‘C’est grand!’ cry the historians; and at that word good and bad have eased to be, and there are only ‘grand’ and not ‘grand.’ ‘Grand’ is equiva- mt to good, and not ‘grand’ to bad. To be grand is to their notions the haracteristic of certain exceptional creatures, called by them heroes, md Napoleon, wrapping himself in his warm fur cloak and hurrying ome away from men, who were not only his comrades, but (in his belief) rought there by his doing, feels que c’est grand; and his soul is content. ‘Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas,’ he says (he sees something rand in himself). And the whole world has gone on for fifty years reeating: Sublime! Grand! Napoleon the Great.
‘Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas’
And it never enters any one’s head that to admit a greatness, immeasui able by the rule of right and wrong, is but to accept one’s own nothingnes and immeasurable littleness.
For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there i nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness wher there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
XIX
What Russian reader has not known an irksome feeling of annoyanct dissatisfaction, and perplexity, when he reads the accounts of the latte period of the campaign of 1812? Who has not asked himself: How wasi all the French were not captured or cut to pieces, when all the three Rue sian armies were surrounding them in superior numbers, when the Frenc: were a disorderly, starving, and freezing rabble, and the whole aim of th Russians (so history tells us) was to check, to cut off, and to capture al the French?
How was it that the Russian army, that with inferior numbers ha< fought the battle of Borodino, failed in its aim of capturing the French when the latter were surrounded on three sides? Can the French be si immensely superior to us that we are not equal to beating them, when w have surrounded them with forces numerically superior? How could tha have come to pass? History (what passes by that name) answers thes questions by saying that that came to pass because Kutuzov, and Tor masov, and Tchitchagov, and this general and that failed to carry ou certain manoeuvres.
But why did they fail to carry them out? And how was it, if they reall; were responsible for not attaining the aim set before them, that they wer. not tried and punished for their shortcomings? But even if we admit tha Kutuzov and Tchitchagov and the others were responsible for the non success of the Russians, it is still impossible to understand why, in tbi position the Russian troops were in at Krasnoe and the Berezina, on botl occasions with numerically superior forces, the French army and marshal were not taken prisoners, if that really was the aim of the Russians.
The explanation of this phenomenon given by the Russian military his torians—that Kutuzov hindered the attack—is insufficient, because w. know that Kutuzov was not able to restrain the troops from attacking a Vyazma and Tarutino. Why was it that the Russian army, that witl inferior forces gained a victory at Borodino over the enemy in ful strength, was unsuccessful at Krasnoe and the Berezina, when fighting ii superior numbers against the undisciplined crowds of the French?
If the aim of the Russians really was to cut off Napoleon and his mar shals, and to take them prisoners, and that aim was not only frustrated but all attempts at attaining it were every time defeated in the mos shameful way, this last period of the war is quite correctly represented b]
he French as a series of victories for them, and quite incorrectly represented by the Russians as redounding to our glory.
The Russian military historians, so far as they recognise the claims of ogic, are forced to this conclusion, and in spite of their lyric eulogies of Russian gallantry and devotion, and all the rest of it, they are reluctantly Obliged to admit that the retreat of the French from Moscow was a series if victories for Napoleon and of defeats for Kutuzov.
But putting patriotic vanity entirely aside, one cannot but feel that here is an inherent discrepancy in this conclusion, seeing that the series f French victories led to their complete annihilation, while the series of Russian defeats was followed by the destruction of their enemy, and the leliverance of their country.
The source of this discrepancy lies in the fact that historians, studying vents in the light of the letters of the sovereigns and of generals, of narra- ives, reports, projects, and so on, have assumed quite falsely that the plan if that period of the campaign of 1812 was to cut off and capture Napoleon and his marshals and his army.
Such a plan never was, and could not have been, the aim of the Russian irmy, because it had no meaning, and its attainment was utterly out of i;he question.
