Book Thirteen: 1812 - Chapter XIX

by Leo Tolstoy

　　A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able togo a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits himat the end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of apromised land to have the strength to move.

　　The promised land for the French during their advance had beenMoscow, during their retreat it was their native land. But that nativeland was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it isabsolutely necessary to set aside his final goal and to say tohimself: "Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where Ishall rest and spend the night," and during the first day's journeythat resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all hishopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are alwaysmagnified in a crowd.

　　For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the finalgoal- their native land- was too remote, and their immediate goalwas Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormouslyintensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew thatmuch food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that theywere told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleonhimself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because thisalone could give them strength to move on and endure their presentprivations. So both those who knew and those who did not know deceivedthemselves, and pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised land.

　　Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprisingenergy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on.Besides the common impulse which bound the whole crowd of Frenchinto one mass and supplied them with a certain energy, there wasanother cause binding them together- their great numbers. As withthe physical law of gravity, their enormous mass drew the individualhuman atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they movedlike a whole nation.

　　Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as aprisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the onehand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, dreweach of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corpscould not surrender to a company, and though the French availedthemselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and tosurrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did notalways occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swiftmovement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not onlydifficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, towhich the French were directing all their energies. Beyond a certainlimit no mechanical disruption of the body could hasten the process ofdecomposition.

　　A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is acertain limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can meltthe snow. On the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified theremaining snow becomes.

　　Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this. When theflight of the French army along the Smolensk road became well defined,what Konovnitsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh ofOctober began to occur. The superior officers all wanted todistinguish themselves, to cut off, to seize, to capture, and tooverthrow the French, and all clamored for action.

　　Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limitedin the case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.

　　He could not tell them what we say now: "Why fight, why block theroad, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunatewretches? What is the use of that, when a third of their army hasmelted away on the road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?" Butdrawing from his aged wisdom what they could understand, he toldthem of the golden bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him,flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the dying beast.

　　Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity to the Frenchnear Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break uptwo French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzovthey sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.

　　And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced tothe attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lostthousands of men.

　　But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadilymelting away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk.