TOWARDS THE END of the year 1811, there began to be greater activity in levying troops and in concentrating the forces of Western Europe, and in 1812 these forces—millions of men, reckoning those engaged in the transport and feeding of the army— moved from the west eastward, towards the frontiers of Russia, where, since 1811, the Russian forces were being in like manner concentrated.
在1811年末，开始加强对兵员征集和西欧力量的集中，到了1812年，这些力量——包括军队运输和供养的人数在内——从西方向东移动，前往俄罗斯边境，地方俄罗斯自1811年以来也在以类似的方式集中兵力。

On the 12th of June the forces of Western Europe crossed the frontier, and the war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and all human nature. —
在6月12日，西欧的力量越过了边境，战争开始了，也就是说，一个违背了人的理性和所有人的自然法则的事件发生了。 —

Millions of men perpetrated against one another so great a mass of crime—fraud, swindling, robbery, forgery, issue of counterfeit money, plunder, incendiarism, and murder—that the annals of all the criminal courts of the world could not muster such a sum of wickedness in whole centuries, though the men who committed those deeds did not at that time look on them as crimes.
成千上万的人们之间犯下了如此之多的罪行——欺诈、骗局、抢劫、伪造、发行假币、抢掠、纵火和谋杀——以至于全世界所有刑事法庭的历史中都无法积累起这样一大堆邪恶行为，虽然当时犯下这些行为的人并没有将其视为罪行。

What led to this extraordinary event? What were its causes? —
是什么导致了这个非同寻常的事件？它的原因是什么？ —

Historians, with simple-hearted conviction, tell us that the causes of this event were the insult offered to the Duke of Oldenburg, the failure to maintain the continental system, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.
历史学家们以纯真的信念告诉我们，这次事件的原因是对Oldenburg公爵的侮辱，未能坚持大陆封锁政策，拿破仑的野心，亚历山大的坚定，外交官的错误等等。

According to them, if only Metternich, Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand had, in the interval between a levée and a court ball, really taken pains and written a more judicious diplomatic note, or if only Napoleon had written to Alexander, “I consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg,” there would have been no war.
按照他们的说法，如果梅特涅希，鲁缅采夫，或者塔列朗在开场仪式和宫廷舞会之间的时间里真的费心地写了一封更明智的外交信函，或者如果拿破仑写信给亚历山大，”我同意将公爵领地归还给Oldenburg公爵”，就不会有战争。

We can readily understand that being the conception of the war that presented itself to contemporaries. —
我们可以很容易理解这是当时人们对战争的构思。 —

We can understand Napoleon’s supposing the cause of the war to be the intrigues of England (as he said, indeed, in St. Helena); —
我们可以理解拿破仑认为战争的原因是英国的阴谋（正如他在圣赫勒拿所说）； —

we can understand how to the members of the English House of Commons the cause of the war seemed to be Napoleon’s ambition; —
我们可以理解英国下议院议员们认为战争的原因是拿破仑的野心。 —

how to the Duke of Oldenburg the war seemed due to the outrage done him; —
对于奥尔登堡公爵来说，战争似乎是对他所犯下的侮辱所产生的结果； —

how to the trading class the war seemed due to the continental system that was ruining Europe; —
对于商业阶级来说，战争似乎是由于破坏欧洲的大陆制度所引起的； —

to the old soldiers and generals the chief reason for it seemed their need of active service; —
对于老兵和将军们来说，战争的主要原因似乎是他们对积极服役的需求； —

to the regiments of the period, the necessity of re-establishing les bons principes; —
对于那个时期的军队来说，必须重新确立良好原则的必要性； —

while the diplomatists of the time set it down to the alliance of Russia with Austria in 1809 not having been with sufficient care concealed from Napoleon, and the memorandum, No. 178, having been awkwardly worded. —
而当时的外交家们将其归结为俄罗斯与奥地利在1809年的联盟未能得到拿破仑充分保密，以及备忘录178号的措辞不当； —

