第 二百四十八 章 · 第248章

Kutúzov’s order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazán road was issued

at night on the first of September.

The first troops started at once, and during the night they marched

slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those nearing

the town at the Dorogomílov bridge saw ahead of them masses of soldiers

crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the opposite side

and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless masses of troops were

bearing down on them from behind, and an unreasoning hurry and alarm

overcame them. They all rushed forward to the bridge, onto it, and

to the fords and the boats. Kutúzov himself had driven round by side

streets to the other side of Moscow.

By ten o’clock in the morning of the second of September, only the rear

guard remained in the Dorogomílov suburb, where they had ample room. The

main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.

At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September,

Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklónny Hill looking at

the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August

to the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodinó to the

entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating,

memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that

always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat

than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear

atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and

refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights

are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and

delight us continually by falling from the sky.

At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather still

held.

The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the Poklónny

Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens, and her

churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her cupolas

glittering like stars in the sunlight.

The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as

he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious and

uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that has

no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full force

of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a distance,

distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the Poklónny

Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as it were, the

breathing of that great and beautiful body.

Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every

foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the

mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.

“Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables églises, Moscou la sainte. La

voilà donc enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il était temps,” * said he, and

dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before him, and

summoned Lelorgne d’Ideville, the interpreter.

* “That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy

Moscow! Here it is then at last, that famous city. It was

high time.”

“A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her honor,”

thought he (he had said so to Túchkov at Smolénsk). From that point of

view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen before. It seemed

strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had seemed unattainable,

had at last been realized. In the clear morning light he gazed now at

the city and now at the plan, considering its details, and the assurance

of possessing it agitated and awed him.

“But could it be otherwise?” he thought. “Here is this capital at my

feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange,

beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In what

light must I appear to them!” thought he, thinking of his troops.

“Here she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men,” he reflected,

glancing at those near him and at the troops who were approaching and

forming up. “One word from me, one movement of my hand, and that ancient

capital of the Tsars would perish. But my clemency is always ready to

descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But

no, it can’t be true that I am in Moscow,” he suddenly thought.

“Yet here she is lying at my feet, with her golden domes and crosses

scintillating and twinkling in the sunshine. But I shall spare her. On

the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great

words of justice and mercy.... It is just this which Alexander will

feel most painfully, I know him.” (It seemed to Napoleon that the chief

import of what was taking place lay in the personal struggle between

himself and Alexander.) “From the height of the Krémlin—yes, there

is the Krémlin, yes—I will give them just laws; I will teach them the

meaning of true civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember

their conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not,

and do not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false

policy of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in

Moscow I will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people.

I do not wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored

monarch. ‘Boyars,’ I will say to them, ‘I do not desire war, I desire

the peace and welfare of all my subjects.’ However, I know their

presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do:

clearly, impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in

Moscow? Yes, there she lies.”

“Qu’on m’amène les boyars,” * said he to his suite.

* “Bring the boyars to me.”

A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the

boyars.

Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the

same place on the Poklónny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to

the boyars had already taken definite shape in his imagination. That

speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it.

He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended to

adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for assemblies

at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and his own would

mingle. He mentally appointed a governor, one who would win the

hearts of the people. Having learned that there were many charitable

institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he would shower favors

on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he had to put on a burnoose

and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must be beneficent like the Tsars.

And in order finally to touch the hearts of the Russians—and being like

all Frenchmen unable to imagine anything sentimental without a reference

to ma chère, ma tendre, ma pauvre mère * —he decided that he would

place an inscription on all these establishments in large letters:

“This establishment is dedicated to my dear mother.” Or no, it should

be simply: Maison de ma Mère, *(2) he concluded. “But am I really in

Moscow? Yes, here it lies before me, but why is the deputation from the

city so long in appearing?” he wondered.

* “My dear, my tender, my poor mother.”

* (2) “House of my Mother.”

Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in whispers

among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite. Those sent to

fetch the deputation had returned with the news that Moscow was empty,

that everyone had left it. The faces of those who were not conferring

together were pale and perturbed. They were not alarmed by the fact

that Moscow had been abandoned by its inhabitants (grave as that fact

seemed), but by the question how to tell the Emperor—without putting

him in the terrible position of appearing ridiculous—that he had been

awaiting the boyars so long in vain: that there were drunken mobs left

in Moscow but no one else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must

be scraped together, others disputed that opinion and maintained that

the Emperor should first be carefully and skillfully prepared, and then

told the truth.

“He will have to be told, all the same,” said some gentlemen of the

suite. “But, gentlemen...”

The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating upon

his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before the

outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from under

his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.

“But it’s impossible...” declared the gentlemen of the suite, shrugging

their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied word—le

ridicule....

At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor’s instinct

suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been too long drawn out

was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with his hand. A single

report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops, who were already

spread out on different sides of Moscow, moved into the city through the

Tver, Kalúga, and Dorogomílov gates. Faster and faster, vying with

one another, they moved at the double or at a trot, vanishing amid the

clouds of dust they raised and making the air ring with a deafening roar

of mingling shouts.

Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with them as far as

the Dorogomílov gate, but there again stopped and, dismounting from his

horse, paced for a long time by the Kámmer-Kollézski rampart, awaiting

the deputation.