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Book 9 Chapter 11

PRINCE ANDREY had hardly seen the last of Pfuhl when Count Bennigsen came hurrying into the room, and bestowing a nod on Bolkonsky, went straight through to the study, giving some instruction to his adjutant. The Tsar was following him, and Bennigsen had hurried on to prepare something, and to be in readiness to meet him. Tchernishev and Prince Andrey went out into the porch. The Tsar, looking tired out, was dismounting from his horse. Marchese Paulucci was saying something to him. Turning his head to the left, the Tsar was listening with a look of displeasure to Paulucci, who was speaking with peculiar warmth. The Tsar moved, evidently anxious to end the conversation; but the Italian, flushed and excited, followed him, still talking, and oblivious of etiquette.

“As for the man who has counselled the camp at Drissa,” Paulucci was saying just as the Tsar, mounting the steps and noticing Prince Andrey, was looking more intently at his unfamiliar face. “As for him, sire,” Paulucci persisted desperately, as though unable to restrain himself, “I see no alternative but the madhouse or the gallows.”

Not attending, and appearing not to hear the Italian, the Tsar recognised Bolkonsky and addressed him graciously:

“I am very glad to see you. Go in where they are meeting and wait for me.”

The Tsar passed on into the study. He was followed by Prince Pyotr Mihalovitch Volkonsky and Baron Stein, and the study door was closed after them. Prince Andrey, taking advantage of the Tsar's permission to do so, accompanied Paulucci, whom he had met in Turkey, into the drawing-room where the council had assembled.

Prince Pyotr Mihalovitch Volkonsky was performing the duties of a sort of informed head of the Tsar's staff. Volkonsky came out of the study and bringing out maps laid them on the table, and mentioned the questions on which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen present. The important fact was that news (which afterwards proved to be false) had been received in the night of movements of the French with the object of making a circuit round the camp at Drissa.

The first to begin speaking was General Armfeldt, who unexpectedly proposed, as a means of avoiding the present difficulty, a quite new project, inexplicable except as a proof of his desire to show that he, too, had a suggestion of his own. His idea was that the army should move into a position away from the Petersburg and Moscow roads, and, united there, await the enemy.It was evident that this project had been formed by Armfeldt long before, and that he brought it forward now not so much with the object of meeting the present problem, to which it presented no solution, as of seizing the opportunity of explaining its merits. It was one of the millions of suggestions which might be made, one as reasonable as another, so long as no one had any idea what form the war would take. Some of those present attacked his idea, others supported it. The young Colonel Toll criticised the Swedish general's project with more heat than any one; and in the course of his remarks upon it drew out of a side pocket a manuscript, which he asked leave to read aloud. In this somewhat diffuse note, Toll proposed another plan of campaign—entirely opposed to Armfeldt's, and also to Pfuhl's plan. Paulucci, in raising objections to Toll's scheme, proposed a plan of direct advance and attack, which he declared to be the only means of extricating us from our present precarious position, and from the trap (so he called the Drissa camp) in which we were placed. During all this discussion, Pfuhl and his interpreter Woltzogen (who was his mouth-piece in the court world) were silent. Pfuhl merely snorted contemptuously and turned his back to indicate that he would never stoop to reply to the rubbish he was hearing. But when Prince Volkonsky, who presided over the debate, called upon him to give his opinion, he simply said: “Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed an excellent position with the rear exposed to the enemy. Or why not the attack suggested by this Italian gentleman? A fine idea! Or a retreat? Excellent, too. Why ask me?” said he. “You all know better than I do, it appears.”

But when Volkonsky, frowning, said that it was in the Tsar's name that he asked his opinion, Pfuhl rose, and growing suddenly excited, began to speak:

“You have muddled and spoilt it all. You would all know better than I, and now you come to me to ask how to set things right. There is nothing that needs setting right. The only thing is to carry out in exact detail the plan laid down by me,” he said, rapping his bony fingers on the table. “Where's the difficulty? It's nonsense; child's play!” He went up to the map, and began talking rapidly, pointing with his wrinkled finger about the map, and proving that no sort of contingency could affect the adaptability of the Drissa camp to every emergency, that every chance had been foreseen, and that if the enemy actually did make a circuit round it, then the enemy would infallibly be annihilated.

