War And Peace

It didn’t make sense because, first, Napoleon’s army was in disarray and fleeing from Russia at all possible speed, in other words doing exactly what was wanted by every last Russian. What purpose would have been served by conducting all sorts of operations against the French when they were already running away as fast as they could?

Second, it would have made no sense to stand in the way of men who were putting all their energy into running away.

Third, it made no sense to risk losing men just to destroy the French army when that army was busy destroying itself without any help from outside, and at such a rate that, without any blocking of the road, all the French were able to take back across the frontier in December was a small number of men, scarcely a hundredth of the original army.

Fourth, it would have made no sense to capture the Emperor, the kings and the dukes, since their imprisonment would have made life difficult for the Russians, as was acknowledged by the more sensitive diplomats of the day (Joseph de Maistre among others). It would have made even less sense to capture the French army when half of our own strength had dwindled away before Krasnoye, and we would have needed a whole division to guard several corps of prisoners, at a time when our own soldiers were often under-provisioned, and the prisoners they did take were dying of starvation.

Any carefully considered plan to isolate Napoleon and capture him along with his army would have been like a gardener devising a plan to drive away a herd of cattle that had been trampling his beds, and then run after them, catch them at the gate and bash them over the head. The best that could be said of the gardener would be that he had lost his temper on a grand scale. But that wouldn’t apply to the authors of the plan, since it wasn’t their garden that had been trampled.

Anyway, the idea of isolating Napoleon along with his army not only made no sense; it was also quite impossible.

Impossible, first because we know from experience that the movement of columns over a three-mile area on a given battlefield never coincides with any planning, so the possibility of Chichagov, Kutuzov and Wittgenstein arriving together at an appointed spot was so remote as to be virtually impossible. Kutuzov knew this even as he received planning instructions from afar, and he went on record as saying that long-distance manœuvres never work out according to plan.

Second, it was impossible because the numbers of troops needed to paralyse the force of inertia propelling Napoleon’s army back the way it had come would have been far greater than anything the Russians had at their disposal.

Third, it was impossible, because the military word for the isolating process – ‘to cut off’ – is meaningless. You can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army. To cut off an army – to block its way forward – is quite impossible, because there are always plenty of possible detours that can be made, and there is always night-time, when things go on unseen, which students of military history ought to recognize from the examples of Krasnoye and the Berezina. You can never capture anybody unless he is willing to be captured, just as you can never catch a swallow, though you might be able to if it settles on your hand. You can only capture prisoners who are willing to surrender, as the Germans did, following set rules of strategy and tactics. But the French soldiers saw this as inexpedient, and they were quite right to do so since a similar death from cold and starvation awaited them if they fled or were taken prisoner.

The fourth and main reason why it was impossible was that never since the world had begun had a war been fought under such terrible conditions as in 1812, and the Russian troops pursuing the French were at the end of their tether, incapable of doing anything more without dying in the attempt.

In the distance between Tarutino and Krasnoye the Russian army lost fifty thousand men sick or fallen by the wayside – a total equivalent to the population of a decent-sized provincial town. Half of them quit without seeing any action.