212 The Imperial Century, 1725-1825accommodation, and conduct-also a useful weapon against highly-placed
rivals, as Segur noted.^53 The manipulative aspect of the myth was of course
hidden from rank-and-file soldiers, who had only appearances to go by. Theirs
was a Manichean world-view: the forces of good and evil were seen as locked
i11 iUortal combat, and the former could prevail only if they had a leader 'Nhc
combined great power (vlast') with the virtues of the common people (narod).
This surely was the real secret of Suvorov's 'genius', that is to say his ability to
inspire an unusual degree of affection and respect.
The heroic deeds of certain great commanders were celebrated in folksong-
in stereotyped fashion, as is characteristic of this literary genre. The same
motifs, and even the same epithets, continually recur and are applied
schematically to different individuals in various historical circumstances. The
standard form is for the hero to be absent, or for his qualities to pass
unrecognized, until the decisive moment approaches, whereupon he hastens to
the scene of action with magical speed, exhorts his warriors to fight bravely,
performs feats of valour himself, and either dies in battle or lives to reward his
rnen handsomely on the morrow of victory. This skeleton plot is embroidered
with picturesque details which match the specific situation referred to and pro-
vide a minimum of historical verisimilitude. Thus batyushka Suvorov, before
the fort of Bender, tells his soldiers to take up position 'not sparing your white
hands'; he assures them, 'smiling gaily', that the foe is weaker than he seems
and then cunningly ferries them across the Danube on rafts; wounded, he is
carried on a litter to his weeping mother, who at first thinks that ffer son is
drunk, until he-tells her that he has been 'filled with lead' by the enemy-who
is identified indiscriminately as Turkish, Prussian, or French!^54 Similar adven-
tures befall several other great commanders of the period, as they had the
chieftains of earlier eras.
It is no surprise to find Russia's autocrats lauded in much the same way. We
may suppose that those folksongs which depict the monarch in a military con-
text were current among the troops, although even this elementary point can-
not be proven. A frequent motif is the soldiers' lament for a deceased
sovereign, whom they implore to return to the world of the living so that good
order may be restored to the army and his or her 'orphans' saved from poverty
and injustice. Consider the following:
Without thee thy realm hath grown troubled,
All the soldiers have deserted.
Why have they fled?
Guard duties have become strict
And changes of the guard rare.SJ De Segur, Memoires, ii. 12; Duffy, Russia's Military Way, pp. 194-5.
54 Alekseyeva and Ycmel"yanov, /st. pesni XVIII v., pp. 250, 256, 268-9; cf. Pesni sobr.
Kireyevskim, ix. 307-9, 319-20, 325-6.