War And Peace: Book 11 - CHAPTER II

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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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1. Ebooks list page : 84
2. War And Peace: Book 4 - CHAPTER V
3. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER III
4. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER II
5. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER I
6. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER IV
7. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XIX
8. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XVI
9. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XV
10. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XIV
11. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER V
12. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER VI
13. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XIX
14. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XVI
15. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XIV
16. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XV