Russians reading about the last part of the campaign of 1812 may wish the French had all been captured or destroyed, but in reality this would have been senseless to try even if it were possible.
Russians reading about the last part of the campaign of 1812 may wish the French had all been captured or destroyed, but in reality this would have been senseless to try even if it were possible.
Book 14, Chapter 19
Russians reading about the last part of the campaign of 1812 may wish the French had all been captured or destroyed, but in reality this would have been senseless to try even if it were possible.
Summary:
At first glance, it might appear that Russia should have captured or destroyed the entire French army during the last part of the war. Afterall, the Russians had the French surrounded and outnumbered, and the French army was in really bad shape by that point. But, for the Russians to have tried to capture or destroy the French at that point really would have made no sense. The French were doing there best to get away as fast as possible. Why not just let them go? The Russians didn’t have enough food and manpower to hold that many prisoners. Even left alone, only about one percent of the French would make it home. And since the French knew that they would starve and freeze as Russian prisoners, they had no reason to surrender peacefully. Plus, trying to capture and destroy the French would have cost Russian lives as well. So, really, it would have been senseless and impossible to try to capture and destroy the French. Sometimes historians try to blame Kutúzov or others for not capturing and destroying the French army, but those historians are not looking at the situation at the time realistically.
quote from the chapter:
Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans and consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who took a direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed insoluble easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.
The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it was senseless and unattainable.
The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion. That aim was attained in the first place of itself, as the French ran away, and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight. Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying the French, and thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was following the French, ready to use its strength in case their movement stopped.
The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a menace than to strike the running animal on the head.
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