War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [493]
Why and how was battle offered and accepted at Shevardino and Borodino? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? Neither for the French nor for the Russians did it make the slightest sense. The most immediate result of it was and had to be—for the Russians, that we came nearer to the destruction of Moscow (which we feared more than anything in the world); and for the French, that they came nearer to the destruction of their whole army (which they also feared more than anything in the world). This result was perfectly obvious then, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov accepted this battle.
If the commanders had been guided by reasonable causes, it would seem it should have been quite clear to Napoleon that, having gone thirteen hundred miles and accepting battle with the likely chance of losing a quarter of his army, he was marching to certain destruction; and it should have been as clear to Kutuzov that, in accepting battle and also risking the loss of a quarter of his army, he would certainly lose Moscow. For Kutuzov this was mathematically clear, as it is clear that, in a game of checkers, if I have one man less and keep trading man for man, I will certainly lose, and therefore I should not keep trading.
When my opponent has sixteen pieces and I have fourteen, I am only one-eighth weaker than he; but when I have traded thirteen pieces, he will be three times stronger than I.
Before the battle of Borodino, our forces were approximately five to six with the French, but after the battle they were one to two; that is, before the battle it was a hundred thousand to a hundred and twenty thousand, but after the battle it was fifty thousand to a hundred thousand. And yet the intelligent and experienced Kutuzov accepted battle. And Napoleon, a commander of genius, as they call him, offered battle, losing a quarter of his army and extending his line still more. If it is said that, by occupying Moscow, he thought to end the campaign, as he had by occupying Vienna, there are many arguments against it. Napoleon’s historians themselves say that he already wanted to stop after Smolensk, that he knew the danger of his extended position, and knew that the occupation of Moscow would not be the end of the campaign, because after Smolensk he had seen the condition of the Russian towns abandoned to him, and he had not received a single response to his repeated announcements of his wish to negotiate.
In offering and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov and Napoleon acted involuntarily and senselessly. And only later did historians furnish the already accomplished facts with ingenious arguments for the foresight and genius of the commanders, who, of all the involuntary instruments of world events, were the most enslaved and involuntary agents.
The ancients left us examples of heroic poems in which heroes constitute the entire interest of history, and we still cannot get used to the fact that, for our human time, history of this sort has no meaning.
To the other question, how the battle of Borodino and the one that preceded it at Shevardino were offered, there exists in the same way a quite definite and universally known, but completely false, notion. All historians describe the matter in the following way:
The Russian army, in its retreat from Smolensk, was supposedly seeking the best position for a general battle, and such a position was supposedly found at Borodino.
The Russians supposedly fortified this position beforehand, to the left of the road (from Moscow to Smolensk), almost at a right angle to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, on the very place where the battle was fought.
In front of this position, a fortified outpost was set up on the Shevardino barrow,24 supposedly to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth, Napoleon supposedly attacked the outpost and took it; and on the twenty-sixth he attacked the whole Russian army, which stood in position on the field of Borodino.
So the histories say, and it is all completely incorrect, as anyone