时间:2019-01-18 作者:英语课 分类:有声英语文学名著


英语课

 Chapter 5 - Reflections on the abandonment of Moscow


 
At that very time, in circumstances even more important than retreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of Moscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the instigator of that event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov.
After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow was as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without fighting.
Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.
The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the towns and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, without the participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The people awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited or tear anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the strength to find what it should do at that most difficult moment. And as soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away abandoning their property, while the poorer remained and burned and destroyed what was left.
The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was and is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of this, and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in Russian Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already in July and at the beginning of August showed that they expected this. Those who went away, taking what they could and abandoning their houses and half their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism which expresses itself not by phrases or by giving one’s children to save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively, simply, organically, and therefore in the way that always produces the most powerful results.
“It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running away from Moscow,” they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchin impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing it had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose that Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had committed in conquered countries. The first people to go away were the rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had remained intact and that during Napoleon’s occupation the inhabitants had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the charming Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russian ladies, then liked so much.
They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It was out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst thing that could happen. They went away even before the battle of Borodino and still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin’s calls to defend Moscow or the announcement of his intention to take the wonder-working icon of the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, or of the balloons that were to destroy the French, and despite all the nonsense Rostopchin wrote in his broadsheets. They knew that it was for the army to fight, and that if it could not succeed it would not do to take young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter of Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as they were to abandon their property to destruction. They went away without thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense and wealthy city being given over to destruction, for a great city with wooden buildings was certain when abandoned by its inhabitants to be burned. They went away each on his own account, and yet it was only in consequence of their going away that the momentous event was accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count Rostopchin’s orders, had already in June moved with her Negroes and her women jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a vague consciousness that she was not Bonaparte’s servant, was really, simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia. But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now had the government offices removed; now distributed quite useless weapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the icons, and now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics of saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one hundred and thirty-six of them removed the balloon that was being constructed by Leppich; now hinted that he would burn Moscow and related how he had set fire to his own house; now wrote a proclamation to the French solemnly upbraiding them for having destroyed his Orphanage; now claimed the glory of having hinted that he would burn Moscow and now repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catch all spies and bring them to him, and now reproached them for doing so; now expelled all the French residents from Moscow, and now allowed Madame Aubert-Chalme (the center of the whole French colony in Moscow) to remain, but ordered the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to be arrested and exiled for no particular offense; now assembled the people at the Three Hills to fight the French and now, to get rid of them, handed over to them a man to be killed and himself drove away by a back gate; now declared that he would not survive the fall of Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums concerning his share in the affair — this man did not understand the meaning of what was happening but merely wanted to do something himself that would astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like a child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event — the abandonment and burning of Moscow — and tried with his puny hand now to speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him along with it.

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Accra
Aeneas
allsopp
andreani
antijudder link
arellanoes
assessment table
bacteriolysin
Balagne
beat one's breast
benzalacetophenone
buergerite(buergerita)
carboxylic styrene butadiene latex
chain of stirred tanks
cheat sb out of sth
classical techniques
colombianite
continous distillation
contour sod strip
crispatine
depocid
despecification
diesel engine geared drive
diplocaryon
double coincidence switch
emilu
exponential decay function
filter washing liquor inlet
flabellifoliate
forced life test
fractional-horse-power motor
full value variable
funebrial
gastrostome
gatten
genus cynipss
geostrophic dividers
glacial canyon
grass retting
hump-shaped pad block
hypnologists
indiferous amphilbole
intertrinitarian
iron scrap
itinerant aircraft
light weight steel shape
loan secured by thing
locally convex linear space
lorazepam
macro-economic
maladichte
man-machine cooperation
manganese-cordierite
microadenoma
miniclier
Minnesota State University
monocaryon mycelium
Musculus mentalis
Neroic
noelie
non sulfurized carbon steel
nosegrinded
o-network
Organized and Serious Crimes Ordinance
over-potting
palatodynia
perenchio
petrotectonic assemblage
phylodiversity
plane stress problem
plasma squeezing
post stack migration
pound sign
prevatte
pyeloureterograph
reasoned discourse
residual heat removal reducing station
Rio Pomba
Rive-de-Gier
rosepoint
sale of property
sandheaps
semiplant
sicca
single window
spindasis kuyanianus
ST_technology_machinery-and-machines
step vane
superimposed back pressure
system message data set
tasher
tax proceeds
teracidic base
thioxanthenes
type wash
unishank process
veterans days
webspeak
Westralia
wotc
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