War and Peace
One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolénsk there were several
different roads available for the French, and one would have thought
that during their stay of four days they might have learned where
the enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan and
undertaken something new. But after a four days’ halt the mob, with no
maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten track, neither
to the right nor to the left but along the old—the worst—road, through
Krásnoe and Orshá.
Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French separated
in their flight and spread out over a distance of twenty-four hours. In
front of them all fled the Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The
Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take the road to the right beyond
the Dnieper—which was the only reasonable thing for him to do—themselves
turned to the right and came out onto the highroad at Krásnoe. 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 army—first Murat’s (the vice-king’s),
then Davout’s, and then Ney’s—ran, 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
Smolénsk which were in nobody’s way, 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 Orshá 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 Orshá they fled farther along the road to Vílna, still playing
at blindman’s buff with the pursuing army. At the Berëzina 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.
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 Kalúga 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 Málo-Yaroslávets when he had a free road into a
well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along
which Kutúzov afterwards pursued him—this unnecessary retreat along
a devastated road—is explained to us as being due to profound
considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for
his retreat from Smolénsk to Orshá. Then his heroism at Krásnoe 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 général,” * 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 Ney—a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he made his way by
night around through the forest and across the Dnieper and escaped to
Orshá, 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 of—even 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 leaving 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! Napoléon 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.
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 Borodinó, 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 Kutúzov and Tormásov and Chichagóv, 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 Kutúzov, Chichagóv, and others
were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible
why, the position of the Russian army being what it was at Krásnoe and
at the Berëzina (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 Kutúzov hindered an attack) is unfounded,
for we know that he could not restrain the troops from attacking at
Vyázma and Tarútino.
Why was the Russian army—which with inferior forces had withstood the
enemy in full strength at Borodinó—defeated at Krásnoe and the Berëzina
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 marshals—and that aim was not merely frustrated but all
attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled—then 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 Kutúzov.
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, 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 dukes—whose capture would have been in the highest
degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit diplomatists of
the time (Joseph de 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 Krásnoe and a whole
division would have been needed to convoy the corps of prisoners, and
when our men were not always getting full rations and the prisoners
already taken were perishing of hunger.
All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon and his
army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving out of
his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had planted, should
run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The only thing to be said
in excuse of that gardener would be that he was very angry. But not even
that could be said for those who drew up this project, for it was not
they who had suffered from the trampled beds.
But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would have
been senseless, it was impossible.