Book 13 Chapter 7

MEANWHILE another column was to have fallen upon the French in the centre, but of this column Kutuzov was in command. He knew very well that nothing but muddle would come of this battle, begun against his will, and, as far as it was in his power, he held his forces back. He did not move.

Kutuzov rode mutely about on his grey horse, making languid replies to the suggestions for an attack.

“You can all talk about attacking, but you don't see that we don't know how to execute complicated man?uvres,” he said to Miloradovitch, who was begging to be allowed to advance.

“We couldn't take Murat alive in the morning, nor be in our places in time; now there's nothing to be done!” he said to another.

When it was reported to Kutuzov that there were now two battalions of Poles in the rear of the French, where according to the earlier reports of the Cossacks there had been none, he took a sidelong glance behind him at Yermolov, to whom he had not spoken since the previous day.

“Here they are begging to advance, proposing projects of all sorts, and as soon as you get to work, there's nothing ready, and the enemy, forewarned, takes his measures.”

Yermolov half closed his eyelids, and faintly smiled, as he heard those words. He knew that the storm had blown over him, and that Kutuzov would not go beyond that hint.

“That's his little joke at my expense,” said Yermolov softly, poking Raevsky, near him, with his knee.

Soon after that, Yermolov moved forward to Kutuzov and respectfully submitted:

“The time has not passed, your highness; the enemy has not gone away. If you were to command an advance? Or else the guards won't have a sight of smoke.”

Kutuzov said nothing, but when news was brought him that Murat's troops were in retreat, he gave orders for an advance; but every hundred paces he halted for three-quarters of an hour.

The whole battle was confined to what had been done by the Cossacks of Orlov-Denisov; the rest of the troops simply lost a few hundreds of men for nothing.

In consequence of this battle, Kutuzov received a diamond decoration; Bennigsen, too, was rewarded with diamonds and a hundred thousand roubles; and the other generals, too, received agreeable recognition according to their rank, and more changes were made on the staff.

“That's how things are always done among us, everything topsy-turvy!” the Russian officers and generals said after the battle of Tarutino; just as they say it nowadays, with an assumption that some stupid person had muddled everything, while we would have managed quite differently. But the men who speak like this either do not understand what they are talking of, or intentionally deceive themselves. Every battle—Tarutino, Borodino, Austerlitz—fails to come off as those who planned it expected it to do. That is inevitable.

An innumerable collection of freely acting forces (and nowhere is a man freer than on the field of battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence the direction taken by a battle, and that can never be known beforehand and never corresponds with the direction of any one force.

If many forces are acting simultaneously in different directions on any body, the direction of its motion will not correspond with any one of the forces, but will always follow a middle course, the summary of them, what is expressed in mechanics by the diagonal of the parallelogram of forces.

If in the accounts given us by historians, especially by French ones, we find that wars and battles appear to follow a definite plan laid down beforehand, the only deduction we can make from that is that these accounts are not true.

The battle of Tarutino obviously failed to attain the aim which Toll had in view: to lead the army into action in accordance with his disposition of the troops, or the aim which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had: to take Murat prisoner; or the aim of destroying at one blow the whole corps, which Benningsen and others may have entertained; or the aim of the officer who desired to distinguish himself under fire; or the Cossack, who wanted to obtain more booty than he did attain, and so on. But if we regard the object of the battle as what was actually accomplished by it, and what was the universal desire of all Russians (the expulsion of the French from Russia and the destruction of their army), it will be perfectly evident that the battle of Tarutino, precisely in consequence of its incongruities, was exactly what was wanted at that period of the campaign. It is difficult or impossible to imagine any issue of that battle more in accordance with that object than its actual result. With the very smallest effort, in spite of the greatest muddle, and with the most trifling loss, the most important results in the whole campaign were obtained—the transition was made from retreat to attack, the weakness of the French was revealed, and the shock was given which was all that was needed to put Napoleon's army to flight.

