We all signed up to this task. Igor even created a measurement by which to judge Sergei's progress. It would be measured by his readiness to accept my love for Laara and to accept her sovereignty in accepting it.

     Luckily, Sergei had a great respect for Friedrich Schiller, the author our first cultural event. On the way to Novosibirsk I asked Sergei to tell us how Schiller had saved Russia from a defeat that would have otherwise destroyed the nation. He had made a remark about that some time earlier.

     Sergei smiled, "This happened during the time of Napoleon, when Napoleon crossed into Russia with over 400,000 men and 300,000 horses. Every patriot in Russia wanted to fight the invaders. If they had fought, every one of them would have been killed. Russia had nothing with which to match Napoleon's strength. But Russia had one advantage. Russia had a man who could see the struggle in the context of the universal human scale. This man had been a close associate of Friedrich Schiller. Actually, Schiller was already dead at the time Napoleon invaded Russia, but William von Wolzogen was very much alive, living in exile in Russia. He had studied with Schiller the human dimensions of war, the tragedies, the arrogance, the strengths of people and their vulnerability. Schiller was aware of the little minds of society that met the great opportunities in history with a pathetic weakness of character, by which the greatest opportunities became lost and humanity suffered as a consequence."

     Sergei explained that Schiller wrote great works of tragedy in which this paradox becomes plainly laid out in a way that the audience of his plays becomes more widely involved with the dimensions of our humanity as human beings, and thereby becomes better men and women. He enlarged the sphere of their concerns so that they could step beyond their petty little affairs and think about enriching and uplifting the whole of humanity.

     "When Napoleon invaded Russia," said Sergei, "Wolzogen made it Russia's goal to survive. Nothing else mattered. He also knew that this goal couldn't be achieved by fighting Napoleon. Wolzogen had only one choice. He took the patriots out of their narrow concerns and opened their eyes. They wanted to block Napoleon's way. He asked them instead to draw Napoleon as deeply as possible into the country. He asked them never to engage Napoleon more than was necessary to irritate him, to make the troops feel vulnerable. He said that this would suffice to slow the advance. It was Wolzogen's tactic to create a logistical nightmare for Napoleon, and a strategic vulnerability that Napoleon in his narrowly confined thinking didn't recognize until it was too late. By the time Napoleon's army had reached the gates of Moscow, 500,000 of his men lay already dead along the path of the invitation. Most were picked off along the supply trail. Some huge battles were fought, which cost both sides dealt, but gained no one any advantage. The human dimension defeated Napoleon, the collapse of its logistical infrastructure."

     "The history books may say that the Russian winter caused Napoleon's defeat," said Sergei. "This is a lie. Eight-five percent of Napoleon's army was already dead before he reached the gates of Moscow long before the winter began. Only seventy thousand of Napoleon's troops were killed by the bitter winter, and this, again, was the legacy of the dead poet. Wolzogen knew that if Napoleon would be able to utilize Moscow as a shelter through the winter, he would recover his strength and fight anew in the spring and then defeat the weakened nation. Thus, Wolzogen did what Schiller's pathetic heroes of tragedy could never do. He persuaded the Russian elite to completely evacuate the city of Moscow before Napoleon's arrival, and then, even while it was occupied, gradually burn the city to the ground from within. Wolzogen knew that Napoleon would have little choice in the end, but to abandon the city with the first onset of the Russian winter. Out of 630,000 men that crossed into Russia under Napoleon's command, no more than twenty to thirty thousand made it back."

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Stories about  Love from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche