Chapter Chapter 298 · 第298章

A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to go

a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the

end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a promised

land to have the strength to move.

The promised land for the French during their advance had been Moscow,

during their retreat it was their native land. But that native land

was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely

necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to himself: “Today I

shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and

spend the night,” and during the first day’s journey that resting place

eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires. And

the impulses felt by a single person are always magnified in a crowd.

For the French retreating along the old Smolénsk road, the final

goal—their native land—was too remote, and their immediate goal

was Smolénsk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously

intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that

much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolénsk, nor that they were

told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon himself,

knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this alone could

give them strength to move on and endure their present privations. So

both those who knew and those who did not know deceived themselves, and

pushed on to Smolénsk as to a promised land.

Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising energy

and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on. Besides the

common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French into one mass and

supplied them with a certain energy, there was another cause binding

them together—their great numbers. As with the physical law of gravity,

their enormous mass drew the individual human atoms to itself. In their

hundreds of thousands they moved like a whole nation.

Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner

to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force

of this common attraction to Smolénsk, their goal, drew each of them in

the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender

to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every

convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the

slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur. Their

very numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived them of that

possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the

Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all

their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical disruption of the

body could hasten the process of decomposition.

A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a certain

limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt the snow. On

the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the remaining snow

becomes.

Of the Russian commanders Kutúzov alone understood this. When the flight

of the French army along the Smolénsk road became well defined, what

Konovnítsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of October began

to occur. The superior officers all wanted to distinguish themselves,

to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to overthrow the French, and all

clamored for action.

Kutúzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited in the

case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.

He could not tell them what we say now: “Why fight, why block the road,

losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate wretches? What

is the use of that, when a third of their army has melted away on the

road from Moscow to Vyázma without any battle?” But drawing from his

aged wisdom what they could understand, he told them of the golden

bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him, flinging themselves on,

rending and exulting over the dying beast.

Ermólov, Milorádovich, Plátov, and others in proximity to the French

near Vyázma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up two

French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutúzov they

sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.

And try as Kutúzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,

trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to the

attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost thousands

of men.

But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,

closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily melting

away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolénsk.