Prince Andrew is called in to see the Emperor, and while waiting sees an influential general and military theorist going in ahead of him.
Prince Andrew is called in to see the Emperor, and while waiting sees an influential general and military theorist going in ahead of him.
Book 9, Chapter 10
Prince Andrew is called in to see the Emperor, and while waiting sees an influential general and military theorist going in ahead of him.
Summary:
Andrew, summoned to brief the Emperor, happens to see General Pfuel. Pfuel is a German theorist who believes strongly that warfare can be reduced to a set of immutable laws-laws of oblique movements, outflankings, and so forth. These theorists so love their theory that they lose sight of the theory’s object-its practical application. That morning Colonel Michaud had ridden round the Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had pointed out to him that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, and till then considered a chef-d’oeuvre of tactical science which would ensure Napoleon’s destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the destruction of the Russian army. Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that anyone had dared to criticize his fortifications in his absence. Pfuel said a few words to Prince Andrew, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all will go very wrong unless he gets his way.
quote from the chapter:
In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstädt, but he did not see the least proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of that war. On the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were, in his opinion, the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark, There, I said the whole affair would go to the devil! Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who so love their theory that they lose sight of the theory’s object-its practical application. His love of theory made him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his theory.
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