War and Peace

an’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but
the desire to find those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without
considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one
of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the
first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says:
“This is the cause!” In historical events (where the actions of men are
the subject of observation) the first and most primitive approximation
to present itself was the will of the gods and, after that, the will of
those who stood in the most prominent position—the heroes of history.
But we need only penetrate to the essence of any historic event—which
lies in the activity of the general mass of men who take part in it—to
be convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the
actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may seem
to be a matter of indifference whether we understand the meaning of
historical events this way or that; yet there is the same difference
between a man who says that the people of the West moved on the East
because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this happened because
it had to happen, as there is between those who declared that the
earth was stationary and that the planets moved round it and those who
admitted that they did not know what upheld the earth, but knew there
were laws directing its movement and that of the other planets. There
is, and can be, no cause of an historical event except the one cause of
all causes. But there are laws directing events, and some of these laws
are known to us while we are conscious of others we cannot comprehend.
The discovery of these laws is only possible when we have quite
abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man,
just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was
possible only when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the
earth.

The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodinó and the
occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the most
important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the Russian
army from the Ryazána to the Kalúga road and to the Tarútino camp—the
so-called flank march across the Krásnaya Pakhrá River. They ascribe the
glory of that achievement of genius to different men and dispute as to
whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians, including the French,
acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders when they speak of
that flank march. But it is hard to understand why military writers,
and following them others, consider this flank march to be the profound
conception of some one man who saved Russia and destroyed Napoleon. In
the first place it is hard to understand where the profundity and genius
of this movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to see that
the best position for an army when it is not being attacked is where
there are most provisions; and even a dull boy of thirteen could have
guessed that the best position for an army after its retreat from Moscow
in 1812 was on the Kalúga road. So it is impossible to understand by
what reasoning the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver
was a profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why
they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and destroy
the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded, accompanied,
or followed by other circumstances, might have proved ruinous to the
Russians and salutary for the French. If the position of the Russian
army really began to improve from the time of that march, it does not at
all follow that the march was the cause of it.

That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to
the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its
destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If
Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
inactive? If the Russian army at Krásnaya Pakhrá had given battle as
Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French
attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhrá? What
would have happened if on approaching Tarútino, Napoleon had attacked
the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when he
attacked them at Smolénsk? What would have happened had the French moved
on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank march that
brought salvation might have proved disastrous.

The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying
history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be
attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in
reality, like the retreat from Filí, it did not suggest itself to anyone
in its entirety, but resulted—moment by moment, step by step, event by
event—from an endless number of most diverse circumstances and was only
seen in its entirety when it had been accomplished and belonged to the
past.

At the council at Filí the prevailing thought in the minds of the
Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, a
direct retreat by the Nízhni road. In proof of this there is the fact
that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and above
all there is the well-known conversation after the council, between the
commander in chief and Lanskóy, who was in charge of the commissariat
department. Lanskóy informed the commander in chief that the army
supplies were for the most part stored along the Oká in the Túla and
Ryazán provinces, and that if they retreated on Nízhni the army would
be separated from its supplies by the broad river Oká, which cannot be
crossed early in winter. This was the first indication of the necessity
of deviating from what had previously seemed the most natural course—a
direct retreat on Nízhni-Nóvgorod. The army turned more to the south,
along the Ryazán road and nearer to its supplies. Subsequently the
inactivity of the French (who even lost sight of the Russian army),
concern for the safety of the arsenal at Túla, and especially the
advantages of drawing nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn
still further south to the Túla road. Having crossed over, by a forced
march, to the Túla road beyond the Pakhrá, the Russian commanders
intended to remain at Podólsk and had no thought of the Tarútino
position; but innumerable circumstances and the reappearance of French
troops who had for a time lost touch with the Russians, and projects
of giving battle, and above all the abundance of provisions in Kalúga
province, obliged our army to turn still more to the south and to cross
from the Túla to the Kalúga road and go to Tarútino, which was between
the roads along which those supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to
say when it was decided to abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say
precisely when, or by whom, it was decided to move to Tarútino. Only
when the army had got there, as the result of innumerable and varying
forces, did people begin to assure themselves that they had desired this
movement and long ago foreseen its result.