________________________________________________
_ 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 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 army- which with inferior forces had withstood
the enemy in full strength at Borodino- defeated 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 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 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, 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 Krasnoe 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.
It was impossible first because- as experience shows that a
three-mile movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with
the plans- the probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein
effecting a junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as to
be tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when
he received the plan remarked that diversions planned over great
distances do not yield the desired results.
Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with
which Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than
the Russians possessed would have been required.
Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term "to cut off"
has no meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army.
To cut off an army- to bar its road- is quite impossible, for there is
always plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night when
nothing can be seen, as the military scientists might convince
themselves by the example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only
possible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it
is only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Men
can only be taken prisoners if they surrender according to the rules
of strategy and tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops
quite rightly did not consider that this suited them, since death by
hunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.
Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the
world began has a war been fought under such conditions as those
that obtained in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the
French strained its strength to the utmost and could not have done
more without destroying itself.
During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe
it lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to
the population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of
the army without a battle.
And it is of this period of the campaign- when the army lacked boots
and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and
was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees
of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and
the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be
maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where
discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for
months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and
cold, when half the army perished in a single month- it is of this
period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich
should have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov to
another place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more than
knee-deep in snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so "routed" and
"cut off" the French and so on and so on.
The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should
have been done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not
to blame because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed
that they should do what was impossible.
All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between
the facts and the historical accounts only arises because the
historians dealing with the matter have written the history of the
beautiful words and sentiments of various generals, and not the
history of the events.
To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do
their surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but
the question of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals
and in graves does not even interest them, for it does not come within
the range of their investigation.
Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans
and consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who
took a direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed
insoluble easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.
The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in
the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it
was senseless and unattainable.
The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion.
That aim was attained in the first place of itself, as the French
ran away, and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight.
Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying
the French, and thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was
following the French, ready to use its strength in case their movement
stopped.
The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the
experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a
menace than to strike the running animal on the head. _
Read next: Book Fifteen: 1812-13: Chapter 1
Read previous: Book Fourteen: 1812: Chapter 18
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