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After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable
to hold back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut
off the enemy and so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French,
and of the Russians who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe
without a battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army
pursuing the French could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery
horses broke down, and the information received of the movements
of the French was never reliable.
The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous
marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could
not go any faster.
To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it
is only necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that,
while not losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after
Tarutino and less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which
left that place a hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with
only fifty thousand.
The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive
to our army as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only
difference was that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no
such threat of destruction as hung over the French, and that the
sick Frenchmen were left behind in enemy hands while the sick
Russians left behind were among their own people. The chief cause
of the wastage of Napoleon's army was the rapidity of its movement,
and a convincing proof of this is the corresponding decrease of
the Russian army.
Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check
the movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by
the Russian army generals, directed his whole activity here, as
he had done at Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing
the movement of our army.
But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution
of the army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident,
another reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented
itself to Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the
French. The road the French would take was unknown, and so the
closer our troops trod on their heels the greater distance they
had to cover. Only by following at some distance could one cut
across the zigzag path of the French. All the artful maneuvers
suggested by our generals meant fresh movements of the army and
a lengthening of its marches, whereas the only reasonable aim
was to shorten those marches. To that end Kutuzov's activity was
directed during the whole campaign from Moscow to Vilna- not casually
or intermittently but so consistently that he never once deviated
from it.
Kutuzov felt and knew- not by reasoning or science but with
the whole of his Russian being- what every Russian soldier felt:
that the French were beaten, that the enemy was flying and must
be driven out; but at the same time he like the soldiers realized
all the hardship of this march, the rapidity of which was unparalleled
for such a time of the year.
But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian
army, who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody,
and for some reason to capture a king or a duke- it seemed that
now- when any battle must be horrible and senseless- was the very
time to fight and conquer somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his
shoulders when one after another they presented projects of maneuvers
to be made with those soldiers- ill-shod, insufficiently clad,
and half starved- who within a month and without fighting a battle
had dwindled to half their number, and who at the best if the
flight continued would have to go a greater distance than they
had already traversed, before they reached the frontier.
This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow,
and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians
stumbled on the French army.
So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the
three French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself
with sixteen thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid
that ruinous encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre
of the broken mob of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued
at Krasnoe for three days.
Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march
to so and so," etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord
with the disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from
a hill over the French crowds that were running past, and demanded
reinforcements which did not arrive. The French, avoiding the
Russians, dispersed and hid themselves in the forest by night,
making their way round as best they could, and continued their
flight.
Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about
the commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be
found when he was wanted- that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche*
as he styled himself- who was fond of parleys with the French,
sent envoys demanding their surrender, wasted time, and did not
do what he was ordered to do.
*Knight without fear and without reproach.
"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding
up to the troops and pointing out the French to the cavalry.
And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that
could scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented
to them- that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,
frost-bitten, and starving- and the column that had been presented
to them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been
anxious to do.
At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several
hundred cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff,"
and disputed as to who had distinguished himself and were pleased
with their achievement- though they much regretted not having
taken Napoleon, or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort,
and reproached one another and especially Kutuzov for having failed
to do so.
These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind
tools of the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered
themselves heroes and imagined that they were accomplishing a
most noble and honorable deed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that
from the very beginning of the campaign he had prevented their
vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought nothing but satisfying his
passions and would not advance from the Linen Factories because
he was comfortable there, that at Krasnoe he checked the advance
because on learning that Napoleon was there he had quite lost
his head, and that it was probable that he had an understanding
with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.
Not only did his contempories, carried away by their passions,
talk in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon
as grand, while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty,
dissolute, weak old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite-
a sort of puppet useful only because he had a Russian name.
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