Paulucci, who did not know German, began to ask him questions in French. Woltzogen came to the assistance of his leader, who spoke French very badly, and began translating his utterances, hardly able to keep pace with Pfuhl, who was proceeding at a great rate to prove that everything, everything, not only what was happening, but everything that possibly could happen, had been provided for in his plan, and that if difficulties had arisen now, they were due simply to the failure to carry out that plan with perfect exactitude. He was continually giving vent to a sarcastic laugh as he went on proving, and at last scornfully abandoned all attempt to prove, his position, as a mathematician will refuse to establish by various different methods a problem he has once for all proved to be correctly solved. Woltzogen took his place, continuing to explain his views in French, and occasionally referring to Pfuhl himself: “Is that not true, your excellency?” But Pfuhl, as a man in the heat of the fray will belabour those of his own side, shouted angrily at his own follower—at Woltzogen, too.

“To be sure, what is there to explain in that?”

Paulucci and Michaud fell simultaneously on Woltzogen in French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuhl himself in German. Toll was interpreting to Prince Volkonsky in Russian. Prince Andrey listened and watched them in silence.

Of all these men the one for whom Prince Andrey felt most sympathy was the exasperated, determined, insanely conceited Pfuhl. He was the only one of all the persons present who was unmistakably seeking nothing for himself, and harbouring no personal grudge against anybody else. He desired one thing only—the adoption of his plan, in accordance with the theory that was the fruit of years of toil. He was ludicrous; he was disagreeable with his sarcasm, but yet he roused an involuntary feeling of respect from his boundless devotion to an idea.

Apart from this, with the single exception of Pfuhl, every speech of every person present had one common feature, which Prince Andrey had not seen at the council of war in 1805—that was, a panic dread of the genius of Napoleon, a dread which was involuntarily betrayed in every utterance now, in spite of all efforts to conceal it. Anything was assumed possible for Napoleon; he was expected from every quarter at once, and to invoke his terrible name was enough for them to condemn each other's suggestions. Pfuhl alone seemed to look on him too, even Napoleon, as a barbarian, like every other opponent of his theory; and Pfuhl roused a feeling of pity, too, as well as respect, in Prince Andrey. From the tone with which the courtiers addressed him, from what Paulucci had ventured to say to the Tsar, and above all from a certain despairing expression in Pfuhl himself, it was clear that others knew, and he himself, that his downfall was at hand. And for all his conceit and his German grumpy irony, he was pitiful with his flattened locks on his forehead and his wisps of uncombed hair sticking out behind. Though he tried to conceal it under a semblance of anger and contempt, he was visibly in despair that the sole chance left him of testing his theory on a vast scale and proving its infallibility to the whole world was slipping away from him.

The debate lasted a long while, and the longer it continued the hotter it became, passing into clamour and personalities, and the less possible it was to draw any sort of general conclusion from what was uttered. Prince Andrey simply wondered at what they were all saying as he listened to the confusion of different tongues, and the propositions, the plans, the shouts, and the objections. The idea which had long ago and often occurred to him during the period of his active service, that there was and could be no sort of military science, and that therefore there could not be such a thing as military genius, seemed to him now to be an absolutely obvious truth. “What theory and science can there be of a subject of which the conditions and circumstances are uncertain and can never be definitely known, in which the strength of the active forces engaged can be even less definitely measured? No one can, or possibly could, know the relative positions of our army and the enemy's in another twenty-four hours, and no one can gauge the force of this or the other detachment. Sometimes when there is no coward in front to cry, ‘We are cut off!' and to run, but a brave, spirited fellow leads the way, shouting ‘Hurrah!' a detachment of five thousand is as good as thirty thousand, as it was at Sch?ngraben, while at times fifty thousand will run from eight thousand, as they did at Austerlitz. How can there be a science of war in which, as in every practical matter, nothing can be definite and everything depends on countless conditions, the influence of which becomes manifest all in a moment, and no one can know when that moment is coming. Armfeldt declares that our army is cut off, while Paulucci maintains that we have caught the French army between two fires; Michaud asserts that the defect of the Drissa camp is having the river in its rear, while Pfuhl protests that that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes one plan, Armfeldt suggests another; and all are good and all are bad, and the suitability of any proposition can only be seen at the moment of trial. And why do they all talk of military genius? Is a man to be called a genius because he knows when to order biscuits to be given out, and when to march his troops to the right and when to the left? He is only called a genius because of the glamour and authority with which the military are invested, and because masses of sycophants are always ready to flatter power, and to ascribe to it qualities quite alien to it. The best generals I have known are, on the contrary, stupid or absent-minded men. The best of them is Bagration—Napoleon himself admitted it. And Bonaparte himself! I remember his fatuous and limited face on the field of Austerlitz. A good general has no need of genius, nor of any great qualities; on the contrary, he is the better for the absence of the finest and highest of human qualities—love, poetry, tenderness, philosophic and inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is of great importance (or he would never have patience to go through with it), and only then will he be a gallant general. God forbid he should be humane, should feel love and compassion, should pause to think what is right and wrong. It is perfectly comprehensible that the theory of their genius should have been elaborated long, long ago, for the simple reason that they are the representatives of power. The credit of success in battle is not by right theirs; for victory or defeat depends in reality on the soldier in the ranks who first shouts ‘Hurrah!' or ‘We are lost!' And it is only in the ranks that one can serve with perfect conviction, that one is of use!”

