Chapter 5
We now check-on Rostopchin, who is considered to be the instigator of the evacuation and burning of Moscow. Tolstoy disagrees - he sees that event as being as inevitable as the lack of a battle in defence of Moscow. Tolstoy cites the fact that things proceeded as they had in all the towns and villages since Smolensk, as they had "without the participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets" and claims it was foreshadowed by everyone who'd already left Moscow. He also says that they did this due to the feeling which is in every Russian, despite Rostopchin claiming it was shameful and cowardly in his newspapers. The first people to go were those who knew Rostopchin's stories about what had happened in other countries weren't true, so they couldn't have been swayed by his broadsheets. I find this argument less convincing, living in a society where we all have access to the internet and yet people believe the weirdest, most easily disprovable things. The Russians simply refused to be under French rule, and would accept any alternative, even leaving Moscow to be destroyed, and Tolstoy says that this is what saved Russia, and that Rostopchin did his level best to stop it, like a child wanting to astonish people and so not taking the momentous historical event seriously.
No comments:
Post a Comment