and we are abandoning the Drissa too. The only sensible thing left for us to do is to conclude peace, and as soon as possible, before we have been driven out of Petersburg!”

This view was widely diffused in the higher military circles, and found adherents, too, in Petersburg—one of them being the chancellor Rumyantsev, who advocated peace on other political considerations.

A fifth section were the adherents of Barclay de Tolly, not so much from his qualities as a man, as a minister of war and commander-in-chief. “Whatever he may be,” they always began, “he is an honest, practical man, and there is nobody better. Let him have sole responsibility, since war can never be prosecuted successfully under divided authority and he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. We owe it simply to Barclay that our army is strong and well organised, and has retreated to the Drissa without disaster. If Barclay is replaced by Bennigsen now, everything will be lost; for Bennigsen has proved his incapacity already in 1807.” Such was the line of argument of the fifth party.

The sixth party, the partisans of Bennigsen, maintained on the contrary that there was after all no one more capable and experienced than Bennigsen, and that whatever else were done they would have to come back to him. They maintained that the whole Russian retreat to Drissa had been an uninterrupted series of shameful disasters and blunders. “Let them blunder now if they will,” they said; “the more blunders the better, at least it will teach them all the sooner that we can’t go on like this. And we want none of your Barclays, but a man like Bennigsen, who showed what he was in 1807, so that Napoleon himself had to do him justice, and a man, too, is needed to whom all would readily intrust authority, and Bennigsen is the only such man.”

The seventh class were persons such as are always found in courts, and especially in the courts of young sovereigns, and were particularly plentiful in the suite of Alexander—generals and adjutants, who were passionately devoted to the Tsar, not merely as an emperor, but sincerely and disinterestedly adored him as a man, as Rostov had adored him in 1805, and saw in him every virtue and good quality of humanity. These persons, while they were ecstatic over the modesty of the Tsar in declining the chief command of the army, deplored that excess of modesty, and desired and urged one thing only, that their adored Tsar, conquering his excessive diffidence, would openly proclaim that he put himself at the head of the army, would gather the staff of the commander-in-chief about him, and, consulting experienced theorists and practical men where necessary, would himself lead his forces, who would be excited to the highest pitch of enthusiasm by this step.

The eighth and largest group, numbering ninety-nine to every one of the others, consisted of people who were eager neither for peace nor for war, neither for offensive operations nor defensive camps, neither at Drissa nor anywhere else; who did not take the side of Barclay, nor of the Tsar, nor of Pfuhl, nor of Bennigsen, but cared only for the one thing most essential—their own greatest gain and enjoyment. In the troubled waters of those cross-currents of intrigue, eddying about the Tsar’s headquarters, success could be attained in very many ways that would have been inconceivable at other times. One courtier, with the single-hearted motive of retaining a lucrative position, would agree today with Pfuhl, and to- morrow with his opponents, and the day after to-morrow would declare that he had no opinion on the subject in question, simply to avoid responsibility and to gratify the Tsar. Another, in the hope of bettering his position, would seek to attract the Tsar’s attention by loudly clamouring a suggestion hinted at by the Tsar on the previous day, by quarrelling noisily at the council, striking himself on the chest and challenging opponents to a duel to prove his readiness to sacrifice himself for the common good. A third simply took advantage of the absence of enemies between two councils to beg a grant from the Single Assistance Fund for his faithful service, knowing there would be no time now for a refusal. A fourth took care to place himself where the Tsar might quite casually find him deeply engrossed in work. A fifth tried to reach the long-desired goal of his ambition—a dinner at the Tsar’s table—by violently espousing one side or another and collecting more or less true and valid arguments in support of it.

All the members of this party were on the hunt after roubles, crosses, and promotions; and in that chase they simply followed the scent given them by the fluctuations of imperial favour. As soon as they saw