Such were Prince Andrey's reflections as he heard the discussion going on around him, and he was only roused from his musing when Paulucci called to him and the meeting was breaking up.

Next day at the review the Tsar asked Prince Andrey where he desired to serve; and Bolkonsky ruined his chances for ever in the court world by asking to be sent to the front, instead of begging for a post in attendance on the Tsar's person.


安德烈公爵还来不及用目光送走普弗尔,贝格尼森伯爵就已匆匆走进房间,他向博尔孔斯基点点头,脚步不停地向自己的副官下达了一些指令就进了书斋。皇帝还在他后面,贝尼格森匆匆前来就是为了准备点什么,迎接皇帝。切尔内绍夫和安德烈公爵走到门廊台阶上。皇帝神情疲倦地下了马,保罗西侯爵正对皇帝讲着什么。皇帝头偏向左侧听着保罗西热烈的絮叨,看来皇帝想结束谈话,举步向前走,但是那个满脸通红、神情激动的意大利人忘了礼节,还跟在他后面继续说道:

“Quant à celui qui a conseillé ce camp,le camp de Drissa.”①保罗西说,这时皇帝已走上台阶,看见安德烈公爵,打量了一下这张他不熟悉的面孔。

①德语:至于那个建设构筑德里萨阵地的人。


“Quant à celui,sire,”保罗西仿佛按捺不住,不顾一切地继续说道,“Qui a conseillé le camp de Drissa,je ne vois pas d'autre alternative que la maison jaune ou le gibet.”①皇帝没听完,或许根本没有听意大利人的话,他认出了博尔孔斯基,亲切地对他说:“很高兴看见你,到那边他们聚集的地方去等着我吧。”皇帝走进了书斋,随后是彼得·米哈伊诺维奇·沃尔孔斯基公爵、施泰因男爵进了书斋,斋门在他们的背后关上了。安德烈公爵利用皇帝的许可,与他在土耳其时代就认识的保罗西一道走进正在聚会的客厅。

①德语:陛下,至于那个建设构筑德里萨阵地的人,我看他只有两个去处:一是疯人院,一是绞刑架。


彼得·米哈伊诺维奇·沃尔孔斯基公爵担任了类似皇帝的参谋长的职务,沃尔孔斯基走出书斋带着一些地图进了客厅,并把地图摊在桌子上,他转达了几个问题,想听听与会诸位对这些问题的意见。情况是,晚上收到消息(后来证实不正确),说法国军队要迂回进攻德里萨阵地。

