Bab Bab 317 · 第317章

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 Borodinó, 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 Kutúzov and Tormásov and Chichagóv, 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 Kutúzov, Chichagóv, 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 Krásnoe and

at the Berëzina (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 Kutúzov hindered an attack) is unfounded,

for we know that he could not restrain the troops from attacking at

Vyázma and Tarútino.

Why was the Russian army—which with inferior forces had withstood the

enemy in full strength at Borodinó—defeated at Krásnoe and the Berëzina

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 Kutúzov.

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 Krásnoe 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 Chichagóv, Kutúzov, and Wittgenstein effecting a junction

on time at an appointed place was so remote as to be tantamount to

impossibility, as in fact thought Kutúzov, 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 Krásnoe and of the Berëzina. 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 Tarútino to Krásnoe 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 Milorádovich should have

made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormásov to another place,

and Chichagóv 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 Milorádovich 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.