Book Fourteen: 1812 - Chapter XIX

by Leo Tolstoy

　　What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaignof 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it isthat the French were not all captured or destroyed when our threearmies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disorderedFrench, hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as thehistorians 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 thanthe French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purposewhen it had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aimwas to capture them? Can the French be so enormously superior to usthat when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could notbeat them? How could that happen?

　　History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questionssays that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov,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 wereguilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not triedand punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, andothers were the cause of the Russian failures, it is stillincomprehensible why, the position of the Russian army being what itwas at Krasnoe and at the Berezina (in both cases we had superiorforces), the French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was notcaptured, if that was what the Russians aimed at.

　　The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian militaryhistorians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) isunfounded, for we know that he could not restrain the troops fromattacking at Vyazma and Tarutino.

　　Why was the Russian army- which with inferior forces had withstoodthe enemy in full strength at Borodino- defeated at Krasnoe and theBerezina by the disorganized crowds of the French when it wasnumerically superior?

　　If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturingNapoleon and his marshals- and that aim was not merely frustratedbut all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled- thenthis last period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by theFrench to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly consideredvictorious by Russian historians.

　　The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claimsof logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyricalrhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admitthat the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories forNapoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.

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

　　The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that thehistorians studying the events from the letters of the sovereignsand the generals, from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth,have attributed to this last period of the war of 1812 an aim thatnever existed, namely that of cutting off and capturing Napoleonwith his marshals and his army.

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

　　It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon'sdisorganized army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, thatis to say, was doing just what every Russian desired. So what wasthe use of performing various operations on the French who wererunning away as fast as they possibly could?

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

　　Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one's owntroops in order to destroy the French army, which without externalinterference was destroying itself at such a rate that, though itspath was not blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more thanit actually did in December, namely a hundredth part of the originalarmy.

　　Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive theEmperor, kings, and dukes- whose capture would have been in thehighest degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroitdiplomatists of the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized.Still more senseless would have been the wish to capture army corps ofthe French, when our own army had melted away to half beforereaching Krasnoe and a whole division would have been needed to convoythe corps of prisoners, and when our men were not always gettingfull rations and the prisoners already taken were perishing of hunger.

　　All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleonand his army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when drivingout of his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he hadplanted, should run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. Theonly thing to be said in excuse of that gardener would be that hewas very angry. But not even that could be said for those who drewup this project, for it was not they who had suffered from thetrampled beds.

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

　　It was impossible first because- as experience shows that athree-mile movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides withthe plans- the probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgensteineffecting a junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as tobe tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who whenhe received the plan remarked that diversions planned over greatdistances do not yield the desired results.

　　Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum withwhich Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces thanthe 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 isalways plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night whennothing can be seen, as the military scientists might convincethemselves by the example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is onlypossible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as itis only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Mencan only be taken prisoners if they surrender according to the rulesof strategy and tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troopsquite rightly did not consider that this suited them, since death byhunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.

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

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

　　And it is of this period of the campaign- when the army lacked bootsand sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, andwas camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degreesof frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight andthe rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot bemaintained, when men were taken into that region of death wherediscipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but formonths, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger andcold, when half the army perished in a single month- it is of thisperiod of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovichshould have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov toanother place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more thanknee-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 shouldhave been done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are notto blame because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposedthat they should do what was impossible.

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

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

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

　　The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except inthe imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because itwas 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 Frenchran away, and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight.Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroyingthe French, and thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army wasfollowing the French, ready to use its strength in case their movementstopped.

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