Anna Pavlovna’s funny feeling was amply justified. Next day, during a special service held at court in honour of the Tsar’s birthday, Prince Volkonsky was called out to receive a message from Prince Kutuzov. It was a report written by Kutuzov at Tatarinova on the day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that the Russians had not given an inch, French losses had been greater than ours, and this message was being dashed off on the actual battlefield without waiting for all the latest intelligence to come in. So there had been a victory. There on the spot, without leaving church, the congregation rendered thanks to the Creator for His help with their cause, and for victory.
Anna Pavlovna’s funny feeling had been justified, and all that morning the town was in a happy holiday mood. Everyone assumed the victory to have been conclusive, and there was talk of Napoleon having been taken prisoner and deposed, and a new sovereign being chosen for France.
Far away from the scene of action and amid the distractions of court life it is quite difficult for events to be properly reflected and kept in proportion. Public events are automatically centred around some event of personal significance. Here, for instance, the courtiers were celebrating not just because a victory had been won, but equally because news of it had arrived on the Tsar’s birthday. It was like an arranged surprise that had come off well. Kutuzov’s report had also mentioned some Russian losses, including names as such as Tuchkov, Bagration and Kutaysov. So it was that, quite unconsciously in this Petersburg world, the sad side of things also centred around a single incident – the death of Kutaysov. Everybody had known him, the Tsar had liked him, and he had been an interesting young man. All that day people said to each other when they met, ‘What a marvellous coincidence! Just like that, in the middle of the service. Oh, but what a loss – Kutaysov! Terrible pity!’
‘What did I tell you about Kutuzov?’ Prince Vasily said now, with the pride of a prophet. ‘I always said he was the only man capable of beating Napoleon.’
But next day there was no news from the army, and the public voice began to waver. The courtiers felt for the Tsar in the agony of suspense that he was suffering.
‘What a dreadful situation for the Empreror to be in!’ said the courtiers. They stopped singing the praises of Kutuzov as they had done the other day; now they rounded on him as the cause of the Tsar’s present plight. Prince Vasily stopped boasting about his beloved Kutuzov, and kept quiet when the commander-in-chief’s name came up. To make matters worse, by that evening everything had seemingly conspired to plunge the Petersburg world into deep distress and anxiety: a dreadful piece of news came to add to their woes. Countess Hélène Bezukhov had died quite suddenly of the dreadful illness which they had so much enjoyed chatting about. At large gatherings the official word was that Countess Bezukhov had died from a terrible attack of angina pectoris, but in close circles people went into great detail, telling how the personal physician to the Queen of Spain had prescribed small doses of a certain medicine for Hélène that were supposed to have a special effect on her, but Hélène, tormented by the old count’s suspicions and her husband’s failure to respond to her letter (that wretched profligate Pierre), had suddenly taken an overdose and died in agony before any help could be given. According to the story, Prince Vasily and the old count had rounded on the Italian, but he had produced notes left by the unhappy deceased, and these were so explicit they had promptly let him go.
Conversation now centred around three sad developments – the Tsar’s state of uncertainty, the loss of Kutaysov and the death of Hélène.
On the third day after Kutuzov’s dispatch a country gentleman arrived from Moscow, and soon the news that the city had been surrendered to the French was all over town. This was awful! What a position for the Emperor to be in! Kutuzov was now a traitor, and when Prince Vasily talked to visitors calling in to express their condolences over his daughter’s death, if there was any mention of Kutuzov (whom he had so recently praised to the skies, though allowances had to be made for the fact that in all his grief he had forgotten his earlier comments), he said you couldn’t have expected anything different from a blind and dissipated old man.
‘The thing that surprises me,’ he would go on to say, ‘is how on earth we could have entrusted the fate of Russia to the likes of him.’
While ever the news remained officially unconfirmed, it was still possible to doubt it, but next day the following message arrived from Count Rostopchin:
