War And Peace: Book 11 - CHAPTER XXIV

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ON THE EVENING of the 1st of September, Count Rastoptchin had come away from

his interview with Kutuzov mortified and offended at not having been invited to

the council of war, and at Kutuzov's having taken no notice of his offer to take

part in the defence of the city, and astonished at the new view of things

revealed to him in the camp, in which the tranquillity of the city and its

patriotic fervour were treated as matters of quite secondary importance, if not

altogether irrelevant and trivial. Mortified, offended, and astonished at all

this, Count Rastoptchin had returned to Moscow. After supper, he lay down on a

sofa without undressing, and at one o'clock was waked by a courier bringing him

a letter from Kutuzov. The letter asked the count, since the troops were

retreating to the Ryazan road behind Moscow, to send police officials to escort

troops through the town. The letter told Rastoptchin nothing new. He had known

that Moscow would be abandoned not merely since his interview the previous day

with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill, but ever since the battle of Borodino; since

when all the generals who had come to Moscow had with one voice declared that

another battle was impossible, and with Rastoptchin's sanction government

property had been removed every night, and half the inhabitants had left. But

nevertheless the fact, communicated in the form of a simple note, with a command

from Kutuzov, and received at night, breaking in on his first sleep, surprised

and irritated the governor.

In later days, Count Rastoptchin, by way of explaining his action during this

time, wrote several times in his notes that his two great aims at that time were

to maintain tranquillity in Moscow, and to make the inhabitants go out of it. If

this twofold aim is admitted, every act of Rastoptchin's appears irreproachable.

Why were not the holy relics, the arms, the ammunition, the powder, the stores

of bread taken away? Why were thousands of the inhabitants deceived into a

belief that Moscow would not be abandoned and so ruined? “To preserve the

tranquillity of the city,” replies Count Rastoptchin's explanation. Why were

heaps of useless papers out of the government offices and Leppich's balloon and

other objects carried away? “To leave the town empty,” replies Count

Rastoptchin's explanation. One has but to admit some menace to public

tranquillity and every sort of action is justified.

All the horrors of terrorism were based only on anxiety for public

tranquillity.

What foundation was there for Count Rastoptchin's dread of popular

disturbance in Moscow in 1812? What reason was there for assuming a disposition

to revolution in the city? The inhabitants were leaving it; the retreating

troops were filling Moscow. Why were the mob likely to riot in

consequence?

Not in Moscow only, but everywhere else in Russia nothing like riots took

place at the approach of the enemy. On the 1st and 2nd of September more than

ten thousand people were left in Moscow, and except for the mob that gathered in

the commander-in-chief's courtyard, attracted there by himself, nothing

happened. It is obvious that there would have been even less ground for

anticipating disturbances among the populace if, after the battle of Borodino,

when the surrender of Moscow became a certainty, or at least a probability,

Rastoptchin had taken steps for the removal of all the holy relics, of the

powder, ammunition, and treasury, and had told the people straight out that the

town would be abandoned, instead of exciting the populace by posting up placards

and distributing arms.

Rastoptchin, an impulsive, sanguine man, who had always moved in the highest

spheres of the administration, was a patriot in feeling, but had not the

faintest notion of the character of the people he supposed himself to be

governing. From the time when the enemy first entered Smolensk, Rastoptchin had

in his own imagination been playing the part of leader of popular feeling—of the

heart of Russia. He did not merely fancy—as every governing official always does

fancy—that he was controlling the external acts of the inhabitants of Moscow,

but fancied that he was shaping their mental attitude by means of his appeals

and placards, written in that vulgar, slangy jargon which the people despise in

their own class, and simply fail to understand when they hear it from persons of

higher station. The picturesque figure of leader of the popular feeling was so

much to Rastoptchin's taste, and he so lived in it, that the necessity of

abandoning it, the necessity of surrendering Moscow with no heroic effect of any

kind, took him quite unawares; the very ground he was standing on seemed

slipping from under his feet, and he was utterly at a loss what to do. Though he

knew it was coming, he could not till the last minute fully believe in the

abandonment of Moscow, and did nothing towards it. The inhabitants left the city

against his wishes. If the courts were removed, it was only due to the

insistence of the officials, to which Rastoptchin reluctantly gave way. He was

himself entirely absorbed by the role he had assumed. As is often the case with

persons of heated imagination, he had known for a long while that Moscow would

be abandoned; but he had known it only with his intellect, and refused with his

whole soul to believe in it, and could not mentally adapt himself to the new

position of affairs.

The whole course of his painstaking and vigorous activity—how far it was

beneficial or had influence on the people is another question— aimed simply at

awakening in the people the feeling he was himself possessed by—hatred of the

French and confidence in himself.

But when the catastrophe had begun to take its true historic proportions;

when to express hatred of the French in words was plainly insufficient; when it

was impossible to express that hatred even by a battle; when self-confidence was

of no avail in regard to the one question before Moscow; when the whole

population, as one man, abandoning their property, streamed out of Moscow, in

this negative fashion giving proof of the strength of their patriotism;—then the

part Rastoptchin had been playing suddenly became meaningless. He felt suddenly

deserted, weak, and absurd, with no ground to stand on.

On being waked out of his sleep to read Kutuzov's cold and peremptory note,

Rastoptchin felt the more irritated the more he felt himself to blame. There was

still left in Moscow all that was under his charge, all the government property

which it was his duty to have removed to safety. There was no possibility of

getting it all away. “Who is responsible for it? who has let it come to such a

pass?” he wondered. “Of course, it's not my doing. I had everything in

readiness; I held Moscow in my hand—like this! And see what they have brought

things to! Scoundrels, traitors!” he thought, not exactly defining who were

these scoundrels and traitors, but feeling a necessity to hate these vaguely

imagined traitors, who were to blame for the false and ludicrous position in

which he found himself.

All that night Rastoptchin was giving instructions, for which people were

continually coming to him from every part of Moscow. His subordinates had never

seen the count so gloomy and irascible.

“Your excellency, they have come from the Estates Department, from the

director for instructions.… From the Consistory, from the Senate, from the

university, from the Foundling Hospital, the vicar has sent … he is inquiring …

what orders are to be given about the fire brigade? The overseer of the prison …

the superintendent of the mad-house …” all night long, without pause, messages

were being brought to the count.

To all these inquiries he gave brief and wrathful replies, the drift of which

was that his instructions were now not needed, that all his careful preparations

had now been ruined by somebody, and that that somebody would have to take all

responsibility for anything that might happen now.

“Oh, tell that blockhead,” he replied to the inquiry from the Estates

Department, “to stay and keep guard over his deeds. Well, what nonsense are you

asking about the fire brigade? There are horses, let them go off to Vladimir.

Don't leave them for the French.”

“Your excellency, the superintendent of the madhouse has come; what are your

commands?”

“My commands? Let them all go, that's all.… And let the madmen out into the

town. When we have madmen in command of our armies, it seems it's God's will

they should be free.”

To the inquiry about the convicts in the prison, the count shouted angrily to

the overseer:

“What, do you want me to give you two battalions for a convoy for them, when

we haven't any battalions at all? Let them all go, and that settles it!”

“Your excellency, there are political prisoners—Myeshkov, Vereshtchagin

…”

“Vereshtchagin! He is not yet hanged?” cried Rastoptchin. “Send him to

me.”

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