We may well understand contemporaries believing in those causes, and in a countless, endless number more, the multiplicity of which is due to the infinite variety of men’s points of view. —
我们可以理解当时的人们相信这些原因及其他无尽的原因，这些原因的多样性是因为人们的观点各不相同； —

But to us of a later generation, contemplating in all its vastness the immensity of the accomplished fact, and seeking to penetrate its simple and fearful significance, those explanations must appear insufficient. —
但对于我们这个后代来说，当我们凝视着这一巨大成就的伟大时刻，试图洞察其简单而可怕的意义时，这些解释似乎是不足的。 —

To us it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. —
对我们来说，无法想象成千上万的基督教徒会相互残杀和折磨，因为拿破仑野心勃勃，亚历山大坚定不移，英国政策狡猾，而老簾公爵的待遇却不堪入目。 —

We cannot grasp the connection between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke’s wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them.
我们无法理解这些情况与谋杀和暴力的直接关联，以及公爵的错误为什么要引导成千上万来自欧洲另一边的人去掠夺和杀害斯摩棱斯克和莫斯科省的居民，而又被他们屠杀。

For us of a later generation, who are not historians led away by the process of research, and so can look at the facts with common-sense unobscured, the causes of this war appear innumerable in their multiplicity. —
对于我们这一代的人来说，我们不是被研究过程带偏的历史学家，因此能够用清晰的常识看待事实，这场战争的原因在它们的多样性中无穷无尽。 —

The more deeply we search out the causes the more of them we discover; —
我们越是深入地探索原因，就越能发现更多的原因； —

and every cause, and even a whole class of causes taken separately, strikes us as being equally true in itself, and equally deceptive through its insignificance in comparison with the immensity of the result, and its inability to produce (without all the other causes that concurred with it) the effect that followed. —
每个原因，甚至整个原因类似于自身都是真实的，但相对于结果的宏大以及在没有其他共同作用的情况下无法产生效果而显得微不足道。 —

Such a cause, for instance, occurs to us as Napoleon’s refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula, and to restore the duchy of Oldenburg; —
比如，拿拿破仑拒绝将军队撤离维斯图拉河以及恢复奥尔登堡公国的要求，这个原因就会在我们的脑海中浮现。 —

and then again we remember the readiness or the reluctance of the first chance French corporal to serve on a second campaign; —
然后，我们又想起了第一次意外的法国下士服役第二次战役时的情愿或不情愿。 —

for had he been unwilling to serve, and a second and a third, and thousands of corporals and soldiers had shared that reluctance, Napoleon’s army would have been short of so many men, and the war could not have taken place.
如果他不情愿服役，并且有第二个、第三个，以及成千上万的下士和士兵也有同样的不情愿，拿破仑的军队就会缺少很多人，战争也不会发生。

If Napoleon had not taken offence at the request to withdraw beyond the Vistula, and had not commanded his troops to advance, there would have been no war. —
如果拿破仑没有因为要求撤离维斯图拉河而生气，并且没有下令他的军队前进，就不会发生战争。 —

But if all the sergeants had been unwilling to serve on another campaign, there could have been no war either.
但是如果所有中士都不愿意再参加另一场战役，就不可能发生战争。

And the war would not have been had there been no intrigues on the part of England, no Duke of Oldenburg, no resentment on the part of Alexander; —
如果英国没有阴谋诡计，没有奥尔登堡公爵，亚历山大没有怨愤，就不会有战争。 —

nor had there been no autocracy in Russia, no French Revolution and consequent dictatorship and empire, nor all that led to the French Revolution, and so on further back: —
如果俄罗斯没有专制统治，法国没有革命和随之而来的独裁和帝国，就不会有导致法国革命的一切，以此类推。 —

without any one of those causes, nothing could have happened. —
如果没有其中任何一个原因，什么都不会发生。 —

And so all those causes—myriads of causes—coincided to bring about what happened. —
因此，所有这些原因——无数的原因——凑巧地导致了发生的事情。 —

