War And Peace

Bolkhovitinov told him everything and then stopped, waiting for orders. Toll was on the point of saying something, but Kutuzov checked him. He tried to say something himself, but suddenly his face wrinkled and crumpled. Waving at Toll, he turned away to the far corner of the hut, which was blackened with candle-smoke around the holy icons. ‘Lord, my Creator! Thou hast heard our prayer . . .’ he said in a trembling voice with his hands clasped together. ‘Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O Lord.’ And he burst into tears.

CHAPTER 18

From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign Kutuzov limited his activity to nothing more than using all his authority, skill and powers of persuasion to restrain his army from any useless attacks, manœuvres and encounters with the doomed enemy. Whereas Dokhturov goes marching off to Maloyaroslavets, Kutuzov is in no hurry with the main army, issuing orders for the evacuation of Kaluga, on the grounds that retreat beyond that town seems like a real possibility. Kutuzov pulls back on all sides, but the enemy, without waiting for him to withdraw, flees in the opposite direction.

Napoleon’s historians describe his tactical skill at Tarutino and Maloyaroslavets, and speculate about what might have happened if Napoleon had managed to get through to the rich provinces of the south.

But, apart from the fact that there was nothing to stop Napoleon marching straight down into these southern provinces (since the Russian army had left the road open), these historians forget that Napoleon’s army was beyond salvation by now because it carried within itself the germ of inevitable ruin. How could that army – which had come across plentiful supplies in Moscow but had trampled them underfoot instead of conserving them, and went in for random looting rather than careful management of provisions when they got to Smolensk – how could this army have suddenly come to its senses in the province of Kaluga, where the inhabitants were of the same Russian stock as in Moscow, and where fire was still fire, consuming anything that is set alight?

The army could never have come to its senses. Ever since the battle of Borodino and the sacking of Moscow it had carried within itself what you might call the chemical elements of decomposition.

This relic of an army, the men and their leaders, fled with no idea where they were going. All of them from Napoleon down to the last of his soldiers had but one thing in mind: to extricate themselves as fast as they could from a hopeless situation which they all acknowledged, however dimly.

And for this reason, when the French generals met in council at Maloyaroslavets and went through the motions of exchanging opinions in serious debate, the last contribution – from an ingenuous soul, General Mouton, who put into words what they had all been thinking, that the only thing to do was to get out as fast as they could – closed every mouth, and no one, not even Napoleon, had anything to say against a truth they all acknowledged.

But though everybody knew they had to go, there was a lingering feeling of shame at having to flee. What they needed was some external impulse strong enough to overcome the shame. And in due course the impulse came. It was what the French called ‘the Emperor’s Hurrah’.

On the day after the council, early in the morning, on the pretext of reviewing the troops and the scene of a past and future battle, Napoleon rode out with a suite of marshals and an escort right in the middle of his army lines. A party of marauding Cossacks stumbled across the Emperor and very nearly took him prisoner. What prevented the Cossacks from capturing Napoleon that day was the very thing that was bringing down the French army – the question of loot, which the Cossacks dived on here, as at Tarutino, in preference to pursuing people. Ignoring Napoleon, they dashed straight at the loot, and Napoleon managed to get away.

If the children of the Don could come within an ace of capturing the Emperor himself in the middle of his army, it was clear that the only thing to do was run away as fast as they could down the nearest known road. Napoleon, with forty years on his back and a big paunch to carry around, was not the nimble adventurer of old, and he soon took the hint. The Cossacks had given him a real scare. He agreed at once with Mouton, and historians tell us he ordered the army to backtrack and go down the road through Smolensk.

The fact that Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and the army went back on its tracks, does not prove that his orders made this happen; all it shows is that certain forces acting on the army as a whole and diverting it down the Mozhaysk road were also acting at the same time on Napoleon.

CHAPTER 19