Book Ten: 1812 - Chapter XXXIX

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures andvarious uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davydovfamily and to the crown serfs- those fields and meadows where forhundreds of years the peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, andSemenovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. Atthe dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for aspace of some three acres around. Crowds of men of various arms,wounded and unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged themselvesback to Mozhaysk from the one army and back to Valuevo from the other.Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, went forward led by theirofficers. Others held their ground and continued to fire.

　　Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitterof bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there nowspread a mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell ofsaltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fallon the dead and wounded, on the frightened, exhausted, andhesitating men, as if to say: "Enough, men! Enough! Cease... bethinkyourselves! What are you doing?"

　　To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest,it began equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue toslaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and thequestion arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill andbe killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don't want todo so anymore!" By evening this thought had ripened in every soul.At any moment these men might have been seized with horror at whatthey were doing and might have thrown up everything and run awayanywhere.

　　But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all thehorror of what they were doing, though they would have been glad toleave off, some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued tocontrol them, and they still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed,and applied the match, though only one artilleryman survived out ofevery three, and though they stumbled and panted with fatigue,perspiring and stained with blood and powder. The cannon balls flewjust as swiftly and cruelly from both sides, crushing human bodies,and that terrible work which was not done by the will of a man butat the will of Him who governs men and worlds continued.

　　Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army wouldhave said that, if only the French made one more slight effort, itwould disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French armywould have said that the Russians need only make one more slighteffort and the French would be destroyed. But neither the French northe Russians made that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowlyout.

　　The Russians did not make that effort because they were notattacking the French. At the beginning of the battle they stoodblocking the way to Moscow and they still did so at the end of thebattle as at the beginning. But even had the aim of the Russiansbeen to drive the French from their positions, they could not havemade this last effort, for all the Russian troops had been brokenup, there was no part of the Russian army that had not suffered in thebattle, and though still holding their positions they had lost onehalf of their army.

　　The French, with the memory of all their former victories duringfifteen years, with the assurance of Napoleon's invincibility, withthe consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield andhad lost only a quarter of their men and still had their Guardsintact, twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort.The French had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from itsposition ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russianscontinued to block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the Frenchhad not been attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain.But the French did not make that effort. Some historians say thatNapoleon need only have used his Old Guards, who were intact, andthe battle would have been won. To speak of what would have happenedhad Napoleon sent his Guards is like talking of what would happen ifautumn became spring. It could not be. Napoleon did not give hisGuards, not because he did not want to, but because it could not bedone. All the generals, officers. and soldiers of the French army knewit could not be done, because the flagging spirit of the troopswould not permitit.

　　It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feelingof the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals andsoldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not,after all their experience of previous battles- when after one tenthof such efforts the enemy had fled- experienced a similar feeling ofterror before an enemy who, after losing half his men, stood asthreateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle. Themoral force of the attacking French army was exhausted. Not thatsort of victory which is defined by the capture of pieces ofmaterial fastened to sticks, called standards, and of the ground onwhich the troops had stood and were standing, but a moral victory thatconvinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his opponent and ofhis own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodino. The Frenchinvaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught receiveda mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not stop, anymore than the Russian army, weaker by one half, could help swerving.By impetus gained, the French army was still able to roll forward toMoscow, but there, without further effort on the part of the Russians,it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal wound it had received atBorodino. The direct consequence of the battle of Borodino wasNapoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the oldSmolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundredthousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which atBorodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirithad been laid.