Once Napoleon’s army began to flee, Kutúzov focused his efforts solely on avoiding useless attacks, maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing enemy.
Once Napoleon’s army began to flee, Kutúzov focused his efforts solely on avoiding useless attacks, maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing enemy.
Book 13, Chapter 18
Once Napoleon’s army began to flee, Kutúzov focused his efforts solely on avoiding useless attacks, maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing enemy.
Summary:
From the time he received news of the French leaving Moscow until the end of the campaign, all Kutúzov’s activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing enemy. Everywhere Kutúzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for his retreat fled in the opposite direction. Historians sometimes argue that Napoleon could have moved into the rich Russian southern provinces, where provisions would have been available. But, in Tolstoy’s opinion, this would not have worked, since now the chief desire of everyone in the French army was just to get away, especially after a chance incident where Napoleon himself was nearly captured by some Russian cossacks. Tolstoy reminds us also that, consistent with his philosophy of history, that the retreat was not caused by one individual named Napoleon, but rather by larger forces influencing the whole army.
quote from the chapter:
That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodinó and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were, the chemical elements of dissolution.
The members of what had once been an army-Napoleon himself and all his soldiers fled-without knowing whither, each concerned only to make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.
So it came about that at the council at Málo-Yaroslávets, when the generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all recognized.
But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away, there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must flee.
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