阿姆菲尔德将军第一个发言,他出人意料地提出一个全新的(除了他有意表明他也能提出意见外)什么也不能说明的方案。在通往彼得堡和莫斯科的大路旁构筑阵地,他认为必须在那里集结军队,以等待敌人,这样才能摆脱现有的困境。看来这个计划阿姆菲尔德早已拟好,他现在陈述它,与其说目的是为了对提案予以解答(实际并未解答),不如说是趁机发表这个方案。这是无数建议中的一个,如果不考虑战争的具体特点的意义,那么这些建议同其他建议一样都有充足的理由,有些人反对他的意见,有些人拥护他的意见。年轻的上校托尔比其他人都更热烈地反驳这位瑞典将军的意见,在争论时,他从衣服口袋内掏出一本写满字迹的笔记本并请求让他读一遍,在这本记述详尽的笔记本中,托尔提出了一个与阿姆菲尔德或普弗尔的计划完全相反的作战计划。保罗西在反对托尔时,提出了一个向前推进和进攻的计划。按他的话说,这个计划能使我们从无所适从和我们所处的陷阱中摆脱出来(他是这样称呼德里萨阵地的),在进行这些争论时,普弗尔和他的翻译官沃尔佐根(他与宫廷关系的桥梁)沉默不语。普弗尔只是轻蔑地抽抽鼻子,扭过头去,表示他无论何时也不屑于反驳他现在听到的废话,但是当主持讨论的沃尔孔斯基公爵请他发表自己的意见时,他只是说:

“何必要问我呢?阿姆菲尔德将军提出了一个绝妙的后方暴露的阵地的主意。或者进攻Von diesem italienischen Herrn,sehr schoCn①。或者退却,Auch gut②.问我干什么呢?”他说,“你们自己难道不比我更清楚吗?”但是当紧皱眉头的沃尔孔斯基说,他是代表皇帝问他的意见时,普弗尔站起来,忽然兴致勃勃地开始说:

①德语:这位意大利先生的意见,很好嘛。

②德语:也很好。


“一切都破坏了,一切都杂乱无章,所有人都想在认识上比我高强,而现在找我来了。怎么补救呢?没什么要补救的。应该切实按照我所阐明的原则去做。”他说着,用瘦骨嶙峋的手指敲着桌子。“困难在哪儿啦?胡说,Kinderspiel。”①他走近地图,用肌肉萎缩的指头点着地图,开始快速地讲起来,他证明任何意外的情况都不能改变德里萨阵地的适当性,一切都预见到了,假如敌人真要迂回,那就一定会被消灭。

不懂德语的保罗西用法语问他。沃尔佐根来帮助法语讲得很差的自己的长官,替他当翻译,他几乎跟不上普弗尔,普弗尔急速地证明说,不仅已经发生的一切,就连可能发生的一切,一切的一切在他的计划中都预见到了,如果现在有什么困难的话,那么全部过错都是因为没有分毫不差的执行他的计划。他不断露出讥讽的冷笑,证明了又证明,最后他轻蔑地停止了证明,仿佛他是一个数学家停止用各种书法验算一道已经证明无误的算题一样。沃尔佐根继续用法语代他说明他的思想,并不时对普弗尔说:“Nicht wahr,Exellenz?”②普弗尔就像一个战斗中杀红眼的人一样打起自己人来,他生气地斥责沃尔佐根说:“Nun ja,was soll denn da noch expliziert werden?”③保罗西和米绍齐声用法语反驳沃尔佐根。阿姆菲尔德用德语与普弗尔说着话。托尔用俄语在向沃尔孔斯基解释。安德烈公爵默默地听着,观察着。

①德语:儿童玩具。

②德语:对不对,大人?

③德语:那当然,还用得着解释吗?


