War and Peace

hat Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign
of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,
dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is
that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three armies
surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered French, hungry
and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the historians relate)
the aim of the Russians was to stop the French, to cut them off, and
capture them all?

How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than the
French had given battle at Borodinó, did not achieve its purpose when it
had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim was to capture
them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us that when we had
surrounded them with superior forces we could not beat them? How could
that happen?

History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions
says that this occurred because Kutúzov and Tormásov and Chichagóv, and
this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers....

But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were
guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried and
punished? But even if we admitted that Kutúzov, Chichagóv, and others
were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible
why, the position of the Russian army being what it was at Krásnoe and
at the Berëzina (in both cases we had superior forces), the French army
with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not captured, if that was what
the Russians aimed at.

The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military
historians (to the effect that Kutúzov hindered an attack) is unfounded,
for we know that he could not restrain the troops from attacking at
Vyázma and Tarútino.

Why was the Russian army—which with inferior forces had withstood the
enemy in full strength at Borodinó—defeated at Krásnoe and the Berëzina
by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was numerically
superior?

If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing
Napoleon and his marshals—and that aim was not merely frustrated but all
attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled—then this last period
of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the French to be a
series of victories, and quite wrongly considered victorious by Russian
historians.

The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims
of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical
rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit
that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for
Napoleon and defeats for Kutúzov.

But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a
conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French
victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series
of Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the
liberation of their country.

The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the historians
studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns and the generals,
from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth, have attributed to this
last period of the war of 1812 an aim that never existed, namely that of
cutting off and capturing Napoleon with his marshals and his army.

There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have been
senseless and its attainment quite impossible.

It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon’s disorganized
army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that is to say, was
doing just what every Russian desired. So what was the use of performing
various operations on the French who were running away as fast as they
possibly could?

Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men whose
whole energy was directed to flight.

Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one’s own troops in
order to destroy the French army, which without external interference
was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its path was not
blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than it actually
did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original army.

Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the
Emperor, kings, and dukes—whose capture would have been in the highest
degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit diplomatists of
the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized. Still more senseless
would have been the wish to capture army corps of the French, when our
own army had melted away to half before reaching Krásnoe and a whole
division would have been needed to convoy the corps of prisoners, and
when our men were not always getting full rations and the prisoners
already taken were perishing of hunger.

All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon and his
army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving out of
his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had planted, should
run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The only thing to be said
in excuse of that gardener would be that he was very angry. But not even
that could be said for those who drew up this project, for it was not
they who had suffered from the trampled beds.

But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would have
been senseless, it was impossible.

It was impossible first because—as experience shows that a three-mile
movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with the plans—the
probability of Chichagóv, Kutúzov, and Wittgenstein effecting a junction
on time at an appointed place was so remote as to be tantamount to
impossibility, as in fact thought Kutúzov, who when he received the plan
remarked that diversions planned over great distances do not yield the
desired results.

Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with which
Napoleon’s army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than the
Russians possessed would have been required.

Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term “to cut off” has no
meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army. To cut off
an army—to bar its road—is quite impossible, for there is always plenty
of room to avoid capture and there is the night when nothing can be
seen, as the military scientists might convince themselves by the
example of Krásnoe and of the Berëzina. It is only possible to capture
prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it is only possible
to catch a swallow if it settles on one’s hand. Men can only be taken
prisoners if they surrender according to the rules of strategy and
tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops quite rightly did not
consider that this suited them, since death by hunger and cold awaited
them in flight or captivity alike.

Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the world
began has a war been fought under such conditions as those that obtained
in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the French strained its
strength to the utmost and could not have done more without destroying
itself.

During the movement of the Russian army from Tarútino to Krásnoe it
lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to the
population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of the army
without a battle.

And it is of this period of the campaign—when the army lacked boots
and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and
was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees
of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and
the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be
maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where
discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for
months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and
cold, when half the army perished in a single month—it is of this period
of the campaign that the historians tell us how Milorádovich should have
made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormásov to another place,
and Chichagóv should have crossed (more than knee-deep in snow) to
somewhere else, and how so-and-so “routed” and “cut off” the French and
so on and so on.

The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should have been
done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not to blame
because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed that they should
do what was impossible.

All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between the
facts and the historical accounts only arises because the historians
dealing with the matter have written the history of the beautiful words
and sentiments of various generals, and not the history of the events.

To them the words of Milorádovich seem very interesting, and so do their
surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but the question
of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals and in graves
does not even interest them, for it does not come within the range of
their investigation.

Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans and
consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who took a
direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed insoluble
easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.

The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in
the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it was
senseless and unattainable.

The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion. That aim
was attained in the first place of itself, as the French ran away,
and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight. Secondly it was
attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying the French, and
thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was following the French,
ready to use its strength in case their movement stopped.

The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the
experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a
menace than to strike the running animal on the head.

BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13