War And Peace: Book 5 - CHAPTER IX

作者: Leo Tolstoy

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Author: Leo Tolstoy

BILIBIN was now in a diplomatic capacity at the headquarters of the army, and

though he wrote in French, with French jests, and French turns of speech, he

described the whole campaign with an impartial self-criticism and self-mockery

exclusively Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation of diplomatic discretion

was a torture to him, and that he was happy to have in Prince Andrey a

trustworthy correspondent to whom he could pour out all the spleen that had been

accumulating in him at the sight of what was going on in the army. The letter

was dated some time back, before the battle of Eylau.

“Since our great success at Austerlitz, you know, my dear prince,” wrote

Bilibin, “that I have not left headquarters. Decidedly I have acquired a taste

for warfare, and it is just as well for me. What I have seen in these three

months is incredible.

“I will begin ab ovo. ‘The enemy of the human race,' as you know, is

attacking the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies, who have only

deceived us three times in three years. We stand up for them. But it occurs that

the enemy of the human race pays no attention to our fine speeches, and in his

uncivil and savage way flings himself upon the Prussians without giving them

time to finish the parade that they had begun, and by a couple of conjuring

tricks thrashes them completely, and goes to take up his quarters in the palace

of Potsdam.

“ ‘I most earnestly desire,' writes the King of Prussia to Bonaparte, ‘that

your majesty may be received and treated in my palace in a manner agreeable to

you, and I have hastened to take all the measures to that end which

circumstances allowed. May I have succeeded!' The Prussian generals pride

themselves on their politeness towards the French, and lay down their arms at

the first summons.

“The head of the garrison at Glogau, who has ten thousand men, asks the King

of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.…All these are actual

facts.

“In short, hoping only to produce an effect by our military attitude, we find

ourselves at war in good earnest, and, what is more, at war on our own frontiers

with and for the King of Prussia. Everything is fully ready, we only want

one little thing, that is the commander-in-chief. As it is thought that the

successes at Austerlitz might have been more decisive if the commander-in-chief

had not been so young, the men of eighty have been passed in review, and of

Prosorovsky and Kamensky the latter is preferred. The general comes to us in a

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