The Russians did not seek out the best position; on the contrary, on their retreat they had passed by many positions better than Borodino. They did not make a stand at one of these positions, because Kutuzov did not care to take up a position he had not himself selected, because the popular clamour for a battle had not yet been so strongly expressed, because Miloradovitch had not yet arrived with reinforcements of militia, and for countless other reasons.
The fact remains that there were stronger positions on the road the Russian army had passed along, and that the plain of Borodino, on which the battle was fought, is in no respect a more suitable position than any other spot in the Russian empire to which one might point at hazard on the map.
Far from having fortified the position on the left at right angles to the road—that is the spot on which the battle was fought—the Russians never, till the 25th of August, 1812, dreamed of a battle being possible on that spot. The proof of this is, first, that there were no fortifications there before the 25th, and that the earthworks begun on that day were not completed by the 26th; and, secondly, the Shevardino redoubt, owing to its situation in front of the position on which the battle was actually fought, was of no real value. With what object was that redoubt more strongly fortified than any of the other points? And with what object was every effort exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till late at night on the 24th? A picket of Cossacks would have been enough to keep watch on the enemy’s movements. And a third proof that the position of the battlefield was not foreseen, and that the redoubt of Shevardino was not the foremost point of that position, is to be found in the fact that Barclay de Tolly and Bagration were, till the 25th, under the impression that the Shevardino redoubt was the left flank of the position, and that Kutuzov himself, in the report written in hot haste after the battle, speaks of Shevardino as the left flank of the position. Only a good time later, when reports of the battle were written at leisure, the incorrect and strange statement was invented (probably to cover the blunders of the commander-in-chief, who had, of course, to appear infallible) that the Shevardino redoubt served as an advance post, though it was in reality simply the fortified point of the left flank, and that the battle of Borodino was fought by us on a fortified position selected beforehand for it, though it was in reality fought on a position quite unforeseen, and almost unfortified.
The affair obviously took place in this way. A position had been pitched upon on the stream Kolotcha, which intersects the high-road, not at a right angle, but at an acute angle, so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right near the village of Novoe, and the centre at Borodino, near the confluence of the Kolotcha and the Voina. Any one looking at the plain of Borodino, and not considering how the battle actually was fought, would pick out this position, covered by the Kolotcha, as the obvious one for an army, whose object was to check the advance of an enemy marching along the Smolensk road towards Moscow.
Napoleon, riding up on the 24th to Valuev, did not (we are told in the histories) see the position of the Russians from Utitsa to Borodino (he could not have seen that position since it did not exist), and did not see the advance posts of the Russian army, but in the pursuit of the Russian rearguard stumbled upon the left flank of the Russian position at the redoubt of Shevardino, and, to the surprise of the Russians, his troops crossed the Kolotcha. And the Russians, since it was too late for a general engagement, withdrew their left wing from the position they had intended to occupy, and took up a new position, which had not been foreseen, and was not fortified. By crossing to the left bank of the Kolotcha, on the left of the road, Napoleon shifted the whole battle from right to left (looking from the Russian side), and transferred it to the plain between Utitsa, Semyonovskoye and Borodino—a plain which in itself was a no more favourable position than any other plain in Russia—and on that plain was fought the whole battle of the 26th.
Had Napoleon not reached the Kolotcha on the evening of the 24th, and had he not ordered the redoubt to be attacked at once that evening, had he begun the attack next morning, no one could have doubted that the Shevardino redoubt was the left flank of the Russian position; and the battle would have been fought as we expected. In that case we should probably have defended the Shevardino redoubt by our left flank even more obstinately; we should have attacked Napoleon in the centre or on the right, and the general engagement would have been fought on the 24th on the position prepared and fortified for it. But as the attack was made on our left flank in the evening after the retreat of our rearguard, that is, immediately after the action at Gridnevo, and as the Russian generals would not, or could not, begin the general engagement on the evening of the 24th, the first and most important action of the battle of Borodino was lost on the 24th, and that loss led inevitably to the loss of the battle fought on the 26th.
