tiers of Russia
crossed.

It is easy now to understand the significance of these events--if
only we abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that
existed only in the heads of a dozen individuals--for the events and
results now lie before us.

But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general opinion,
so truly discern the importance of the people's view of the events that
in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?

The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of the
events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he possessed in
full purity and strength.

Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling caused
the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar's wish, to
select him--an old man in disfavor--to be their representative in the
national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest human
pedestal from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all his powers
not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing pity on
them.

That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not be cast
in the false mold of a European hero--the supposed ruler of men--that
history has invented.

To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception of
greatness.

CHAPTER VI

The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle of
Krasnoe. Toward evening--after much disputing and many mistakes made by
generals who did not go to their proper places, and after adjutants had
been sent about with counterorders--when it had become plain that the
enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and would be no
battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither his headquarters
had that day been transferred.

The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on his plump little
white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented generals who
whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the road groups of
French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them)
were crowding to warm themselves at campfires. Near Dobroe an immense
crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with talk and wrapped and bandaged
in anything they had been able to get hold of, were standing in the road
beside a long row of unharnessed French guns. At the approach of the
commander in chief the buzz of talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on
Kutuzov who, wearing a whi