Book Ten: 1812 - Chapter XIX

by Leo Tolstoy

　　On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the ShevardinoRedoubt was fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by eitherside, and on the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodino itself tookplace.

　　Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino given andaccepted? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not theleast sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediateresult for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were broughtnearer to the destruction of Moscow- which we feared more thananything in the world; and for the French its immediate result wasthat they were brought nearer to the destruction of their wholearmy- which they feared more than anything in the world. What theresult must be was quite obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzovaccepted that battle.

　　If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that itmust have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteenhundred miles and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarterof his army, he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must havebeen equally clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and risking theloss of a quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. ForKutuzov this was mathematically clear, as it is that if when playingdraughts I have one man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainlylose, and therefore should not exchange. When my opponent hassixteen men and I have fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker thanhe, but when I have exchanged thirteen more men he will be three timesas strong as I am.

　　Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to theFrench was about as five to six, but after that battle it was littlemore than one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against ahundred and twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fiftythousand against a hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experiencedKutuzov accepted the battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be acommander of genius, gave it, losing a quarter of his army andlengthening his lines of communication still more. If it is saidthat he expected to end the campaign by occupying Moscow as he hadended a previous campaign by occupying Vienna, there is muchevidence to the contrary. Napoleon's historians themselves tell usthat from Smolensk onwards he wished to stop, knew the danger of hisextended position, and knew that the occupation of Moscow would not bethe end of the campaign, for he had seen at Smolensk the state inwhich Russian towns were left to him, and had not received a singlereply to his repeated announcements of his wish to negotiate.

　　In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov actedinvoluntarily and irrationally. But later on, to fit what hadoccurred, the historians provided cunningly devised evidence of theforesight and genius the generals who, of all the blind tools ofhistory were the most enslaved and involuntary.

　　The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroesfurnish the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable toaccustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of thatkind are meaningless.

　　On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and thepreceding battle of Shevardino were fought, there also exists adefinite and well-known, but quite false, conception. All thehistorians describe the affair as follows:

　　The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk soughtout for itself the best position for a general engagement and foundsuch a position at Borodino.

　　The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on theleft of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and almost at a rightangle to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where thebattle was fought.

　　In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was setup on the Shevardino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth,we are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, onthe twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was inposition on the field of Borodino.

　　So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who caresto look into the matter can easily convince himself.

　　The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on thecontrary, during the retreat passed many positions better thanBorodino. They did not stop at any one of these positions becauseKutuzov did not wish to occupy a position he had not himself chosen,because the popular demand for a battle had not yet expressed itselfstrongly enough, and because Miloradovich had not yet arrived with themilitia, and for many other reasons. The fact is that otherpositions they had passed were stronger, and that the position atBorodino (the one where the battle was fought), far from being strong,was no more a position than any other spot one might find in theRussian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at hazard.

　　Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field ofBorodino to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (thatis, the position on which the battle took place), but never till thetwenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might befought there. This was shown first by the fact that there were noentrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on thetwenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by theposition of the Shevardino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senselessin front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was itmore strongly fortified than any other post? And why were allefforts exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it tilllate at night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would havesufficed to observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the positionon which the battle was fought had not been foreseen and that theShevardino Redoubt was not an advanced post of that position, wehave the fact that up to the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly andBagration were convinced that the Shevardino Redoubt was the leftflank of the position, and that Kutuzov himself in his report, writtenin hot haste after the battle, speaks of the Shevardino Redoubt as theleft flank of the position. It was much later, when reports on thebattle of Borodino were written at leisure, that the incorrect andextraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify the mistakesof a commander in chief who had to be represented as infallible)that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced post- whereas in realityit was simply a fortified point on the left flank- and that the battleof Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position previouslyselected, where as it was fought on a quite unexpected spot whichwas almost unentrenched.

　　The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the riverKolocha- which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at anacute angle- so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right flanknear the village of Novoe, and the center at Borodino at theconfluence of the rivers Kolocha and Voyna.

　　To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of howthe battle was actually fought, this position, protected by theriver Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object wasto prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.

　　Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (asthe history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utitsato Borodino (he could not have seen that position because it did notexist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but whilepursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of theRussian position- at the Shevardino Redoubt- and unexpectedly forthe Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And the Russians,not having time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their leftwing from the position they had intended to occupy and took up a newposition which had not been foreseen and was not fortified. Bycrossing to the other side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad,Napoleon shifted the whole forthcoming battle from right to left(looking from the Russian side) and transferred it to the plainbetween Utitsa, Semenovsk, and Borodino- a plain no moreadvantageous as a position than any other plain in Russia- and therethe whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took place.

　　Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth tothe Kolocha, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on theredoubt but had begun the attack next morning, no one would havedoubted that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our andthe battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that casewe should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubt- our leftflank- still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in thecenter or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place onthe twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. Butas the attack on our left flank took place in the evening after theretreat of our rea guard (that is, immediately after the fight atGridneva), and as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were notin time, to begin a general engagement then on the evening of thetwenty-fourth, the first and chief action of the battle of Borodinowas already lost on the twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the lossof the one fought on the twenty-sixth.

　　After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found ourselves onthe morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank,and were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where itchanced to be.

　　Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended byweak, unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of thatposition was increased by the fact that the Russian commanders- nothaving fully realized what had happened, namely the loss of ourposition on the left flank and the shifting of the whole field ofthe forthcoming battle from right to left- maintained their extendedposition from the village of Novoe to Utitsa, and consequently hadto move their forces from right to left during the battle. So ithappened that throughout the whole battle the Russians opposed theentire French army launched against our left flank with but half asmany men. (Poniatowski's action against Utitsa, and Uvarov's on theright flank against the French, were actions distinct from the maincourse of the battle.) So the battle of Borodino did not take place atall as (in an effort to conceal our commanders' mistakes even at thecost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian army and people) ithas been described. The battle of Borodino was not fought on achosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly weaker thanthose of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the ShevardinoRedoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodino on an open andalmost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous as theFrench; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not merelyunthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive result,but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete disintegrationand flight.