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Niemen. Twelve weeks later Napoleon rode intoMoscow. In the evening of the 14th December, behinda derelict remnant a few thousand weak, Ney repassedthe Niemen, last over the last bridge. A month later theRussian vanguard crossed the river. On the 31st March1814 Alexander, at the head of the Allied troops, rodeinto Paris, never entered by any foreign army since thedays of Joan of Arc.1812 was 'the War for the Fatherland.' In its combinationof dramatic scale and intensity and in its consequencesit stands unequalled in Russian history betweenthe Mongol invasions far back and the two death-grapplesof our own day. Now again it is the exemplar of patriotresistance to the last and of final triumph. 1Divergent estimates have come from Russians as to themain characteristics of 1812 and of the roles of particularindividuals. But there is now general agreement that itwas 'a people's war.' The patriotic elements among allclasses (except in St Petersburg) were much more to thefore than the renegades or the faint-hearts or the lathand-plastertalkers; and the peasants were Russians first,serfs second.Among the government and the serf-owners there werefears that the French might appear as liberators. TheRussian peasants did not regard them as such. Anyarmy living to a large extent off the country arouseshostility, and the hostility of the Russian peasantry whenaroused is merciless. Wherever the French penetratedpeasant guerrillas played a notable part against them.In the western provinces, in cases where there wereoutbreaks of the peasants against their masters, the Frenchaided in quelling them. Napoleon aimed at winningover the upper class and compelling Alexander to treat,not at overturning existing order by appeals to whatmust lead to chaos.The long Russian retreat from the frontier to the oldcapital and beyond was not 'according to plan,' butimposed by divided counsels, by the numerical inferiority1 Although it is superfluous, it is impossible not to say: read andre-read War and Peace; almost as great as an historical interpretationas it is as a work of art.402