• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4181 0

why did he not take up a position before Fili, why did he not retreat directly to the Kaluga road, why did he abandon Moscow, and so on. People who are accustomed to think that way forget or do not know those inevitable conditions in which the activity of every commander in chief always takes place. The activity of a commander does not have the slightest resemblance to the activity we imagine to ourselves, sitting at ease in our study, analyzing some campaign on a map with a known number of troops on one side and the other, and on known terrain, and beginning our reflections from some certain moment. A commander in chief is never in those conditions of the beginning of some event, in which we always consider events. A commander in chief always finds himself in the middle of a shifting series of events, and in such a way that he is never able at any moment to ponder all the meaning of the ongoing event. Imperceptibly, moment by moment, an event is carved into its meaning, and at every moment of this consistent, ceaseless carving of the event, a commander in chief finds himself in the center of a most complex play of intrigues, cares, dependency, power, projects, advice, threats, deceptions, finds himself constantly in the necessity of responding to the countless number of questions put to him, which always contradict each other.

Learned military men tell us quite seriously that Kutuzov ought to have moved his troops to the Kaluga road long before Fili, that someone had even suggested such a plan. But a commander in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has before him not one plan, but always dozens simultaneously. And all these plans, based on strategy and tactics, contradict each other. The work of the commander in chief seems to be merely to choose one of these plans. But he cannot even do that. Events and time do not wait. Suppose a suggestion is made to move to the Kaluga road on the twenty-eighth, but just then an adjutant comes galloping from Miloradovich and asks whether they should go into action against the French now or retreat. An order must be given at once, that minute. And the order to retreat deflects us from the turnoff to the Kaluga road. After the adjutant, a commissary comes asking where to transport the food supplies, and the head of the hospitals asking where to transport the wounded; and a courier from Petersburg brings a letter from the sovereign that does not admit the possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the commander’s rival, the one who tries to undermine him (there are always rivals—not one, but several), suggests a new plan, diametrically opposed to the plan of going to the Kaluga road; and the commander’s own forces require sleep and fortification; and a venerable general, overlooked for a reward, comes to complain, and the inhabitants beg for protection; and an officer sent to survey the terrain comes and reports the complete opposite of what an officer sent out before him had said; and a spy, a prisoner, and a general who did some reconnoitering all describe the position of the enemy army differently. People accustomed to not understanding or to forgetting all these unavoidable conditions of the activity of any commander in chief present to us, for instance, the position of the army at Fili and in so doing suppose that on the first of September the commander in chief could quite freely decide the question of whether to abandon or defend Moscow, whereas, with the Russian army positioned within three miles of Moscow, this question could not exist. When, then, was the question decided? At Drissa, and at Smolensk, and most palpably at Shevardino on the twenty-fourth, on the twenty-sixth at Borodino, and every day, hour, and minute of our retreat from Borodino to Fili.

III

The Russian troops, having retreated from Borodino, were camped at Fili. Ermolov, who had gone to survey the position, rode up to the field marshal.

“It’s not possible to fight in this position,” he said. Kutuzov looked at him in surprise and made him repeat what he had said. When he did, Kutuzov held out his hand to