War and Peace

hough Balashëv was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the luxury
and magnificence of Napoleon’s court.

The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many
generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates—several of whom
Balashëv had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia—were waiting.
Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before going
for his ride.

After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came into
the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashëv to follow
him.

Balashëv went into a small reception room, one door of which led into a
study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had dispatched him
on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He heard hurried
footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened rapidly; all
was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of other steps,
firm and resolute—they were those of Napoleon. He had just finished
dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform, opening in front over
a white waistcoat so long that it covered his rotund stomach, white
leather breeches tightly fitting the fat thighs of his short legs, and
Hessian boots. His short hair had evidently just been brushed, but one
lock hung down in the middle of his broad forehead. His plump white neck
stood out sharply above the black collar of his uniform, and he smelled
of Eau de Cologne. His full face, rather young-looking, with its
prominent chin, wore a gracious and majestic expression of imperial
welcome.

He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head slightly
thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad thick
shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had that
imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live in
comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits that
day.

He nodded in answer to Balashëv’s low and respectful bow, and coming up
to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of his
time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but is sure
he will always say the right thing and say it well.

“Good day, General!” said he. “I have received the letter you brought
from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you.” He glanced with
his large eyes into Balashëv’s face and immediately looked past him.

It was plain that Balashëv’s personality did not interest him at all.
Evidently only what took place within his own mind interested him.
Nothing outside himself had any significance for him, because everything
in the world, it seemed to him, depended entirely on his will.

“I do not, and did not, desire war,” he continued, “but it has been
forced on me. Even now” (he emphasized the word) “I am ready to receive
any explanations you can give me.”

And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for
dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly
moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashëv
was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter into
negotiations.

When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the
Russian envoy, Balashëv began a speech he had prepared long before:
“Sire! The Emperor, my master...” but the sight of the Emperor’s eyes
bent on him confused him. “You are flurried—compose yourself!” Napoleon
seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked at
Balashëv’s uniform and sword.

Balashëv recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the
Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurákin’s demand for his passports a
sufficient cause for war; that Kurákin had acted on his own initiative
and without his sovereign’s assent, that the Emperor Alexander did not
desire war, and had no relations with England.

“Not yet!” interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to his
feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashëv might
proceed.

After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashëv added that
the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter into
negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashëv hesitated:
he remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his
letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykóv and had
told Balashëv to repeat to Napoleon. Balashëv remembered these words,
“So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil,” but some
complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though he
wished to do so. He grew confused and said: “On condition that the
French army retires beyond the Niemen.”

Napoleon noticed Balashëv’s embarrassment when uttering these last
words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to quiver
rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he began speaking in
a louder tone and more hurriedly than before. During the speech that
followed, Balashëv, who more than once lowered his eyes, involuntarily
noticed the quivering of Napoleon’s left leg which increased the more
Napoleon raised his voice.

“I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander,” he began. “Have
I not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it? I
have waited eighteen months for explanations. But in order to begin
negotiations, what is demanded of me?” he said, frowning and making an
energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump hand.

“The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire,” replied Balashëv.

“The Niemen?” repeated Napoleon. “So now you want me to retire beyond
the Niemen—only the Niemen?” repeated Napoleon, looking straight at
Balashëv.

The latter bowed his head respectfully.

Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from Pomerania,
only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded. Napoleon turned
quickly and began to pace the room.

“You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen
before commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months ago
the demand was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the Oder,
and yet you are willing to negotiate.”

He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and again
stopped in front of Balashëv. Balashëv noticed that his left leg was
quivering faster than before and his face seemed petrified in its stern
expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing Napoleon was
conscious of. “The vibration of my left calf is a great sign with me,”
he remarked at a later date.

“Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be made to a
Prince of Baden, but not to me!” Napoleon almost screamed, quite to his
own surprise. “If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I could not accept
such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But who first joined his
army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer me negotiations when I
have expended millions, when you are in alliance with England, and when
your position is a bad one. You offer me negotiations! But what is the
aim of your alliance with England? What has she given you?” he continued
hurriedly, evidently no longer trying to show the advantages of peace
and discuss its possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and
power and Alexander’s errors and duplicity.

The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the
intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position and showing
that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had begun talking,
and the more he talked the less could he control his words.

The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt himself and
insult Alexander—just what he had least desired at the commencement of
the interview.

“I hear you have made peace with Turkey?”

Balashëv bowed his head affirmatively.

“Peace has been concluded...” he began.

