War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [495]
If Napoleon had not ridden out to the Kolocha on the evening of the twenty-fourth and had not ordered an attack on the redoubt that same evening, but had begun the attack the next morning, no one would have questioned that the Shevardino redoubt was the left flank of our position, and the battle would have taken place as we had expected. In that case, we would probably have defended the Shevardino redoubt on our left flank still more tenaciously; we would have attacked Napoleon in the center or on the right, and the general battle would have taken place on the twenty-fourth at a position that had been fortified and foreseen. But since the attack on our left flank took place in the evening, following the retreat of our rear guard, that is, immediately after the battle at Gridnevo, and since the Russian commanders did not want or did not manage to begin the general battle that same evening of the twenty-fourth, the first and main action of the battle of Borodino was already lost on the twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss of the one fought on the twenty-sixth.
After the loss of the Shevardino redoubt, we found ourselves on the morning of the twenty-fifth with no position on the left flank, and were forced into the necessity of pulling our left wing back and hastily fortifying it wherever it ended up.
But it was not just that the Russian troops on the twenty-sixth of August were defended by weak, unfinished fortifications—the disadvantage of this position was increased still more by the fact that the Russian commanders, not having fully grasped the accomplished fact (the loss of the position on the left flank and the transfer of the whole future battlefield from right to left), remained in their extended position from the village of Novoe to Utitsa, and as a result had to move their troops from right to left during the battle. Thus, throughout the battle, the Russians confronted the whole French army, directed against our left wing, with forces that were twice weaker. (The actions of Poniatowski against Utitsa and of Uvarov against the French on the right flank were separate from the main course of the battle’s action.)
And so, the battle of Borodino took place not at all as it is described (in an attempt to conceal the mistakes of our commanders and thereby diminishing the glory of the Russian army and people). The battle of Borodino did not take place on a chosen and fortified position, with only slightly weaker forces on the Russian side, but, owing to the loss of the Shevardino redoubt, was accepted by the Russians on open, almost unfortified terrain with forces twice weaker than the French—that is, in conditions in which it was not only unthinkable to fight for ten hours and leave the battle undecided, but unthinkable to keep the army for as long as three hours from total destruction and flight.
XX
On the morning of the twenty-fifth, Pierre was driving out of Mozhaisk. Going down the huge, steep, and crooked hill that led out of the town, past the cathedral that stood on the hill to the right, in which a service was going on and the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of the carriage and went on foot. Behind him some mounted regiment was coming down the hill with singers at its head. In the opposite direction came a train of carts with men wounded in yesterday’s action. The peasant drivers, shouting at the horses and whipping them with knouts, kept running from one side to the other. The carts with three or four wounded men lying or sitting in them bounced up and down on the stones scattered over the steep ascent in the guise of pavement. The wounded men, bandaged with rags, pale, with compressed lips and frowning brows, clinging to the sides, bounced and jostled in the carts. They all looked at Pierre’s white hat and green tailcoat with an almost naïve, childlike curiosity.
Pierre’s coachman shouted angrily at the train of wounded