บทที่ บทที่ 316 · 第316章

This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which they did

all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they turned onto

the Kalúga road to the day their leader fled from the army, none of the

movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might have thought that

regarding this period of the campaign the historians, who attributed

the actions of the mass to the will of one man, would have found it

impossible to make the story of the retreat fit their theory. But

no! Mountains of books have been written by the historians about this

campaign, and everywhere are described Napoleon’s arrangements, the

maneuvers, and his profound plans which guided the army, as well as the

military genius shown by his marshals.

The retreat from Málo-Yaroslávets when he had a free road into a

well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along

which Kutúzov afterwards pursued him—this unnecessary retreat along

a devastated road—is explained to us as being due to profound

considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for

his retreat from Smolénsk to Orshá. Then his heroism at Krásnoe is

described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle

and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick

and said:

“J’ai assez fait l’empereur; il est temps de faire le général,” * but

nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the

scattered fragments of the army he left behind.

* “I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act

the general.”

Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals, especially

of Ney—a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he made his way by

night around through the forest and across the Dnieper and escaped to

Orshá, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths of his men.

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

army is presented to us by the historians as something great and

characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in

ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child

is taught to be ashamed of—even that act finds justification in the

historians’ language.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical

ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all

that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving

conception of “greatness.” “Greatness,” it seems, excludes the standards

of right and wrong. For the “great” man nothing is wrong, there is no

atrocity for which a “great” man can be blamed.

“C’est grand!” * say the historians, and there no longer exists either

good or evil but only “grand” and “not grand.” Grand is good, not

grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of some

special animals called “heroes.” And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm

fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his comrades

but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que c’est

grand, *(2) and his soul is tranquil.

* “It is great.”

* (2) That it is great.

“Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n’y

a qu’un pas,” * said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been

repeating: “Sublime! Grand! Napoléon le Grand!” Du sublime au ridicule

il n’y a qu’un pas.

* “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.”

And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with

the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one’s own nothingness

and immeasurable meanness.

For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human

actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity,

goodness, and truth are absent.