And consequently nothing was exclusively the cause of the war, and the war was bound to happen, simply because it was bound to happen. —
因此，没有任何一个原因独自导致了战争，战争必然会发生，只是因为它注定会发生。 —

Millions of men, repudiating their common-sense and their human feelings, were bound to move from west to east, and to slaughter their fellows, just as some centuries before hordes of men had moved from east to west to slaughter their fellows.
数百万人违背常识和人性，注定要从西向东移动，并屠杀他们的同胞，正如几个世纪前成群的人从东向西移动并屠杀他们的同胞一样。

The acts of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words it seemed to depend whether this should be done or not, were as little voluntary as the act of each soldier, forced to march out by the drawing of a lot or by conscription. —
拿破仑和亚历山大的行动是不可避免的，就像每个士兵被强制出征一样，要么通过抽签要么通过征兵。 —

This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the whole decision appeared to rest) should be effective, a combination of innumerable circumstances was essential, without any one of which the effect could not have followed. —
这不可能有所不同，因为为了让拿破仑和亚历山大的意愿（整个决策似乎都依赖于他们的话语）发挥作用，需要结合无数的环境因素，没有其中任何一个环境因素，效果就不会出现。 —

It was essential that the millions of men in whose hands the real power lay—the soldiers who fired guns and transported provisions and cannons—should consent to carry out the will of those feeble and isolated persons, and that they should have been brought to this acquiescence by an infinite number of varied and complicated causes.
至关重要的是，实际权力掌握在手中的千百万士兵——那些开枪、运送粮食和大炮的士兵——同意执行那些虚弱而孤立的人的意愿，而且他们被各种各样的复杂原因所带动到这种默契。

We are forced to fall back upon fatalism in history to explain irrational events (that is those of which we cannot comprehend the reason). —
我们在历史中被迫诉诸宿命论来解释不合理的事件（即我们无法理解其原因的事件）。 —

The more we try to explain those events in history rationally, the more irrational and incomprehensible they seem to us. —
我们越是试图以理性的方式解释那些历史事件，它们就越显得非理性和难以理解。 —

Every man lives for himself, making use of his free-will for attainment of his own objects, and feels in his whole being that he can do or not do any action. —
每个人都是为自己而活，利用自由意志追求自己的目标，完全感受到自己可以选择行动或不行动。 —

But as soon as he does anything, that act, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irrevocable and is the property of history, in which it has a significance, predestined and not subject to free choice.
但是一旦他做了任何事情，那个在某一时刻完成的行为就成为不可撤销的，并变成了历史的财产，其中具有注定的意义，不受自由选择的影响。

There are two aspects to the life of every man: —
每个人的生活有两个方面： —

the personal life, which is free in proportion as its interests are abstract, and the elemental life of the swarm, in which a man must inevitably follow the laws laid down for him.
个人生活，在其利益抽象程度上越大，就越自由；而作为一个群体，却必须无可避免地遵循为他规定的规则的生活。

Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of will, but he serves as an unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. —
有意识地，一个人按照自己的意愿自由生活，但他作为一种无意识的工具却又服务于实现人类历史目标的。 —

An act he has once committed is irrevocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others, has an historical value. —
他曾经做过的一件行动是不可撤销的，并且他的这个行动与其他数百万人的行动同时发生，具有历史价值。 —

The higher a man’s place in the social scale, the more connections he has with others, and the more power he has over them, the more conspicuous is the inevitability and predestination of every act he commits. —
一个人在社会阶层中的地位越高，与他人的联系越多，对他人的控制力越大，他所做的每一个行动的必然性和命中注定性就越明显。 —

“The hearts of kings are in the hand of God.” The king is the slave of history.
“君王的心在上帝手中。” 君王是历史的奴隶。

History—that is the unconscious life of humanity in the swarm, in the community—makes every minute of the life of kings its own, as an instrument for attaining its ends.
历史——即人类在蜂群、在社群中的无意识生活——将国王生命中的每一分钟都当作实现其目标的手段。

