Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The Russian army,
expecting Napoleon to take the road to the right beyond
the Dnieperwhich was the only reasonable thing for him
to dothemselves turned to the right and came out onto the
highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of blindman’s
buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing their enemy
unexpectedly the French fell into confusion and stopped
short from the sudden fright, but then they resumed their
flight, abandoning their comrades who were farther behind. Then for three days separate portions of the French
armyfirst Murat’s (the vice-king’s), then Davout’s, and then
Ney’sran, as it were, the gauntlet of the Russian army. They
abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy baggage,
their artillery, and half their men, and fled, getting past the
Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.
Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of Smolensk which were in nobody’s way,
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because despite the unfortunate plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor against which
they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of ten
thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one
thousand men left, having abandoned all the rest and all his
cannon, and having crossed the Dnieper at night by stealth
at a wooded spot.
From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna,
still playing at blindman’s buff with the pursuing army. At
the Berezina they again became disorganized, many were
drowned and many surrendered, but those who got across
the river fled farther. Their supreme chief donned a fur coat
and, having seated himself in a sleigh, galloped on alone,
abandoning his companions. The others who could do so
drove away too, leaving those who could not to surrender
or die.
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Chapter XVIII
This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during
which they did all they could to destroy themselves. From
the time they turned onto the Kaluga road to the day their
leader fled from the army, none of the movements of the
crowd had any sense. So one might have thought that regarding this period of the campaign the historians, who
attributed the actions of the mass to the will of one man,
would have found it impossible to make the story of the
retreat fit their theory. But no! Mountains of books have
been written by the historians about this campaign, and
everywhere are described Napoleon’s arrangements, the
maneuvers, and his profound plans which guided the army,
as well as the military genius shown by his marshals.
The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free
road into a well-supplied district and the parallel road
was open to him along which Kutuzov afterwards pursued
himthis unnecessary retreat along a devastated roadis explained to us as being due to profound considerations.
Similarly profound considerations are given for his retreat
from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is
described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle and take personal command, and to have walked
about with a birch stick and said:
‘J’ai assez fait l’empereur; il est temps de faire le general,’*
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but nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning
to its fate the scattered fragments of the army he left behind.
”I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act the general.’ Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals, especially of Neya greatness of soul consisting in this: that he made his way by night around through the forest and across the Dnieper and escaped to Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths of his men. And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic army is presented to us by the historians as something great and characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child is taught to be ashamed ofeven that act finds justification in the historians’ language. When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of ‘greatness.’ ‘Greatness,’ it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the ‘great’ man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a ‘great’ man can be blamed. ‘C’est grand!’ say the historians, and there no longer
exists either good or evil but only ‘grand’ and ‘not grand.’
Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic,
in their conception, of some special animals called ‘heroes.’
And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm fur coat and leav
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ing to perish those who were not merely his comrades but
were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que
c’est grand,*[2] and his soul is tranquil.
*”It is great.’
[2] That it is great. ‘Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas,’ said he. And the whole world for
fifty years has been repeating: ‘Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le
Grand!’ Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.
*”From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.’
And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not
commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is
merely to admit one’s own nothingness and immeasurable
meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by
Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there
is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are
absent.
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Chapter XIX
What Russian, reading the account of the last part of
the campaign of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret, dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who
has not asked himself how it is that the French were not all
captured or destroyed when our three armies surrounded
them in superior numbers, when the disordered French,
hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as
the historians 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 than the French had given battle at Borodino,
did not achieve its purpose when it had surrounded the
French on three sides and when its aim was to capture them?
Can the French be so enormously superior to us that when
we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not
beat them? How could that happen?
History (or what is called by that name) replying to these
questions says 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 were guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan
were they not tried and punished? But even if we admitted
that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and others were the cause of the
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Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible why, the position of the Russian army being what it was at Krasnoe and
at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior forces), the
French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not
captured, if that was what the Russians aimed at.
The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian
military historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an
attack) is unfounded, for we know that he could not restrain
the troops from attacking at Vyazma and Tarutino.
Why was the Russian armywhich with inferior forces had
withstood the enemy in full strength at Borodinodefeated
at Krasnoe and the Berezina by the disorganized crowds of
the French when it was numerically superior?
If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and
capturing Napoleon and his marshalsand that aim was not
merely frustrated but all attempts to attain it were most
shamefully baffledthen this last period of the campaign is
quite rightly considered by the French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered victorious by Russian
historians.
The Russian military historians in so far as they submit
to claims of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of
their lyrical rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth,
must reluctantly admit that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for Napoleon and defeats for
Kutuzov.
But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that
such a conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of
French victories brought the French complete destruction,
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while the series of Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the liberation of their country.
The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the
historians studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns and the generals, from memoirs, reports, projects,
and so forth, have attributed to this last period of the war
of 1812 an aim that never existed, namely that of cutting off
and capturing Napoleon with his marshals and his army.
There never was or could have been such an aim, for it
would have been senseless and its attainment quite impossible.
It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon’s
disorganized army was flying from Russia with all possible
speed, that is to say, was doing just what every Russian desired. So what was the use of performing various operations
on the French who were running away as fast as they possibly could?
Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men whose whole energy was directed to flight.
Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one’s
own troops in order to destroy the French army, which
without external interference was destroying itself at such a
rate that, though its path was not blocked, it could not carry
across the frontier more than it actually did in December,
namely a hundredth part of the original army.
Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take
captive the Emperor, kings, and dukeswhose capture would
have been in the highest degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit diplomatists of the time (Joseph de
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Maistre and others) recognized. Still more senseless would
have been the wish to capture army corps of the French,
when our own army had melted away to half before reaching Krasnoe and