After the loss of the Shevardino redoubt, we found ourselves on the morning of the 25th with our left flank driven from its position, and were forced to draw in the left wing of our position and hurriedly fortify it were we could.
So that on the 26th of August the Russian troops were only defended by weak, unfinished earthworks, and the disadvantage of that position was aggravated by the fact that the Russian generals, not fully recognising the facts of the position (the loss of the position on the left flank, and the shifting of the whole field of the coming battle from right to left), retained their extended formation from Novoe to Utitsa, and, consequently, had to transfer their troops from right to left during the battle. Consequently, we had during the whole battle to face the whole French army attacking our left wing, with our forces of half the strength.
(Poniatovsky’s action facing Utitsa and Uvarov’s action against the French right flank were quite independent of the general course of the battle.)
And so the battle of Borodino was fought, not at all as, in order to cover the blunders of our commanders, it is described by our historians, whose accounts, consequently, diminish the credit due to the Russian army and the Russian people. The battle of Borodino was not fought on a carefully picked and fortified position, with forces only slightly weaker on the Russian side. After the loss of the Shevardino redoubt, the Russians fought on an open, almost unfortified position, with forces half the strength of the French, that is, in conditions in which it was not merely senseless to fight for ten hours and gain a drawn battle, but incredibly difficult to keep the army for three hours together from absolute rout and flight.
Chapter 20
ON THE MORNING of the 25th Pierre drove out of Mozhaisk. On the slope of an immense, steep, and winding hill, leading out of the town, Pierre got out of the carriage, and walked by a cathedral on the right of the hill, where a service was being performed. A cavalry regiment followed him down the hill, the singers of the regiment in front. A train of carts came up the hill towards them, filled with wounded from the previous day’s engagement. The peasant drivers kept running from side to side, shouting and whipping the horses. The carts, in each of which three or four wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, jolted up and down on the stones that had been thrown on the steep ascent to mend the road. The wounded men, pale and bandaged up, with compressed lips and knitted brows, clung to the sides, as they were shaken and jolted in the carts. Almost all of them stared with na?ve and childlike curiosity at Pierre’s white hat and green coat.
Pierre’s coachman shouted angrily at the train of wounded men to keep to one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, coming down the hill in time to their song, overtook Pierre’s chaise and blocked the road. Pierre stopped, keeping close to the edge of the road that had been hollowed out in the hill. The sun did not reach over the side of the hill to the road, and there it felt cold and damp. But overhead it was a bright August morning, and the chimes rang out merrily. One cart full of wounded men came to a standstill at the edge of the road quite close to Pierre. The driver, in bast shoes, ran panting up to his cart, thrust a stone under the hind wheels, which were without tires, and began setting straight the breech on his horse.
An old wounded soldier, with his arm in a sling, walking behind the cart, caught hold of it with his uninjured arm, and looked round at Pierre.
“Well, fellow-countryman, are we to be put down here or taken on to Moscow?” he said.
Pierre was so lost in thought that he did not hear the question. He looked from the cavalry regiment, which was now meeting the train of wounded, to the cart by which he stood, with the two wounded men sitting, and one lying down in it. One of the soldiers sitting in the cart had probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was done up in bandages, and one cheek was swollen as large as a baby’s head. All his mouth and nose were on one side. This soldier was looking at the cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young fellow, a light-haired recruit, as white as though there were not a drop of blood in his thin face, gazed with a fixed, good-natured smile at Pierre. The third lay so that his face could not be seen. The singers of the cavalry regiment passed close by the cart.
“A! za-pro-pa-la …”
they sang the military dance tune. As though seconding them, though in a different tone of gaiety, clanged out the metallic notes of the chimes at the top of the hill. And the hot rays of the sun bathed the top of the opposite slope with sunshine sparkling with another suggestion of gaiety. But where Pierre stood under the hillside, by the cart full of wounded soldiers, and the panting, little nag, it was damp, overcast, and dismal.
The soldier with the wounded cheek looked angrily at the singing horse soldiers.
“Oh, the smart fellows!” he murmured reproachfully.
