The ghastly sight of a battlefield littered with corpses and wounded men, together with the feeling of heaviness in his head, the news that a score of generals known to him personally were among the dead or wounded, and the knowledge that his once mighty army has lost its power, all of this had a curious effect on Napoleon, who was usually not averse to surveying the dead and wounded, because (he imagined) it showed his dauntless spirit. This time the horror of the battlefield was too much for his dauntless spirit, which he had always looked on as a virtue and his greatest claim to fame. He was quick to leave the battlefield and head back to Shevardino. There, he sat down on a camp-stool with his heavy face all yellow and puffy, his eyes dim, his nose red, and his voice hoarse, looking down but forced to listen to the sounds of battle. Feeling sick at heart, he was waiting for the action to end, convinced he had started the whole thing off and now he could not stop it. For one brief moment personal, human feelings won out over the artificial apology for a life that he had been leading for such a long time. He gave himself up to the agony and death he had seen on the battlefield. The heaviness in his head and chest delivered a sharp reminder of his own vulnerability to agony and death. At that moment he didn’t want Moscow, victory or glory. (Why would he need any more glory?) All he wanted was to be left alone in peace and quiet. But when he had been on the high ground above Semyonovsk the artillery commander had asked permission to take several batteries up there in order to increase fire on the masses of Russian troops just outside Knyazkovo. Napoleon had agreed, and told them to let him know whether these batteries had any effect. Now here was an adjutant reporting that the Emperor’s orders had been carried out, two hundred guns had been directed at the Russians, and they were still standing their ground.
‘Our fire is mowing them down in rows, but they won’t budge,’ said the adjutant.
‘They want more!’ said Napoleon in his husky voice.
‘Sire?’ repeated the adjutant, who had missed what he said.
‘They want more!’ Napoleon croaked hoarsely, with a scowl. ‘Give them more.’
As things stood, without any orders from him, what he wanted done was being done, and he carried on issuing instructions simply because he thought it was expected of him. And back he went once again into his old world of artificiality with its fantasies of greatness, and once again (like a horse on a treadmill that thinks it’s doing something for itself) he humbly resumed the cruel, unhappy, burdensome, inhuman role that was his destiny.
And this would not be the only hour or day of his life when darkness afflicted the mind and conscience of this man, who had assumed more responsibility for what was going on than any other participant, though he never, to the end of his days, had the slightest understanding of goodness, beauty, truth or the significance of his own deeds, which were too far removed from truth and goodness, too remote from anything human for him to be able to grasp their significance. Unable to renounce his own deeds, which were highly praised by half the world, he was forced to repudiate truth, goodness and everything human.
As he had ridden round the edge of the battlefield piled with corpses and mutilated men (the product of his will, as he saw things) he had taken a good look at all these men, and this would not be the only day of his life when he tried to work out how many Russians had fallen for every Frenchman; he took great pleasure in deceiving himself with the false belief that there were five Russians for every Frenchman. This would not be the only occasion in his life that he wrote a letter to Paris describing the battlefield as ‘superb’ because there were fifty thousand corpses on it. Even on the island of St Helena, in the peace and solitude where he said he intended to devote his leisure to an account of the great things he had achieved, he would one day write:
The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern times: it was a war of good sense and tangible benefit fought for the peace and security of all; it was purely pacific and conservationist.
It was fought for a great cause, the end of uncertainty and the beginning of security. A new horizon, new labours were to unfold, bringing nothing but welfare and prosperity for all. The European system had already been established; all that remained was to organize it.
Satisfied on these great points and at peace on all sides, I too might have had my Congress and Holy Alliance – ideas that were stolen from me. In this assembly of great sovereigns we would have been able to talk over our interests like members of one family and make ourselves accountable to our peoples like clerks reporting to their masters.