But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all the
talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort of eloquence and
unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people are so prone.

“Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining
Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those
provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes,” he went on, “I promised and would
have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now he
won’t have those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united them to
his empire and in a single reign would have extended Russia from the
Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the Great could
not have done more,” said Napoleon, growing more and more excited as he
paced up and down the room, repeating to Balashëv almost the very words
he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. “All that, he would have
owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!” he repeated several
times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold snuffbox, lifted it to
his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.

“What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander’s might have been!”

He looked compassionately at Balashëv, and as soon as the latter tried
to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.

“What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained
through my friendship?” demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders
in perplexity. “But no, he has preferred to surround himself with
my enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and
Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country;
Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French
subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but all
the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807 and who
should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander’s mind....
Granted that were they competent they might be made use of,” continued
Napoleon—hardly able to keep pace in words with the rush of thoughts
that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and strong he was (in his
perception the two were one and the same)—“but they are not even that!
They are neither fit for war nor peace! Barclay is said to be the
most capable of them all, but I cannot say so, judging by his first
movements. And what are they doing, all these courtiers? Pfuel proposes,
Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and Barclay, called on to act,
does not know what to decide on, and time passes bringing no result.
Bagratión alone is a military man. He’s stupid, but he has experience,
a quick eye, and resolution.... And what role is your young monarch
playing in that monstrous crowd? They compromise him and throw on him
the responsibility for all that happens. A sovereign should not be with
the army unless he is a general!” said Napoleon, evidently uttering
these words as a direct challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander
desired to be a military commander.

“The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven’t even been able to
defend Vílna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of the Polish
provinces. Your army is grumbling.”

“On the contrary, Your Majesty,” said Balashëv, hardly able to remember
what had been said to him and following these verbal fireworks with
difficulty, “the troops are burning with eagerness...”

“I know everything!” Napoleon interrupted him. “I know everything. I
know the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You have
not two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number. I give
you my word of honor,” said Napoleon, forgetting that his word of honor
could carry no weight—“I give you my word of honor that I have five
hundred and thirty thousand men this side of the Vistula. The Turks will
be of no use to you; they are worth nothing and have shown it by making
peace with you. As for the Swedes—it is their fate to be governed by
mad kings. Their king was insane and they changed him for
another—Bernadotte, who promptly went mad—for no Swede would ally
himself with Russia unless he were mad.”

Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his nose.

Balashëv knew how to reply to each of Napoleon’s remarks, and would
have done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing to say
something, but Napoleon always interrupted him. To the alleged insanity
of the Swedes, Balashëv wished to reply that when Russia is on her side
Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon gave an angry exclamation
to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that state of irritability in which
a man has to talk, talk, and talk, merely to convince himself that he is
in the right. Balashëv began to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared
to demean his dignity and felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man,
he shrank before the transport of groundless wrath that had evidently
seized Napoleon. He knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon
had any significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them
when he came to his senses. Balashëv stood with downcast eyes, looking
at the movements of Napoleon’s stout legs and trying to avoid meeting
his eyes.

“But what do I care about your allies?” said Napoleon. “I have
allies—the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight like
lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them.”

And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered this
obvious falsehood, and that Balashëv still stood silently before him in
the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon abruptly turned
round, drew close to Balashëv’s face, and, gesticulating rapidly and
energetically with his white hands, almost shouted:

“Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I’ll wipe it off the map
of Europe!” he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and he
struck one of his small hands energetically with the other. “Yes, I
will throw you back beyond the Dvína and beyond the Dnieper, and will
re-erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind of
Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to you.
That is what you have gained by alienating me!” And he walked silently
several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders twitching.

He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again, lifted
it several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashëv. He
paused, looked ironically straight into Balashëv’s eyes, and said in a
quiet voice:

“And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!”

Balashëv, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the
Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon was
silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently not listening to
him. Balashëv said that in Russia the best results were expected from
the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to say, “I know it’s
your duty to say that, but you don’t believe it yourself. I have
convinced you.”

When Balashëv had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox, sniffed
at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal. The door
opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully, handed the Emperor
his hat and gloves; another brought him a pocket handkerchief. Napoleon,
without giving them a glance, turned to Balashëv:

“Assure the Emperor Alexander from me,” said he, taking his hat, “that
I am as devoted to him as before: I know him thoroughly and very highly
esteem his lofty qualities. I will detain you no longer, General; you
shall receive my letter to the Emperor.”

And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception room
rushed forward and descended the staircase.