War and Peace
together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that take on a
national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds opposing
each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when attacked by
stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers. This was done
by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in the Caucasus, and
by the Russians in 1812.
People have called this kind of war “guerrilla warfare” and assume that
by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a war does
not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known rule
of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That rule says that an
attacker should concentrate his forces in order to be stronger than his
opponent at the moment of conflict.
Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes
that rule.
This contradiction arises from the fact that military science assumes
the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. Military
science says that the more troops the greater the strength. Les gros
bataillons ont toujours raison. *
* Large battalions are always victorious.
For military science to say this is like defining momentum in mechanics
by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are equal or unequal
to each other simply because the masses involved are equal or unequal.
Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.
In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass
and some unknown x.
Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact
that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that
small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence
of this unknown factor and tries to discover it—now in a geometric
formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in the
genius of the commanders. But the assignment of these various meanings
to the factor does not yield results which accord with the historic
facts.
Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to gratify
the “heroes”) of the efficacy of the directions issued in wartime by
commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.
That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the
greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the men
composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are not,
fighting under the command of a genius, in two—or three-line formation,
with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a minute. Men
who want to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous
conditions for fighting.
The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass gives
the resulting force. To define and express the significance of this
unknown factor—the spirit of an army—is a problem for science.
This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to substitute
for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that force becomes
apparent—such as the commands of the general, the equipment employed,
and so on—mistaking these for the real significance of the factor,
and if we recognize this unknown quantity in its entirety as being
the greater or lesser desire to fight and to face danger. Only then,
expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative
significance of this factor, can we hope to define the unknown.
Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions, or
divisions, conquer—that is, kill or take captive—all the others, while
themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and on the other
fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to the fifteen, and
therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This equation does not
give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us a ratio between two
unknowns. And by bringing variously selected historic units (battles,
campaigns, periods of war) into such equations, a series of numbers
could be obtained in which certain laws should exist and might be
discovered.
The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when attacking, and
in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms the truth that the
strength of an army depends on its spirit. To lead men forward under
fire more discipline (obtainable only by movement in masses) is needed
than is needed to resist attacks. But this rule which leaves out of
account the spirit of the army continually proves incorrect and is in
particularly striking contrast to the facts when some strong rise or
fall in the spirit of the troops occurs, as in all national wars.
The French, retreating in 1812—though according to tactics they should
have separated into detachments to defend themselves—congregated into
a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen that only the mass
held the army together. The Russians, on the contrary, ought according
to tactics to have attacked in mass, but in fact they split up
into small units, because their spirit had so risen that separate
individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the French without needing
any compulsion to induce them to expose themselves to hardships and
dangers.
CHAPTER III
The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into
Smolénsk.
Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the
government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had
been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off
as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denís Davýdov,
with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the value of
this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of military science
destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit for taking the first
step toward regularizing this method of warfare.
On August 24 Davýdov’s first partisan detachment was formed and then
others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more
numerous these detachments became.
The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the
fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree—the
French army—and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October, when
the French were fleeing toward Smolénsk, there were hundreds of such
companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some that adopted
all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and the
comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were
also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of peasants and
landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which
captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and there
was Vasílisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew hundreds of the
French.
The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of
October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,
amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded
and captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,
hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the end
of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had become
clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what could
not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and moving
according to rules at a distance from the French, still regarded many
things as impossible. The small bands that had started their activities
long before and had already observed the French closely considered
things possible which the commanders of the big detachments did not dare
to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who crept in among the French
now considered everything possible.
On October 22, Denísov (who was one of the irregulars) was with his
group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early morning he
and his party had been on the move. All day long he had been watching
from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French convoy of
cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the rest of the
army, which—as was learned from spies and prisoners—was moving under a
strong escort to Smolénsk. Besides Denísov and Dólokhov (who also led
a small party and moved in Denísov’s vicinity), the commanders of some
large divisions with staffs also knew of this convoy and, as Denísov
expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for it. Two of the commanders
of large parties—one a Pole and the other a German—sent invitations
to Denísov almost simultaneously, requesting him to join up with their
divisions to attack the convoy.
“No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself,” said Denísov on reading
these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite his heartfelt
desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general, he had to forgo
that pleasure because he was already under the command of the Polish
general. To the Polish general he replied to the same effect, informing
him that he was already under the command of the German.
Having arranged matters thus, Denísov and Dólokhov intended, without
reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that
convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from
the village of Mikúlino to that of Shámshevo. To the left of the road
between Mikúlino and Shámshevo there were large forests, extending in
some places up to the road itself though in others a mile or more back
from it. Through these forests Denísov and his party rode all day,
sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to the very
edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That morning,
Cossacks of Denísov’s party had seized and carried off into the forest
two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck in the mud not
far from Mikúlino where the forest ran close to the road. Since then,
and until evening, the party had watched the movements of the French
without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach Shámshevo
quietly without alarming them and then, after joining Dólokhov who was
to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman’s hut in the forest
less than a mile from Shámshevo, to surprise the French at dawn, falling
like an avalanche on their heads from two sides, and rout and capture
them all at one blow.
In their rear, more than a mile from Mikúlino where the forest came
right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any fresh
columns of French should show themselves.
Beyond Shámshevo, Dólokhov was to observe the road in the same way, to
find out at what distance there were other French troops. They reckoned
that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denísov had two hundred, and
Dólokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of numbers did not
deter Denísov. All that he now wanted to know was what troops these were
and to learn that he had to capture a “tongue”—that is, a man from
the enemy column. That morning’s attack on the wagons had been made so
hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a
little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he
could tell them nothing definite about the troops in that column.
Denísov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of
putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tíkhon Shcherbáty, a
peasant of his party, to Shámshevo to try and seize at least one of the
French quartermasters who had been sent on in advance.
CHAPTER IV
It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both
the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and then
suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.
Denísov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain ran down
was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides. Like his horse,