War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [538]
II
The forces of two-and-ten European nations burst into Russia. The Russian army and populace retreat, avoiding a confrontation as far as Smolensk, and from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army, with an ever-increasing force of momentum, races on to Moscow, the goal of its movement. The force of its momentum increases as it nears its goal, just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it nears the earth. Behind are thousands of miles of famished, hostile country; ahead are a few dozen miles separating it from its goal. Every soldier of Napoleon’s army feels that, and the invasion pushes on of itself, by the mere force of its momentum.
In the Russian army, as it retreats, the spirit of hostility towards the enemy flares up more and more; as it falls back, it concentrates and increases. At Borodino a confrontation takes place. Neither army falls apart, but immediately after the confrontation, the Russian army retreats of necessity, just as a ball rebounds of necessity after colliding with another ball coming towards it at a greater speed; and also of necessity (though losing all its force in the collision) the swiftly rolling ball of the invasion rolls on for a certain distance.
The Russians retreat another eighty miles beyond Moscow; the French reach Moscow and stop there. During the five weeks after that, there is not a single battle. The French do not move. Like a mortally wounded beast, which, losing blood, licks its wounds, they remain in Moscow for five weeks without undertaking anything, and suddenly, with no new cause, flee back: they rush down the Kaluga high road (and that after a victory, for the field remains theirs again after Maloyaroslavets), without entering a single serious battle, flee still more quickly back to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond Vilno, beyond the Berezina, and further.
On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, both Kutuzov and the whole Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino had been won. Kutuzov wrote as much to the sovereign. Kutuzov ordered preparations for a new battle to finish off the enemy, not because he wanted to deceive anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was defeated, just as every participant in the battle knew it.
But that same evening and the next day, reports came in one after another about unheard-of losses, about the loss of half the army, and a new battle turned out to be physically impossible.
It was impossible to offer battle when not all the information had been gathered, when the wounded had not been taken away, the charges had not been replenished, the dead had not been counted, new commanders had not been appointed to replace those killed, and the men had not had enough food or sleep.
And at the same time, immediately after the battle, the next morning, the French army (by that impetuous force of movement, now increased in inverse proportion to the square of the distance) was of itself already making for the Russian army. Kutuzov had wanted to attack the next day, and the whole army had wanted it. But in order to attack, the wish to do so is not enough; what is needed is the possibility of doing so, and that possibility was not there. It was impossible not to retreat by one march, then it was just as impossible not to retreat by another, and by a third march, and finally, on the first of September, when the army got as far as Moscow, despite the strength of feeling that arose in the ranks of the army, the force of things demanded that those troops go beyond Moscow. And the troops retreated by one last march and surrendered Moscow to the enemy.
For those people who are accustomed to think that the plans of wars and battles are drawn up by the commanders, just as each of us sitting in his study over a map makes reflections on how he would have disposed such and such battles, questions present themselves as to why Kutuzov, as he retreated, did not act thus and so,