War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy

But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single aim towards which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodinó, from which time his disagreement with those about him began, he alone said that the battle of Borodinó was a victory and repeated this both verbally and in his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to Lauriston’s proposal of peace, he said: there can be no peace, for such is the people’s will. He alone during the retreat of the French said that all our manoeuvres are useless, everything is being accomplished of itself better than we could desire, that the enemy must be offered “a golden bridge”; that neither the Tarútino, the Vyázma, nor the Krásnoe battles were necessary, that we must keep some force to reach the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a single Russian for ten Frenchmen.