在所有这些人当中,最能引起安德烈公爵同情的,就是那个愤怒、坚决、固执己见的普弗尔,在座的所有的人中间,显然只有他不为个人私利着想,不敌视任何人,只一心想着一件事——把那按照他多年辛苦研究出来的理论所拟定的计划付诸实践。他是可笑的,他的冷嘲热讽是令人不愉快的,可是他却无限忠诚于自己的理想,这就令人不由自主地肃然起敬。此外,在所有发言的人里面,除开普弗尔,都有一个共同的特点,这在一八○五年的军事会议中是没有的——这就是现在虽然被掩饰却仍然在每一个人的反驳中流露出对拿破仑的天才的恐惧和惊惶失措。他们都假设拿破仑无所不能,从各个方面都可出现他的影子,人们以他可怕的名字互相推翻对方的设想。好像只有普弗尔一个人认为拿破仑就象反对他的理论的人一样也是野蛮人。但是,除了尊敬的感情以外,普弗尔还使安德烈公爵产生怜悯之情。根据宫廷大臣对待他的态度,根据保罗西胆敢对皇帝说的那些话,最主要是根据普弗尔本人有点失望的表情来看,虽然,其他人都知道,他自己也感觉得出,他倒台的日子已不远了。尽管他很自信,具有德国人的好抱怨的爱讥讽的性格,连同他那梳光的鬓角和脑后一撮撮翘起的头发,都使他觉自己可怜,虽然他把这些隐藏在自己的愤怒和蔑视之下,但是他陷入绝望,因为用大规模的实验来检验和向全世界证明地的理论的正确性的唯一机会,现在从他手中失去了。

辩论继续了很久,而且他们讨论得越久,争论也越激烈,甚至大吼大叫,互相诋毁,因而要从所有发言中得出一个共同的结论也更不可能不听着这场各种语言交织的谈话以及这些设想、计划、辩驳和叫喊、他对他们所说的话,只有感到不胜惊讶。在他从事军事活动期间,他很早而且常常有一种想法——没有也不可能有什么军事科学,因而也没有任何所谓的军事天才,现在在他看来已是十分明显的真理。“如果一场战争的条件和环境不明了也不可能弄清楚,投入战斗的兵力无以明确,又怎么谈得上那场战争的理论和科学呢?谁也不能知道也不可能知道,我方和敌方军队明天将是怎样的情势,而且谁也不可能知道这支或那支部队的力量如何。有时,是胆小鬼在前面喊道:‘我们被截断了!'于是开始溃逃,而有时是前面一位快活勇敢的人喊‘乌拉!'——一支五千人的部队就抵得上三万人,申格拉本战役即是如此;而有时五万人也会在八千人面前溃逃,就像在奥斯特利茨战役一样。在军事行动中如同在所有其他实践活动中一样,谈不上什么科学,什么也不能确定。一切都取决于无数的条件,在谁也无法预料的那一瞬间便可确定这些条件所起的作用。阿姆菲尔德常说我们的军队被截断了,而保罗西却说,法军陷入我两军夹击之中;米绍说,德里萨阵地不利在于背河布阵,而普弗尔却说,这正是阵地威力之所在。托尔提出一个计划,阿姆菲尔德提出另一个计划;而所有计划都好,也都不好,任何建议的好坏只有在事件发生时才显得出来。那么人们从何说起军事天才呢?难道天才就是会及时命令运送面包干,指挥那个向右那个向左的人?因为军人们被授予荣誉和权力,成群的蝇营狗苟的坏胚子趋炎附势,本不具备的天才品质都赋予了权势,于是他们便被称为天才。其实正相反,我所知道的最好的将军们——都是些愚笨和粗心的人。最好的是巴格拉季翁——拿破仑自己对此也承认,还有波拿巴本人!我记得那副在奥斯特利茨战场的自鸣得意的嘴脸。一个优秀的统帅不仅不需要天才和那些特殊的人类品质,而且相反,他要剔去那些人类最崇高、最完善的品质——仁爱,诗人气质,温情,从哲学探索问题的怀疑精神。他必须是目光短浅,坚信他所做的事是非常重要的(不如此他就没有足够的耐心),只有这样,他才是一个勇敢的统帅,上帝保佑,千万别成为那种今天爱惜一些人,明日又为另一些人怜惜。老在琢磨什么是对,什么是错的人。不言而喻,有权有势的人,自古以来人们就已为他们编造了一套天才的理论。其实军事上的胜利并不取决于他们,而取决于那些在队伍中喊:‘我们完了!'或者喊:‘乌拉!'的人们。只有在这些队伍中服务,你才会有你是有用的信心。”

安德烈公爵一面听着议论,一面这样思考着,直到保罗西叫他们时,他才清醒过来,大家都已经要离开了。

第二天阅兵的时候,皇帝问安德烈公爵,他想在那儿工作,安德烈公爵没有请求留在皇帝身边,而是请求到军队去服务,他永远失去了置身于宫廷的机会。



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