‘O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer…’ said
he in a tremulous voice with folded hands. ‘Russia is saved.
I thank Thee, O Lord!’ and he wept.
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Chapter XVIII
From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all Kutuzov’s activity was directed toward restraining
his troops, by authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing
enemy. Dokhturov went to Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov
lingered with the main army and gave orders for the evacuation of Kalugaa retreat beyond which town seemed to him
quite possible.
Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without
waiting for his retreat fled in the opposite direction.
Napoleon’s historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers
at Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as
to what would have happened had Napoleon been in time to
penetrate into the rich southern provinces.
But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him
from advancing into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did not bar his way), the historians forget that
nothing could have saved his army, for then already it bore
within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How could that
armywhich had found abundant supplies in Moscow and
had trampled them underfoot instead of keeping them,
and on arriving at Smolensk had looted provisions instead
of storing themhow could that army recuperate in Kaluga
province, which was inhabited by Russians such as those
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who lived in Moscow, and where fire had the same property
of consuming what was set ablaze?
That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle
of Borodino and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within
itself, as it were, the chemical elements of dissolution.
The members of what had once been an armyNapoleon
himself and all his soldiers fledwithout knowing whither,
each concerned only to make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of which they
were all more or less vaguely conscious.
So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets,
when the generals pretending to confer together expressed
various opinions, all mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier Mouton who, speaking
last, said what they all felt: that the one thing needful was
to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all
recognized.
But though they all realized that it was necessary to get
away, there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting
that they must flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this shock came in due time. It was
what the French called ‘le hourra de l’Empereur.’
The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon
rode out early in the morning amid the lines of his army
with his suite of marshals and an escort, on the pretext of
inspecting the army and the scene of the previous and of the
impending battle. Some Cossacks on the prowl for booty fell
in with the Emperor and very nearly captured him. If the
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Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what saved him
was the very thing that was destroying the French army, the
booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they
went after plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed after the plunder and Napoleon managed
to escape.
When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the
Emperor himself in the midst of his army, it was clear that
there was nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible along
the nearest, familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old
stomach understood that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and under the influence of the fright the
Cossacks had given him he at once agreed with Mouton and
issued ordersas the historians tell usto retreat by the Smolensk road.
That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army
retreated, does not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat,
but that the forces which influenced the whole army and
directed it along the Mozhaysk (that is, the Smolensk) road
acted simultaneously on him also.
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Chapter XIX
A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To
be able to go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the end of those thousand miles.
One must have the prospect of a promised land to have the
strength to move.
The promised land for the French during their advance
had been Moscow, during their retreat it was their native
land. But that native land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely necessary to set aside
his final goal and to say to himself: ‘Today I shall get to a
place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and spend the
night,’ and during the first day’s journey that resting place
eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are always
magnified in a crowd.
For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road,
the final goaltheir native landwas too remote, and their immediate goal was Smolensk, toward which all their desires
and hopes, enormously intensified in the mass, urged them
on. It was not that they knew that much food and fresh
troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they were told so
(on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because
this alone could give them strength to move on and endure
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their present privations. So both those who knew and those
who did not know deceived themselves, and pushed on to
Smolensk as to a promised land.
Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising energy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they
had fixed on. Besides the common impulse which bound
the whole crowd of French into one mass and supplied them
with a certain energy, there was another cause binding
them togethertheir great numbers. As with the physical law
of gravity, their enormous mass drew the individual human
atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they moved
like a whole nation.
Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself
up as a prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery;
but on the one hand the force of this common attraction to
Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender
to a company, and though the French availed themselves of
every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to
surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did
not always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded
and swift movement deprived them of that possibility and
rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the Russians
to stop this movement, to which the French were directing
all their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical
disruption of the body could hasten the process of decomposition.
A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There
is a certain limit of time in less than which no amount of
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heat can melt the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat
the more solidified the remaining snow becomes.
Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood
this. When the flight of the French army along the Smolensk
road became well defined, what Konovnitsyn had foreseen
on the night of the eleventh of October began to occur. The
superior officers all wanted to distinguish themselves, to cut
off, to seize, to capture, and to overthrow the French, and all
clamored for action.
Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very
limited in the case of any commander in chief) to prevent
an attack.
He could not tell them what we say now: ‘Why fight, why
block the road, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate wretches? What is the use of that, when a
third of their army has melted away on the road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?’ But drawing from his
aged wisdom what they could understand, he told them 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 French near Vyazma could not resist their desire to
cut off and break up two French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov they 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 to the attack with music and with
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drums beating, and killed and lost thousands of men.
But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the
French army, closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily melting away, to pursue its fatal path to
Smolensk.
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War and Peace
BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812
1937
Chapter I
The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow
that followed it and the flight of the French without further
conflicts, is one of the most instructive phenomena in history.
All historians agree that the external activity of states
and nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed
in wars, and that as a direct result of greater or less success
in war the political strength of states and nations increases
or decreases.
Strange as may be the historical account of how some
king or emperor, having quarreled with another, collects
an army, fights his enemy’s army, gains a victory by killing
three, five, or ten thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all the facts of
history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one army against
another is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of
an increase or decrease in the strength of the nationeven
though it is unintelligible why the defeat of an armya hundredth part of a nationshould oblige that whole nation to
submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the rights of
the conquering nation have increased to the detriment of
the defeated. An army has suffered defeat, and at once a
people loses its rights in proportion to the severity of the
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reverse, and if its
