War And Peace: Book 14 - CHAPTER XVIII

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ONE MIGHT have supposed that the historians, who ascribe the actions of the

masses to the will of one man, would have found it impossible to explain the

retreat of the French on their theory, considering that they did everything

possible during this period of the campaign to bring about their own ruin, and

that not a single movement of that rabble of men, from their turning into the

Kaluga road up to the flight of the commander from his army, showed the

slightest trace of design.

But no! Mountains of volumes have been written by historians upon this

campaign, and in all of them we find accounts of Napoleon's masterly

arrangements and deeply considered plans; of the strategy with which the

soldiers were led, and the military genius showed by the marshals.

The retreat from Maley Yaroslavets, when nothing hindered Napoleon from

passing through a country abundantly furnished with supplies, and the parallel

road was open to him, along which Kutuzov afterwards pursued him—this wholly

unnecessary return by a road through devastated country is explained to us as

due to various sagacious considerations. Similar reasons are given us for

Napoleon's retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then we have a description of his

heroism at Krasnoe, when he is reported to have prepared to give battle, and to

take the command, and coming forward with a birch stick in his hand, to have

said:

“Long enough I have been an emperor, it is time now to be a general!”

Yet in spite of this, he runs away immediately afterwards, abandoning the

divided army in the rear to the hazards of destiny.

Then we have descriptions of the greatness of some of the marshals,

especially of Ney—a greatness of soul that culminated in his taking a circuitous

route by the forests across the Dnieper, and fleeing without his flags, his

artillery, and nine-tenths of his men into Orsha.

And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic army is

represented by the historians as something great—a stroke of genius.

Even that final act of running away—which in homely language would be

described as the lowest depth of baseness, such as every child is taught to feel

ashamed of—even that act finds justification in the language of the

historians.

When it is impossible to stretch the elastic thread of historical argument

further, when an action is plainly opposed to what all humanity is agreed in

calling right and justice, the historians take refuge in the conception of

greatness. Greatness would appear to exclude all possibility of applying

standards of right and wrong. For the great man—nothing is wrong. There is no

atrocity which could be made a ground for blaming a great man.

“C'est grand!” cry the historians; and at that word good and bad have

ceased to be, and there are only “grand” and not “grand.” “Grand”

is equivalent to good, and not “grand” to bad. To be grand is to

their notions the characteristic of certain exceptional creatures, called by

them heroes. And Napoleon, wrapping himself in his warm fur cloak and hurrying

home away from men, who were not only his comrades, but (in his belief) brought

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 grand in himself). And the whole world has gone on for fifty years

repeating: 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, immeasurable by

the rule of right and wrong, is but to accept one's own nothingness and

immeasurable littleness.

For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing

for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not

simplicity, goodness, and truth.

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