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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.
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