Chapter Chapter 253 · 第253章

On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with

Kutúzov, Count Rostopchín had returned to Moscow mortified and offended

because he had not been invited to attend the council of war, and

because Kutúzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in the

defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed to him

at the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital and its

patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite irrelevant and

unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and surprised by all this,

Rostopchín had returned to Moscow. After supper he lay down on a sofa

without undressing, and was awakened soon after midnight by a courier

bringing him a letter from Kutúzov. This letter requested the count to

send police officers to guide the troops through the town, as the army

was retreating to the Ryazán road beyond Moscow. This was not news to

Rostopchín. He had known that Moscow would be abandoned not merely since

his interview the previous day with Kutúzov on the Poklónny Hill but

ever since the battle of Borodinó, for all the generals who came to

Moscow after that battle had said unanimously that it was impossible to

fight another battle, and since then the government property had been

removed every night, and half the inhabitants had left the city

with Rostopchín’s own permission. Yet all the same this information

astonished and irritated the count, coming as it did in the form of a

simple note with an order from Kutúzov, and received at night, breaking

in on his beauty sleep.

When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchín explained his actions at

this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated by two important

considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow and expedite the

departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this twofold aim all

Rostopchín’s actions appear irreproachable. “Why were the holy relics,

the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of corn not removed? Why

were thousands of inhabitants deceived into believing that Moscow would

not be given up—and thereby ruined?” “To preserve the tranquillity

of the city,” explains Count Rostopchín. “Why were bundles of useless

papers from the government offices, and Leppich’s balloon and other

articles removed?” “To leave the town empty,” explains Count Rostopchín.

One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action

finds a justification.

All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude for

public tranquillity.

On what, then, was Count Rostopchín’s fear for the tranquillity of

Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there for assuming any probability

of an uprising in the city? The inhabitants were leaving it and the

retreating troops were filling it. Why should that cause the masses to

riot?

Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything resembling an

insurrection ever occur when the enemy entered a town. More than

ten thousand people were still in Moscow on the first and second of

September, and except for a mob in the governor’s courtyard, assembled

there at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there would

have been even less reason to expect a disturbance among the people

if after the battle of Borodinó, when the surrender of Moscow became

certain or at least probable, Rostopchín instead of exciting the people

by distributing arms and broadsheets had taken steps to remove all

the holy relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and had told the

population plainly that the town would be abandoned.

Rostopchín, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and

impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative circles

and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed himself to

be guiding. Ever since the enemy’s entry into Smolénsk he had in

imagination been playing the role of director of the popular feeling

of “the heart of Russia.” Not only did it seem to him (as to all

administrators) that he controlled the external actions of Moscow’s

inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental attitude by

means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a coarse tone which the

people despise in their own class and do not understand from those in

authority. Rostopchín was so pleased with the fine role of leader of

popular feeling, and had grown so used to it, that the necessity of

relinquishing that role and abandoning Moscow without any heroic display

took him unawares and he suddenly felt the ground slip away from under

his feet, so that he positively did not know what to do. Though he knew

it was coming, he did not till the last moment wholeheartedly believe

that Moscow would be abandoned, and did not prepare for it. The

inhabitants left against his wishes. If the government offices were

removed, this was only done on the demand of officials to whom the count

yielded reluctantly. He was absorbed in the role he had created

for himself. As is often the case with those gifted with an ardent

imagination, though he had long known that Moscow would be abandoned he

knew it only with his intellect, he did not believe it in his heart and

did not adapt himself mentally to this new position of affairs.

All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it was useful

and had any effect on the people is another question) had been simply

directed toward arousing in the masses his own feeling of patriotic

hatred of the French.

But when events assumed their true historical character, when expressing

hatred for the French in words proved insufficient, when it was not

even possible to express that hatred by fighting a battle, when

self-confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question before

Moscow, when the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one man,

abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative action all

the depth of their national feeling, then the role chosen by Rostopchín

suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself ridiculous,

weak, and alone, with no ground to stand on.

When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold, peremptory note

from Kutúzov, he felt the more irritated the more he felt himself

to blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state

property which he should have removed, was still in Moscow and it was no

longer possible to take the whole of it away.

“Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?” he

ruminated. “Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow

firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains!

Traitors!” he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and

traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever

they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous position in

which he found himself.

All that night Count Rostopchín issued orders, for which people came to

him from all parts of Moscow. Those about him had never seen the count

so morose and irritable.

“Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar’s Department has sent

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

University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent...

asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire Brigade?

From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of the

lunatic asylum...” All night long such announcements were continually

being received by the count.

To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating that

orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair, carefully

prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that that somebody

would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that might happen.

“Oh, tell that blockhead,” he said in reply to the question from the

Registrar’s Department, “that he should remain to guard his documents.

Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They have

horses, let them be off to Vladímir, and not leave them to the French.”

“Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come:

what are your commands?”

“My commands? Let them go away, that’s all.... And let the lunatics

out into the town. When lunatics command our armies God evidently means

these other madmen to be free.”

In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count

Rostopchín shouted angrily at the governor:

“Do you expect me to give you two battalions—which we have not got—for a

convoy? Release them, that’s all about it!”

“Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkóv,

Vereshchágin...”

“Vereshchágin! Hasn’t he been hanged yet?” shouted Rostopchín. “Bring

him to me!”