الفصل الفصل 231 · 第231章

The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The Russian

army and people avoided a collision till Smolénsk was reached, and again

from Smolénsk to Borodinó. The French army pushed on to Moscow, its

goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, just as the

velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches the earth. Behind

it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken, hostile country; ahead

were a few dozen miles separating it from its goal. Every soldier in

Napoleon’s army felt this and the invasion moved on by its own momentum.

The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of hatred

of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army increased and

consolidated. At Borodinó a collision took place. Neither army was

broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately after the

collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding with another

having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability the ball

of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on for some

distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its force.

The Russians retreated eighty miles—to beyond Moscow—and the French

reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks after that

there was not a single battle. The French did not move. As a bleeding,

mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained inert in Moscow

for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh reason, fled back:

they made a dash for the Kalúga road, and (after a victory—for at

Málo-Yaroslávets the field of conflict again remained theirs) without

undertaking a single serious battle, they fled still more rapidly back

to Smolénsk, beyond Smolénsk, beyond the Berëzina, beyond Vílna, and

farther still.

On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutúzov and the whole

Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodinó was a victory.

Kutúzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare for a

fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive anyone,

but because he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who had taken

part in the battle knew it.

But all that evening and next day reports came in one after another

of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a fresh battle

proved physically impossible.

It was impossible to give battle before information had been collected,

the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition replenished, the

slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to replace those who had been

killed, and before the men had had food and sleep. And meanwhile, the

very next morning after the battle, the French army advanced of itself

upon the Russians, carried forward by the force of its own momentum now

seemingly increased in inverse proportion to the square of the distance

from its aim. Kutúzov’s wish was to attack next day, and the whole

army desired to do so. But to make an attack the wish to do so is not

sufficient, there must also be a possibility of doing it, and that

possibility did not exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day’s

march, and then in the same way it was impossible not to retreat another

and a third day’s march, and at last, on the first of September when

the army drew near Moscow—despite the strength of the feeling that had

arisen in all ranks—the force of circumstances compelled it to retire

beyond Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last, day’s march, and

abandoned Moscow to the enemy.

For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles are

made by generals—as anyone of us sitting over a map in his study may

imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that battle—the

questions present themselves: Why did Kutúzov during the retreat not do

this or that? Why did he not take up a position before reaching Filí?

Why did he not retire at once by the Kalúga road, abandoning Moscow? and

so on. People accustomed to think in that way forget, or do not know,

the inevitable conditions which always limit the activities of any

commander in chief. The activity of a commander in chief does not at all

resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at ease in

our studies examining some campaign on the map, with a certain number of

troops on this and that side in a certain known locality, and begin our

plans from some given moment. A commander in chief is never dealing with

the beginning of any event—the position from which we always contemplate

it. The commander in chief is always in the midst of a series of

shifting events and so he never can at any moment consider the whole

import of an event that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is

imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every moment of this continuous,

uninterrupted shaping of events the commander in chief is in the

midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies,

authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is

continually obliged to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him,

which constantly conflict with one another.

Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutúzov should

have moved his army to the Kalúga road long before reaching Filí, and

that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But a commander

in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always before him not

one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these proposals, based

on strategics and tactics, contradict each other.

A commander in chief’s business, it would seem, is simply to choose one

of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and time do not

wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested to him to

cross to the Kalúga road, but just then an adjutant gallops up from

Milorádovich asking whether he is to engage the French or retire. An

order must be given him at once, that instant. And the order to retreat

carries us past the turn to the Kalúga road. And after the adjutant

comes the commissary general asking where the stores are to be taken,

and the chief of the hospitals asks where the wounded are to go, and a

courier from Petersburg brings a letter from the sovereign which does

not admit of the possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the commander in

chief’s rival, the man who is undermining him (and there are always

not merely one but several such), presents a new project diametrically

opposed to that of turning to the Kalúga road, and the commander in

chief himself needs sleep and refreshment to maintain his energy and

a respectable general who has been overlooked in the distribution of

rewards comes to complain, and the inhabitants of the district pray to

be defended, and an officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and

gives a report quite contrary to what was said by the officer

previously sent; and a spy, a prisoner, and a general who has been

on reconnaissance, all describe the position of the enemy’s army

differently. People accustomed to misunderstand or to forget these

inevitable conditions of a commander in chief’s actions describe to

us, for instance, the position of the army at Filí and assume that the

commander in chief could, on the first of September, quite freely decide

whether to abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army

less than four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had

that question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolénsk and most

palpably of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevárdino and on

the twenty-sixth at Borodinó, and each day and hour and minute of the

retreat from Borodinó to Filí.