Book Fifteen: 1812-13 - Chapter IV

by Leo Tolstoy

　　After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to holdback his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemyand so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of theRussians who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without abattle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing theFrench could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses brokedown, and the information received of the movements of the Frenchwas never reliable.

　　The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuousmarching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could notgo any faster.

　　To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is onlynecessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while notlosing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino andless than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left thatplace a hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fiftythousand.

　　The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to ourarmy as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only differencewas that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat ofdestruction as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmenwere left behind in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behindwere among their own people. The chief cause of the wastage ofNapoleon's army was the rapidity of its movement, and a convincingproof of this is the corresponding decrease of the Russian army.

　　Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check themovement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russianarmy generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done atTarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement ofour army.

　　But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution ofthe army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident,another reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itselfto Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French.The road the French would take was unknown, and so the closer ourtroops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to cover.Only by following at some distance could one cut across the zigzagpath of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generalsmeant fresh movements of the army and a lengthening of its marches,whereas the only reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. Tothat end Kutuzov's activity was directed during the whole campaignfrom Moscow to Vilna- not casually or intermittently but soconsistently that he never once deviated from it.

　　Kutuzov felt and knew- not by reasoning or science but with thewhole of his Russian being- what every Russian soldier felt: thatthe French were beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be drivenout; but at the same time he like the soldiers realized all thehardship of this march, the rapidity of which was unparalleled forsuch a time of the year.

　　But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russianarmy, 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 tofight and conquer somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders whenone after another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made withthose soldiers- ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved- whowithin a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to halftheir number, and who at the best if the flight continued would haveto go a greater distance than they had already traversed, beforethey reached the frontier.

　　This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow,and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russiansstumbled on the French army.

　　So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the threeFrench columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteenthousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinousencounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mobof French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for threedays.

　　Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so andso," etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with thedisposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over theFrench crowds that were running past, and demanded reinforcementswhich did not arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed andhid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round asbest they could, and continued their flight.

　　Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about thecommissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be foundwhen he was wanted- that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche* as hestyled himself- who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoysdemanding their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he wasordered to do.

　　*Knight without fear and without reproach.

　　"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops andpointing out the French to the cavalry.

　　And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that couldscarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented tothem- that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,frost-bitten, and starving- and the column that had been presentedto them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long beenanxious to do.

　　At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, severalhundred cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," and disputedas to who had distinguished himself and were pleased with theirachievement- though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon,or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached oneanother and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.

　　These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools ofthe most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroesand imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorabledeed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of thecampaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that hethought nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance fromthe Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that atKrasnoe he checked the advance because on learning that Napoleon wasthere he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that he hadan understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and soon, and so on.

　　Not only did his contempories, carried away by their passions,talk in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon asgrand, 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.