War And Peace

Not only did he fail to do any of these things, he did the opposite; he used all his powers to go through the full range of courses open to him and opt for the stupidest and most disastrous of them all. Of all the possibilities – wintering in Moscow, marching up to Petersburg, or over to Nizhny Novgorod, or back by a more northerly or southerly route, perhaps down the road eventually taken by Kutuzov – it would have been hard to imagine a more stupid and disastrous policy than the one adopted by Napoleon: staying on in Moscow until October, thus giving the troops every opportunity to rampage through the city, then vacillating for some time before leaving a well-fortified place and marching out of Moscow, advancing towards Kutuzov and then abstaining from battle, turning to the right and marching on to Maloyaroslavets, again making no attempt at a breakthrough, and finally retreating, not down the road taken by Kutuzov, but back up to Mozhaysk and down the Smolensk road through countryside that had been devastated. It would be hard to conceive of a more stupid course than this, anything more disastrous for the army, as events would show. It would have been a stiff challenge for any expert strategist, assuming Napoleon’s object to be the destruction of his own army, to devise a series of actions which, without relying on any steps taken by the Russian forces, could have guaranteed the complete destruction of the whole French army with such certainty as the course taken by Napoleon.

This was done by Napoleon, the man of genius. And yet to say that Napoleon destroyed his own army because he wanted to, or because he was a very stupid man, would be just as wrong as claiming that Napoleon got his troops to Moscow because he wanted to, and because he was a very clever man and a great genius. In both cases his individual contribution, no stronger than the individual contribution of every common soldier, happened to coincide with the laws by which the event was being determined.

Historians utterly falsify the past when (simply because Napoleon’s actions were not vindicated by subsequent events) they represent Napoleon in Moscow as a man whose powers were in decline. He was behaving exactly as before, and afterwards in 1813 – exerting all his strength and skill to do the best for himself and his army. Napoleon’s actions at this time were no less spectacular than in Egypt, Italy, Austria and Prussia. We cannot say with any certainty what degree of real genius Napoleon showed in Egypt, where forty centuries looked down on him in his glory, because all his famous exploits in that country are described for us exclusively by Frenchmen. We can arrive at no certain judgement of his genius in Austria and Prussia, since any information about his achievements in those places has to be extracted from French and German sources. And the inexplicable surrender of entire formations without a fight, and fortresses without a siege, is bound to predispose the Germans towards the concept of genius as the sole explanation of the war as it was waged in Germany. But we, thank God, have no reason to invoke his genius to cover our shame. We have paid for the right to look the facts simply and squarely in the face, and we are not going to give up that right.

His actions in Moscow are as spectacular and redolent of genius as anywhere else. He never stops issuing order after order and plan after plan from the time he enters Moscow to the time he leaves. He is in no way inhibited by the absence of citizens and deputations, or even the burning of Moscow. He never loses sight of the welfare of his army, the actions of the enemy, the welfare of the peoples of Russia, the conduct of affairs in Paris or the diplomatic considerations involved in the anticipated peace.

CHAPTER 9

With regard to military matters, immediately after his arrival in Moscow Napoleon issues General Sebastiani with strict orders to keep a watch on all movements of the Russian army, sends detachments down all the various roads, and gives Murat the job of finding Kutuzov. He then gives meticulous instructions for the fortification of the Kremlin. Then he draws up the kind of plan for a future campaign over the whole map of Russia that only a genius could have conceived. On the diplomatic side, Napoleon sends for Captain Yakovlev, who has been robbed and reduced to rags and doesn’t know how to get out of Moscow, outlines his whole policy in close detail and shows great magnanimity before writing a letter to the Emperor Alexander, in which he considers it his duty to inform his friend and brother that Rostopchin has managed affairs very badly in Moscow, and then sending Yakovlev with it to Petersburg.

After parading his views and his magnanimity in the same kind of detail to Tutolmin, he sends this little old fellow off to Petersburg as well, to open negotiations.