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<h2> CHAPTER VII </h2>
<p>While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already passed
Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow. Napoleon's
historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to justify his hero
says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against his will. He is as
right as other historians who look for the explanation of historic events
in the will of one man; he is as right as the Russian historians who
maintain that Napoleon was drawn to Moscow by the skill of the Russian
commanders. Here besides the law of retrospection, which regards all the
past as a preparation for events that subsequently occur, the law of
reciprocity comes in, confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer
having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a
mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets
that at each stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none
of his moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays
attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more
complex than this is the game of war, which occurs under certain limits of
time, and where it is not one will that manipulates lifeless objects, but
everything results from innumerable conflicts of various wills!</p>
<p>After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh at Vyazma, and
then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but it happened that owing to a conjunction of
innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give battle till they
reached Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow. From Vyazma Napoleon ordered
a direct advance on Moscow.</p>
<p>Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacree des
peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme de
pagodes chinoises, * this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no rest. On
the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light bay
bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his pages, and
aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind to question a
Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by Lelorgne d'Ideville,
an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a gallop and reined in his horse
with an amused expression.</p>
<p>* "Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the<br/>
sacred city of Alexander's people, Moscow with its<br/>
innumerable churches shaped like Chinese pagodas."<br/></p>
<p>"Well?" asked Napoleon.</p>
<p>"One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is joining up with the
main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander in chief. He is a
very shrewd and garrulous fellow."</p>
<p>Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and bring the
man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several adjutants galloped
off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov had handed over to
Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's jacket and on a French cavalry
saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face. Napoleon told him to ride by his
side and began questioning him.</p>
<p>"You are a Cossack?"</p>
<p>"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."</p>
<p>"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon's plain
appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental mind the
presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the incidents of
the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality Lavrushka,
having got drunk the day before and left his master dinnerless, had been
whipped and sent to the village in quest of chickens, where he engaged in
looting till the French took him prisoner. Lavrushka was one of those
coarse, bare-faced lackeys who have seen all sorts of things, consider it
necessary to do everything in a mean and cunning way, are ready to render
any sort of service to their master, and are keen at guessing their
master's baser impulses, especially those prompted by vanity and
pettiness.</p>
<p>Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had easily
and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed but merely
did his utmost to gain his new master's favor.</p>
<p>He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence could no
more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's with the rods,
would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant major or
Napoleon could deprive him of.</p>
<p>So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the orderlies.
Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the Russians thought
they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed up his eyes and
considered.</p>
<p>In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see cunning in
everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.</p>
<p>"It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if there's a battle soon, yours
will win. That's right. But if three days pass, then after that, well,
then that same battle will not soon be over."</p>
<p>Lelorgne d'Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon thus:
"If a battle takes place within the next three days the French will win,
but if later, God knows what will happen." Napoleon did not smile, though
he was evidently in high good humor, and he ordered these words to be
repeated.</p>
<p>Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending not to
know who Napoleon was, added:</p>
<p>"We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in the
world, but we are a different matter..."—without knowing why or how
this bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.</p>
<p>The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase, and
Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty interlocutor smile,"
says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence, Napoleon turned to
Berthier and said he wished to see how the news that he was talking to the
Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who had written his immortally
victorious name on the Pyramids, would affect this enfant du Don. *</p>
<p>* "Child of the Don."<br/></p>
<p>The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.</p>
<p>Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and that
Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new masters
promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his eyes wide,
and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken to be whipped. "As
soon as Napoleon's interpreter had spoken," says Thiers, "the Cossack,
seized by amazement, did not utter another word, but rode on, his eyes
fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached him across the steppes of
the East. All his loquacity was suddenly arrested and replaced by a naive
and silent feeling of admiration. Napoleon, after making the Cossack a
present, had him set free like a bird restored to its native fields."</p>
<p>Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his
imagination, and "the bird restored to its native fields" galloped to our
outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but that he
meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place he did not
wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth telling. He found the
Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating with Platov's detachment and
by evening found his master, Nicholas Rostov, quartered at Yankovo. Rostov
was just mounting to go for a ride round the neighboring villages with
Ilyin; he let Lavrushka have another horse and took him along with him.</p>
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