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THE ARMED FORCES of twelve different nationalities of Europe invade Russia.
The Russian army and population fall back, avoiding a battle, to Smolensk, and
from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army moves on to Moscow, its goal, with
continually increasing impetus. The impetus of its advance is increased as it
approaches its goal, just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it gets
nearer the earth. Behind them thousands of versts of famine-stricken, hostile
country; before them some dozens of versts between them and their goal. Every
soldier of Napoleon's army feels it, and the expedition advances of itself, by
the force of its own impetus.
In the Russian troops the spirit of fury, of hatred of the foe, burns more
and more fiercely during their retreat; it gathers strength and concentration as
they draw back. At Borodino the armies meet. Neither army is destroyed, but the
Russian army, immediately after the conflict, retreats as inevitably as a ball
rebounds after contact with another ball flying with greater impetus to meet it.
And just as inevitably (though parting with its force in the contact) the ball
of the invading army is carried for a space further by the energy, not yet fully
spent, within it.
The Russians retreat one hundred and twenty versts beyond Moscow; the French
reach Moscow and there halt. For five weeks after this there is not a single
battle. The French do not move. Like a wild beast mortally wounded, bleeding and
licking its wounds, for five weeks the French remain in Moscow, attempting
nothing; and all at once, with nothing new to account for it, they flee back;
they make a dash for the Kaluga road (after a victory, too, for they remained in
possession of the field of battle at Maley Yaroslavets); and then, without a
single serious engagement, fly more and more rapidly back to Smolensk, to Vilna,
to the Berezina, and beyond it.
On the evening of the 26th of August, Kutuzov and the whole Russian army were
convinced that the battle of Borodino was a victory. Kutuzov wrote to that
effect to the Tsar. He ordered the troops to be in readiness for another battle,
to complete the defeat of the enemy, not because he wanted to deceive any one,
but because he knew that the enemy was vanquished, as every one who had taken
part in the battle knew it.
But all that evening and next day news was coming in of unheard-of losses, of
the loss of one-half of the army, and another battle turned out to be physically
impossible.
It was impossible to give battle when information had not yet come in,
the wounded had not been removed, the ammunition stores had not been filled up,
the slain had not been counted, new officers had not been appointed to replace
the dead, and the men had had neither food nor sleep. And meanwhile, the very
next morning after the battle, the French army of itself moved down upon the
Russians, carried on by the force of its own impetus, accelerated now in inverse
ratio to the square of the distance from its goal. Kutuzov's wish was to attack
next day, and all the army shared this desire. But to make an attack it is not
sufficient to desire to do so; there must also be a possibility of doing so, and
this possibility there was not. It was impossible not to retreat one day's
march, and then it was as impossible not to retreat a second and a third day's
march, and finally, on the 1st of September, when the army reached Moscow,
despite the force of the growing feeling in the troops, the force of
circumstances compelled those troops to retreat beyond Moscow. And the troops
retreated one more last day's march, and abandoned Moscow to the enemy.
Persons who are accustomed to suppose that plans of campaigns and of battles
are made by generals in the same way as any of us sitting over a map in our
study make plans of how we would have acted in such and such a position, will be
perplexed by questions why Kutuzov, if he had to retreat, did not take this or
that course, why he did not take up a position before Fili, why he did not at
once retreat to the Kaluga road, leaving Moscow, and so on. Persons accustomed
to think in this way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which
always limit the action of any commander-in-chief. The action of a
commander-in-chief in the field has no sort of resemblance to the action we
imagine to ourselves, sitting at our ease in our study, going over some campaign
on the map with a certain given number of soldiers on each side, in a certain
known locality, starting our plans from a certain moment. The general is never
in the position of the beginning of any event, from which we always
contemplate the event. The general is always in the very middle of a changing
series of events, so that he is never at any moment in a position to deliberate
on all the bearings of the event that is taking place. Imperceptibly, moment by
moment, an event takes shape in all its bearings, and at every moment in that
uninterrupted, consecutive shaping of events the commander-in-chief is in the
centre of a most complex play of intrigues, of cares, of dependence and of
power, of projects, counsels, threats, and conceptions, with one thing depending
on another, and is under the continual necessity of answering the immense number
of mutually contradictory inquiries addressed to him.
We are, with perfect seriousness, told by those learned in military matters
that Kutuzov ought to have marched his army towards the Kaluga road long before
reaching Fili; that somebody did, indeed, suggest such a plan. But the commander
of an army has before him, especially at a difficult moment, not one, but dozens
of plans. And each of those plans, based on the rules of strategy and tactics,
contradicts all the rest. The commander's duty would, one would suppose, be
merely to select one out of those plans; but even this he cannot do. Time and
events will not wait. It is suggested to him, let us suppose, on the 28th to
move towards the Kaluga road, but at that moment an adjutant gallops up from
Miloradovitch to inquire whether to join battle at once with the French or to
retire. He must be given instructions at once, at the instant. And the order to
retire hinders us from turning to the Kaluga road. And then after the adjutant
comes the commissariat commissioner to inquire where the stores are to be taken,
and the ambulance director to ask where the wounded are to be moved to, and a
courier from Petersburg with a letter from the Tsar, not admitting the
possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the commander's rival, who is trying to
cut the ground from under his feet (and there are always more than one such)
proposes a new project, diametrically opposed to the plan of marching upon the
Kaluga road. The commander's own energies, too, require sleep and support. And a
respectable general, who has been overlooked when decorations were bestowed,
presents a complaint, and the inhabitants of the district implore protection,
and the officer sent to inspect the locality comes back with a report utterly
unlike that of the officer sent on the same commission just previously; and a
spy, and a prisoner, and a general who has made a reconnaissance, all describe
the position of the enemy's army quite differently. Persons who forget, or fail
to comprehend, those inevitable conditions under which a commander has to act,
present to us, for instance, the position of the troops at Fili, and assume that
the commander-in-chief was quite free on the 1st of September to decide the
question whether to abandon or to defend Moscow, though, with the position of
the Russian army, only five versts from Moscow, there could no longer be any
question on the subject. When was that question decided? At Drissa, and at
Smolensk, and most palpably of all on August the 24th at Shevardino, and on the
26th at Borodino, and every day and hour and minute of the retreat from Borodino
to Fili.
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