can never be sure of the relative strengths of different forces. Believe me,’ he went on, ‘if anything really depended on what gets done at headquarters, I’d be up there with them, doing things, but no, I have the honour of serving here in this regiment along with these gentlemen, and I’m convinced that tomorrow’s outcome depends on us, not on them . . . Success never has depended, never will depend, on dispositions or armaments, not even numbers, and position least of all.’
‘Well, what does it depend on?’
‘On the gut feeling inside me and him,’ he indicated Timokhin, ‘and every soldier.’
Prince Andrey glanced across at Timokhin, who was staring at his commanding officer in alarm and bemusement. In contrast to his former silence and reserve, Prince Andrey now seemed to be all worked up. He seemed unable to stop himself blurting out every thought that came into his head.
‘A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost. And we said that because then we had nothing to fight for. We wanted to get off the battlefield as fast as we could. “All is lost! Let’s run away!” And run we did. If we had waited till evening before saying that, God knows what might have happened.
‘But we shan’t be saying that tomorrow. You talk about our position. The left flank’s weak, and the right flank’s too spread out,’ he went on. ‘It’s all nonsense. Irrelevant. So what is in store for us tomorrow? A hundred million contingent factors, and they’ll all be determined by what happens on the day – who’s run away and who’s going to run away, us or them, who gets killed, one man or another. But what’s going on right now is just fooling about. The point is this: those people who took you round the positions don’t help things along, they actually get in the way. They’re completely absorbed in their own petty interests.’
‘At a time like this?’ said Pierre, full of reproach.