Although in that year, 1812, Napoleon believed more than ever that to shed or not to shed the blood of his peoples depended entirely on his will (as Alexander said in his last letter to him), yet then, and more than at any time, he was in bondage to those laws which forced him, while to himself he seemed to be acting freely, to do what was bound to be his share in the common edifice of humanity, in history.
虽然在那一年，1812年，拿破仑越发相信，是他的意愿决定是否要牺牲他的人民的鲜血（正如亚历山大在他最后一封信中所说的），然而，那时，他比任何时候都更加受制于强迫他去为人类共同建设做出自己的贡献的法律，在他自己看来，他似乎是在自由地行动。

The people of the west moved to the east for men to kill one another. —
西方人向东方迁徙是为了让人们彼此残杀。 —

And by the law of the coincidence of causes, thousands of petty causes backed one another up and coincided with that event to bring about that movement and that war: —
由于各种偶然原因的巧合，成千上万个小原因互相支持并与那个事件同时发生，导致了那场迁徙和战争的发生。 —

resentment at the non-observance of the continental system, and the Duke of Oldenburg, and the massing of troops in Prussia—a measure undertaken, as Napoleon supposed, with the object of securing armed peace—and the French Emperor’s love of war, to which he had grown accustomed, in conjunction with the inclinations of his people, who were carried away by the grandiose scale of the preparations, and the expenditure on those preparations, and the necessity of recouping that expenditure. —
对于大陆封锁的不遵守，对于老登堡公爵的不满，以及在普鲁士集结军队的举措——拿破仑认为这是为了维持武装和平——还有拿破仑对战争的热爱，他已经习惯了这一点，再加上他的人民受到了大规模准备的鼓舞，还有那些准备所需的开支，以及弥补这些开支的必要性。 —

Then there was the intoxicating effect of the honours paid to the French Emperor in Dresden, and the negotiations too of the diplomatists, who were supposed by contemporaries to be guided by a genuine desire to secure peace, though they only inflamed the amour-propre of both sides; —
那么在德累斯顿向法国皇帝致敬的令人陶醉的效应和外交人员们的谈判，当时人们认为他们都是出于真正希望实现和平，但他们只是激起了双方的自尊心。 —

and millions upon millions of other causes, chiming in with the fated event and coincident with it.
还有无数其他的原因，与命中注定的事件相共振并与之同时发生。

When the apple is ripe and falls—why does it fall? —
当苹果成熟并掉下来时——为什么会掉下来？ —

Is it because it is drawn by gravitation to the earth, because its stalk is withered, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it?
是因为它被地心引力吸引，因为它的茎枯萎，因为它被太阳晒干，因为它越长越重，因为风摇晃它，或因为站在树下的男孩想吃它？

Not one of those is the cause. All that simply makes up the conjunction of conditions under which every living, organic, elemental event takes place. —
这些都不是原因。这只是构成每一个有机的、有机的、基础事件发生的条件的结合。 —

And the botanist who says that the apple has fallen because the cells are decomposing, and so on, will be just as right as the boy standing under the tree who says the apple has fallen because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it to fall. —
植物学家说苹果掉下来是因为细胞分解，等等，和站在树下的男孩说苹果掉下来是因为他想吃它并祈求它掉下来的人一样正确。 —

The historian, who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and was ruined because Alexander desired his ruin, will be just as right and as wrong as the man who says that the mountain of millions of tons, tottering and undermined, has been felled by the last stroke of the last workingman’s pick-axe. —
历史学家说拿破仑去莫斯科是因为他想去，并且被亚历山大希望他的毁灭所毁灭的说法，既对又错，就像一个人说数百万吨的山体因为最后一位劳动者的凿子而倒塌一样。 —

In historical events great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself.
在历史事件中，所谓伟大的人物只是为事件赋予一个名字的符号，就像标签一样，它们与事件本身的联系最少。

Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free-will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.
他们的每一个行动，在他们看来是自由意志的表现，但从历史的角度来看，却并不真正自由，而是受制于整个历史过程，并在永恒之前就已注定。