Bab Bab 209 · 第209章

On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevárdino Redoubt was

fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either side, and on

the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodinó itself took place.

Why and how were the battles of Shevárdino and Borodinó given and

accepted? Why was the battle of Borodinó fought? There was not the least

sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate result

for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought nearer

to the destruction of Moscow—which we feared more than anything in

the world; and for the French its immediate result was that they were

brought nearer to the destruction of their whole army—which they feared

more than anything in the world. What the result must be was quite

obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutúzov accepted that battle.

If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it must

have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen hundred miles

and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter of his army,

he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have been equally

clear to Kutúzov that by accepting battle and risking the loss of a

quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For Kutúzov this was

mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing draughts I have one

man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly lose, and therefore

should not exchange. When my opponent has sixteen men and I have

fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than he, but when I have exchanged

thirteen more men he will be three times as strong as I am.

Before the battle of Borodinó our strength in proportion to the French

was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little more than

one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a hundred and

twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty thousand against a

hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced Kutúzov accepted the

battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be a commander of genius,

gave it, losing a quarter of his army and lengthening his lines of

communication still more. If it is said that he expected to end the

campaign by occupying Moscow as he had ended a previous campaign by

occupying Vienna, there is much evidence to the contrary. Napoleon’s

historians themselves tell us that from Smolénsk onwards he wished

to stop, knew the danger of his extended position, and knew that the

occupation of Moscow would not be the end of the campaign, for he had

seen at Smolénsk the state in which Russian towns were left to him, and

had not received a single reply to his repeated announcements of his

wish to negotiate.

In giving and accepting battle at Borodinó, Kutúzov acted involuntarily

and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had occurred, the historians

provided cunningly devised evidence of the foresight and genius of the

generals who, of all the blind tools of history were the most enslaved

and involuntary.

The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes furnish

the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to accustom

ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that kind are

meaningless.

On the other question, how the battle of Borodinó and the preceding

battle of Shevárdino were fought, there also exists a definite and

well-known, but quite false, conception. All the historians describe the

affair as follows:

The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolénsk sought out

for itself the best position for a general engagement and found such a

position at Borodinó.

The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the left

of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolénsk) and almost at a right angle

to it, from Borodinó to Utítsa, at the very place where the battle was

fought.

In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set up on

the Shevárdino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth, we

are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on the

twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was in position on

the field of Borodinó.

So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares to

look into the matter can easily convince himself.

The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the contrary,

during the retreat passed many positions better than Borodinó. They did

not stop at any one of these positions because Kutúzov did not wish to

occupy a position he had not himself chosen, because the popular demand

for a battle had not yet expressed itself strongly enough, and because

Milorádovich had not yet arrived with the militia, and for many other

reasons. The fact is that other positions they had passed were stronger,

and that the position at Borodinó (the one where the battle was fought),

far from being strong, was no more a position than any other spot one

might find in the Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at

hazard.

Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of

Borodinó to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that

is, the position on which the battle took place), but never till the

twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might be

fought there. This was shown first by the fact that there were no

entrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the

twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the

position of the Shevárdino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless

in front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was it

more strongly fortified than any other post? And why were all efforts

exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till late at

night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have sufficed to

observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position on which the

battle was fought had not been foreseen and that the Shevárdino Redoubt

was not an advanced post of that position, we have the fact that up to

the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and Bagratión were convinced that the

Shevárdino Redoubt was the left flank of the position, and that Kutúzov

himself in his report, written in hot haste after the battle, speaks of

the Shevárdino Redoubt as the left flank of the position. It was much

later, when reports on the battle of Borodinó were written at leisure,

that the incorrect and extraordinary statement was invented (probably to

justify the mistakes of a commander in chief who had to be represented

as infallible) that the Shevárdino Redoubt was an advanced post—whereas

in reality it was simply a fortified point on the left flank—and that

the battle of Borodinó was fought by us on an entrenched position

previously selected, whereas it was fought on a quite unexpected spot

which was almost unentrenched.

The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river

Kolochá—which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an acute

angle—so that the left flank was at Shevárdino, the right flank near the

village of Nóvoe, and the center at Borodinó at the confluence of the

rivers Kolochá and Vóyna.

To anyone who looks at the field of Borodinó without thinking of how

the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the river

Kolochá, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was to

prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolénsk road to Moscow.

Napoleon, riding to Valúevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as the

history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utítsa

to Borodinó (he could not have seen that position because it did not

exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while

pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the

Russian position—at the Shevárdino Redoubt—and unexpectedly for the

Russians moved his army across the Kolochá. And the Russians, not having

time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left wing from the

position they had intended to occupy and took up a new position which

had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By crossing to the other

side of the Kolochá to the left of the highroad, Napoleon shifted the

whole forthcoming battle from right to left (looking from the Russian

side) and transferred it to the plain between Utítsa, Semënovsk, and

Borodinó—a plain no more advantageous as a position than any other plain

in Russia—and there the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took

place.

Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to the

Kolochá, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the redoubt

but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have doubted that

the Shevárdino Redoubt was the left flank of our position, and the

battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case

we should probably have defended the Shevárdino Redoubt—our left

flank—still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the

center or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on the

twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But as the

attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the retreat of

our rear guard (that is, immediately after the fight at Gridnëva), and

as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not in time, to begin a

general engagement then on the evening of the twenty-fourth, the first

and chief action of the battle of Borodinó was already lost on the

twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss of the one fought on the

twenty-sixth.

After the loss of the Shevárdino Redoubt, we found ourselves on the

morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank, and

were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where it chanced to

be.

Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by weak,

unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that position was

increased by the fact that the Russian commanders—not having fully

realized what had happened, namely the loss of our position on the left

flank and the shifting of the whole field of the forthcoming battle from

right to left—maintained their extended position from the village of

Nóvoe to Utítsa, and consequently had to move their forces from right to

left during the battle. So it happened that throughout the whole battle

the Russians opposed the entire French army launched against our left

flank with but half as many men. (Poniatowski’s action against Utítsa,

and Uvárov’s on the right flank against the French, were actions

distinct from the main course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodinó

did not take place at all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders’

mistakes even at the cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian

army and people) it has been described. The battle of Borodinó was not

fought on a chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly

weaker than those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the

Shevárdino Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodinó on an

open and almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous

as the French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not

merely unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive

result, but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete

disintegration and flight.