d disputed as to
who had distinguished himself and were pleased with their
achievement--though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon, or at
least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one another and
especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.

These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of the
most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes and
imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable
deed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the
campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought of
nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from the Linen
Factories because he was comfortable there, that at Krasnoe he checked
the advance because on learning that Napoleon was there he had quite
lost his head, and that it was probable that he had an understanding
with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.

Not only did his contemporaries, carried away by their passions, talk
in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as grand,
while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty, dissolute, weak
old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite--a sort of puppet
useful only because he had a Russian name.

CHAPTER V

In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor
was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written by order
of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a cunning court
liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at
Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian army of the glory of
complete victory over the French. *

* History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and
reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at
Krasnoe, by Bogdanovich.

Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian mind
does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary individuals
who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their personal will to
it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish such men for discerning
the higher laws.

For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon--that most
insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in exile, showed
human dignity--Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he
is grand. But Kutuzov--the man who from the beginning to the end of hi