This old man, who through experience of life had reached the convic tion that the thoughts and words that serve as its expression are never th( motive force of men, frequently uttered words, which were quite meaning less—the first words that occurred to his mind.
But heedless as he was of his words, he never once throughout all hi: career uttered a single word which was inconsistent with the sole aim foi the attainment of which he was working all through the war. With obviou: unwillingness, with bitter conviction that he would not be understood he more than once, under the most different circumstances, gave expres sion to his real thought. His first differed from all about him after th<
attle of Borodino, which he alone persisted in calling a victory, and this ew he continued to assert verbally and in reports and to his dying day. e alone said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In answer ) the overtures for peace, his reply to Lauriston was: There can he no pace, for such is the people’s will. He alone during the retreat of the rench said that all our manoeuvres are unnecessary; that everything is sing done of itself better than we could desire; that we must give the lemy a ‘golden bridge’; that the battles of Tarutino, of Vyazma, and of rasnoe, were none of them necessary; that we must keep some men to ;ach the frontier with; that he wouldn’t give one Russian for ten French- ’ en. And he, this intriguing courtier, as we are told, who lied to Arakcheev to propitiate the Tsar, he alone dared to face the Tsar’s displeasure y telling him at Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier would be dschievous and useless.
But words alone would be no proof that he grasped the significance of /ents at the time. His actions—all without the slightest deviation— ere directed toward the one threefold aim: first, to concentrate all his trees to strike a blow at the French; secondly, to defeat them; and tirdly, to drive them out of Russia, alleviating as far as was possible the ifferings of the people and the soldiers in doing so.
He, the lingerer Kutuzov, whose motto was always ‘Time and Patience,’ te sworn opponent of precipitate action, he fought the battle of Boro- [no, and made all his preparations for it with unwonted solemnity. Be- >re the battle of Austerlitz he foretold that it would be lost, but at orodino, in spite of the conviction of the generals that the battle was a ;feat, in spite of the fact, unprecedented in history, of his army being ireed to retreat after the victory, he alone declared in opposition to 1 that it was a victory, and persisted in that opinion to his dying day. e was alone during the whole latter part of the campaign in insisting tat there was no need of fighting now, that it was a mistake to cross the ussian frontier and to begin a new war. It is easy enough now that all le events with their consequences lie before us to grasp their significance, only we refrain from attributing to the multitude the aims that only fisted in the brains of some dozen or so of men.
But how came that old man, alone in opposition to the opinion of all, to ruge so truly the importance of events from the national standard, so lat he never once was false to the best interests of his country?
The source of this extraordinary intuition into the significance of con • mporary events lay in the purity and fervour of patriotic feeling in his ,iart.
It was their recognition of this feeling in him that led the people in such strange manner to pick him out, an old man out of favour, as the chosen ader of the national war, against the will of the Tsar. And this feeling one it was to which he owed his exalted position, and there he exerted 1 his powers as commander-in-chief not to kill and maim men, but to ve them and have mercy on them.
This simple, modest, and therefore truly great figure, could not be cast
into the false mould of the European hero, the supposed leader of men that history has invented.
To the flunkey no man can be great, because the flunkey has his owr flunkey conception of greatness.
VI
The 5th of November was the first day of the so-called battle of Krasnoe Many had been the blunders and disputes among the generals, who hac not reached their proper places, many the contradictory orders carriec to them by adjutants, but towards evening it was clear that the enemy were everywhere in flight, and that there would not and could not be r battle. In the evening Kutuzov set out from Krasnoe towards Dobroe, tc which place the headquarters had that day been removed.