“It’s not soldiers only, but peasants, too, I have seen to-day! Peasants, too, they are hunting up,” said the soldier standing by the cart, addressing himself to Pierre, with a melancholy smile. “They can’t pick and choose now. … They want to mass all the people together—it’s a matter of Moscow, you see. There is only one thing to do now.” In spite of the vagueness of the soldier’s words, Pierre fully grasped his meaning, and nodded his head approvingly.
The road was clear once more, and Pierre walked downhill, and drove on further.
Pierre drove on, looking on both sides of the road for familiar faces, and meeting none but unfamiliar, military faces, belonging to all sorts of regiments, and all staring with the same surprise at his white hat and green coat.
After driving four versts, for the first time he met an acquaintance, and greeted him joyfully. This was a doctor, one of the heads of the medical staff. He drove to meet Pierre in a covered gig, with a young doctor sitting beside him; and recognising Pierre, he called to the Cossack, who sat on the driver’s seat, and told him to stop.
“Count, your excellency, how do you come here?” asked the doctor.
“Oh, I wanted to have a look …”
“Oh well, there will be something to look at …” Pierre got out of his carriage, and stopped to have a talk with the doctor, explaining to him his plan for taking part in the battle.
The doctor advised Bezuhov to go straight to his highness.
“Why, you would be God knows where during the battle, out of sight,” he said, with a glance at his young companion; “and his highness knows you anyway, and will give you a gracious reception. That’s what I should do, my friend,” said the doctor.
The doctor seemed tired and hurried.
“So you think. … But one thing more I wanted to ask you, where is the position exactly?” said Pierre.
“The position?” said the doctor; “well, that’s not in my line. Drive on to Tatarinovo, there’s a great deal of digging going on there. There you’ll come out on a mound; from there you get a view,” said the doctor.
“A view from it? … If you would …”
But the doctor interrupted, and moved toward his gig.
“I would have shown you the way, but by God, you see” (the doctor made a significant gesture), “I’m racing to the commander of the corps. We’re in such a fix, you see … you know, count, there’s to be a battle tomorrow; with a hundred thousand troops, we must reckon on twenty thousand wounded at least; and we haven’t the stretchers, nor beds, nor attendants, nor doctors for six thousand. There are ten thousand carts; but we want other things; one must manage as one can.”
The strange idea that of those thousands of men, alive and well, young and old, who had been staring with such light-hearted amusement at his hat, twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death (perhaps the very men whom he had seen) made a great impression on Pierre.
“They will die, perhaps, to-morrow; how can they think of anything but death?” And suddenly, by some latent connection of ideas, he saw a vivid picture of the hillside of Mozhaisk, the carts of wounded men, the chimes, the slanting sunshine, and the singing of the cavalry regiment.
“They were going into battle, and meeting wounded soldiers, and never for a minute paused to think what was in store for them, but went by and winked at their wounded comrades. And of all those, twenty thousand are doomed to death, and they can wonder at my hat! Strange!” thought Pierre, as he went on towards Tatarinovo.
Carriages, waggons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels were standing about a gentleman’s house on the left side of the road. The commander-in-chief was putting up there. But when Pierre arrived, he found his highness and almost all the staff were out. They had all gone to the church service. Pierre pushed on ahead to Gorky; and driving uphill into a little village street, Pierre saw for the first time the peasants of the militia in white shirts, with crosses on their caps. With loud talk and laughter, eager and perspiring, they were working on the right of the road at a huge mound overgrown with grass.
Some of them were digging out the earth, others were carrying the earth away in wheelbarrows, while a third lot stood doing nothing.
There were two officers on the knoll giving them instructions. Seeing these peasants, who were unmistakably enjoying the novelty of their position as soldiers, Pierre thought again of the wounded soldiers at Mozhaisk, and he understood what the soldier had tried to express by the words “they want to mass all the people together.” The sight of these bearded peasants toiling on the field of battle with their queer, clumsy boots, with their perspiring necks, and here and there with shirts unbuttoned showing their sun-burnt collar-bones, impressed Pierre more strongly than anything he had yet seen and heard with the solemnity and gravity of the moment.
