Book Thirteen: 1812 - Chapter I

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in theircompleteness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted inman's soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity ofthe conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be thecause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems tohim intelligible and says: "This is the cause!" In historical events(where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the firstand most primitive approximation to present itself was the will of thegods and, after that, the will of those who stood in the mostprominent position- the heroes of history. But we need onlypenetrate to the essence of any historic event- which lies in theactivity of the general mass of men who take part in it- to beconvinced that the will of the historic hero does not control theactions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It mayseem to be a matter of indifference whether we understand themeaning of historical events this way or that; yet there is the samedifference between a man who says that the people of the West moved onthe East because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that thishappened because it had to happen, as there is between those whodeclared that the earth was stationary and that the planets movedround it and those who admitted that they did not know what upheld theearth, but knew there were laws directing its movement and that of theother planets. There is, and can be, no cause of an historical eventexcept the one cause of all causes. But there are laws directingevents, and some of these laws are known to us while we areconscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery of theselaws is only possible when possible when we have quite abandoned theattempt to find the cause in the will of some one man, just as thediscovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was possible onlywhen men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the earth.

　　The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and theoccupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, themost important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of theRussian army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutinocamp- the so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River. Theyascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men anddispute as to whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians,including the French, acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanderswhen they speak of that flank march. But it is hard to understandwhy military writers, and following them others, consider this flankmarch to be the profound conception of some one man who saved Russiaand destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to understandwhere the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not muchmental effort was needed to see that the best position for an armywhen it is not being attacked is where there are most provisions;and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the bestposition for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was onthe Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoningthe historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver was aprofound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just whythey think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia anddestroy the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded,accompanied, or followed by other circumstances, might have provedruinous to the Russians and salutary for the French. If the positionof the Russian army really began to improve from the time of thatmarch, 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 tothe Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to itsdestruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? IfMurat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remainedinactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given battle asBennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the Frenchattacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhra? Whatwould have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon hadattacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown whenhe attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had theFrench moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flankmarch that brought salvation might have proved disastrous.

　　The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studyinghistory deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot beattributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that inreality, like the retreat from Fili, it did not suggest itself toanyone in its entirety, but resulted- moment by moment, step bystep, event by event- from an endless number of most diversecircumstances and was only seen in its entirety when it had beenaccomplished and belonged to the past.

　　At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds of theRussian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely,a direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In proof of this there is thefact that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, andabove all there is the well-known conversation after the council,between the commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of thecommissariat department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chiefthat the army supplies were for the most part stored along the Okain the Tula and Ryazan provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhnithe army would be separated from its supplies by the broad riverOka, which cannot be crossed early in winter. This was the firstindication of the necessity of deviating from what had previouslyseemed the most natural course- a direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod.The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer toits supplies. Subsequently the in activity of the French (who evenlost sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the arsenalat Tula, and especially the advantages of drawing nearer to itssupplies caused the army to turn still further south to the Tula road.Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the Tula road beyond thePakhra, the Russian commanders intended to remain at Podolsk and hadno thought of the Tarutino position; but innumerable circumstances andthe reappearance of French troops who had for a time lost touch withthe Russians, and projects of giving battle, and above all theabundance of provisions in Kaluga province, obliged our army to turnstill more to the south and to cross from the Tula to the Kalugaroad and go to Tarutino, which was between the roads along which thosesupplies lay. Just as it is impossible to say when it was decided toabandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say precisely when, or by whom,it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only when the army had gotthere, as the result of innumerable and varying forces, did peoplebegin to assure themselves that they had desired this movement andlong ago foreseen its result.