War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [694]
Je crois devoir faire connaître à Votre Majesté l’état de ses troupes dans les différent corps d’armée que j’ai été à même d’observer depuis deux ou trois jours dans différents passages. Elles sont presque débandées. Le nombre des soldats qui suivent les drapeaux est en proportion du quart au plus dans presque tous les régiments, les autres marchent isolément dans différents directions et pour leur compte, dans l’espérance de trouver des subsistances et pour se débarrasser de la discipline. En général ils regardent Smolensk comme le point où ils doivent se refaire. Ces derniers jours on a remarqué que beaucoup de soldats jettent leurs cartouches et leurs armes. Dans cet état de choses, l’intérêt du service de Votre Majesté exige, quelles que soient ses vues ultérieurs, qu’on rallie l’armée à Smolensk en commençant à la débarrasser des non-combattants, tels que hommes démontés et des bagages inutiles et du matériel de l’artillerie qui n’est plus en proportion avec les forces actuelles. En outre les jours de repos, des subsistances sont nécessaires aux soldats qui sont exténués par la faim et la fatigue; beaucoup sont morts ces derniers jours sur la route et dans les bivouacs. Cet état de choses va toujours en augmentant et donne lieu de craindre que si l’on n’y prête un prompt remède, on ne soit plus maître des troupes dans un combat.
Le 9 novembre, à 30 verstes de Smolensk.*734
Barging into Smolensk, which in their imagination was a promised land, the French killed each other over provisions, looted their own storehouses, and, when everything had been looted, ran further.
They all went, not knowing themselves where they were going or why. The genius Napoleon knew still less than others, since no one gave him orders. But even so he and his entourage observed their long-standing habits: wrote orders, letters, reports, the ordre du jour;*735 addressed each other as Sire, Mon Cousin, Prince d’Eckmühl, roi de Naples, and so on. But the orders and reports existed only on paper, nothing was carried out according to them, because nothing could be carried out, and despite their calling themselves majesties, highnesses, and cousins, they all felt that they were pathetic and vile people who had done a great deal of evil, for which they now had to pay. And despite their pretence of looking after the army, each of them thought only of himself and of how to get away quickly and save himself.
XVII
The actions of the Russian and French armies during the reverse campaign from Moscow to the Niemen resemble a game of blindman’s buff, when two players are blindfolded and one occasionally rings a little bell to let the catcher know where he is. At first the one to be caught rings without fearing the enemy, but, when things go badly for him, he runs away from his enemy, trying to move inaudibly, and often, thinking to escape, goes straight into his arms.
At first Napoleon’s troops let their presence be known—this was in the initial period of their movement along the Kaluga road—but later, coming out to the Smolensk road, they began to run, holding the little bell’s tongue, and often, thinking they were getting away, ran straight into the Russians.
Owing to the quickness of the French flight and the Russian pursuit, and the resulting exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of roughly ascertaining the position of the enemy—cavalry patrols—did not exist. Besides that, as a result of the frequent and rapid changes of position of the two armies, information, if there was any, could not arrive in time. If the