War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [645]
III
The Russian army was governed by Kutuzov and his staff and by the sovereign from Petersburg. In Petersburg, before the news of the abandoning of Moscow had been received, a detailed plan for the whole war was drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance. Despite the fact that this plan was drawn up on the assumption that Moscow was still in our hands, it was approved by the staff and accepted for carrying out. Kutuzov wrote only that it is always difficult to carry out diversions from a distance. And in order to resolve the emerging difficulties, new directives and persons were sent, whose responsibility it was to follow his actions and report on them.
Besides that, the whole staff of the Russian army was now transformed. Bagration, who had been killed, and the offended Barclay, who had withdrawn, were replaced. Quite serious reflection was given to which would be better: to put A in B’s place, and B in D’s place, or, on the contrary, D in A’s place, and so on, as if anything apart from the good pleasure of A and B could depend on it.
In the army staff, because of the enmity between Kutuzov and his chief of staff, Bennigsen, and the presence of the sovereign’s confidential persons, and these replacements, a more than usually complex play of parties went on: A undermined B, D undermined C, and so on, in all possible transpositions and combinations. In all these underminings, the subject of the intrigues was for the most part the business of war, which all these people wanted to conduct; but this business of war went on independently of them, precisely as it had to go on, that is, never coinciding with what people devised, but proceeding from the essential correlation of the masses. Only in higher spheres were all these devisings, crisscrossing and entangling, taken as a faithful reflection of what ought to happen.
The sovereign wrote on the second of October, in a letter received only after the battle of Tarutino:
Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich!
Since September 2nd Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last reports are from the 20th; and in the course of all this time, not only has nothing been undertaken for action against the enemy and the deliverance of the first-throned capital, but, according to your latest reports, you have retreated even further back. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy detachment, and Tula, with its famous factory, so necessary for the army, is in danger. By the reports of General Wintzingerode, I see that an enemy corps of 10,000 men is moving down the Petersburg road. Another, of several thousand men, is also heading towards Dmitrov. A third has moved forward on the Vladimir road. A fourth, a rather considerable one, is stationed between Ruza and Mozhaisk. Napoleon himself was still in Moscow on the 25th. In the light of all these reports, when the enemy has broken up his forces into strong detachments, when Napoleon himself is still in Moscow with his guards, is it possible that the enemy forces you have before you are considerable and do not allow you to go on the offensive? In all probability, on the contrary, it is to be supposed that he is pursuing you with detachments or at most a corps, much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem that, profiting from these circumstances, you could with advantage attack an enemy who is weaker than you and destroy him, or at least, by forcing him to retreat, keep in our hands the greater part of the provinces now occupied by the enemy and thus divert the danger from Tula and our other towns of the interior. It will remain your responsibility if the enemy is in a position to detach a considerable corps for Petersburg and threaten this capital, in which not many troops could remain, for with