在这些纵队中，另有一个纵队应当从正面进攻法国人，然而库图佐夫在这个纵队里。他十分清楚地知道，这次违反他的意志进行的战斗，除了弄得十分混乱以外，不会有别的结果，于是就他的权力所及，尽力阻止部队进攻，他按兵不动。

库图佐夫骑着他那匹小灰马，默默地走着，他懒懒地回答向他提出的发动进攻的建议。

“您老是把进攻挂在嘴上，你没有看到我们尚不善于打复杂的运动战。”他对请求前进的米洛拉多维奇说。

“今天早上没能生擒缪拉，部队没有按时到达指定地点，现在什么也办不到啦！”他对另一个人回答道。

库图佐夫听说，依据哥萨克的情报，法军后方先前一个人也没有，而现在已有两个营的波兰士兵，他转过脸，斜着眼看了看身后的叶尔莫洛夫（他从昨天起就没有同他说过一句话）。

“您瞧，还要求进攻呢，制定了种种作战方案，可是一旦动手，什么都没有准备好，而警觉的敌人却采取了应对的措施。”

叶尔莫洛夫听了这些话，眯起眼睛，淡淡一笑，他懂得，对于他来说，暴风雨已经过去了，库图佐夫仅以这种暗示为满足。

“他这是拿我来取笑。”叶尔莫洛夫碰了一下站在他身旁的拉耶夫斯基的膝盖，悄悄说道。

过了不大一会，叶尔莫洛夫走近库图佐夫，恭恭敬敬地报告说：

“阁下，现在为时还不晚，敌人还没走。您是不是下令进攻？否则近卫军连一点硝烟也看不见了。”

库图佐夫一句话也不说，当人们向他报告说缪拉的部队在撤退的时候，他下了进攻命令；然而每前进一百步要停三刻钟。

整个战斗就只有奥尔洛夫·杰尼索夫的哥萨克所做的那点事情，其余的军队只是白白损失了几百人。

由于这次战役，库图佐夫获得了一枚钻石勋章，贝尼格森也得到一些钻石和十万卢布，其余的人按照级别都得到了许多令人愉快的好处，在这次战役之后，参谋部又作了新的调动。

“我们总是搞成这个样子，都搞颠倒了！”在塔鲁丁诺战役之后，俄国的军官们和将军们说道，现在也还是有人这样说，这给人一种感觉，似乎有一个傻瓜把事情搞糟了似的，要是我们，就不会这样。然而说这种话的人，他们不是不知道他们所说的那件事情，就是有意欺骗他们自己。所有的战役——塔鲁丁诺、波罗底诺、奥斯特利茨等战役，都不是按照战役的制定者的设计进行的。这就是最本质的情况。

无数自由的力量（因为没有任何一个地方比人们在进行殊死搏斗的时候更加自由）影响着战斗的趋势，而这个趋势从来都不可能未卜先知，也从来不会与某种力量的趋势相符合。

如果同时有许多各种不相同的力作用于某一物体，该物体运动的方向不可能与任何一个力的运动的方向相符合；而总是平均最短的方向，即力学所说的平行四边形的对角线。

如果我们在历史学家的著述中，特别是在法国历史学家的著述中，发现他们对战争和战斗都是按照事先制定的计划进行的，那我们唯一可以得出的结论是，这些论述是不真实的。

塔鲁丁诺战役显然没有达到托尔想达到的目的，军队没有按照他规定的顺序投入战斗；也没有达到奥尔洛夫伯爵的目的——生擒缪拉，或者，也没有达到贝尼格森和别的人想要一举歼灭整个师团的目的，军官们也没有达到想参加战斗并能荣立战功的目的，或者哥萨克们也没有达到想得到比他们已经得到的还要更多的战利品的目的，诸如此类。如果那次战役的目的是实际上已经达到的目的的话，那么，当时所有俄国人的一个共同愿望（把法国人从俄国赶出去，消灭他们的军队），那么，问题就十分明显，塔鲁丁诺战役正是因为矛盾而出，所以恰好是那个时期所必需的战役。很难而且也不可能设想出比这次战役的结果更适宜的结果。在用最少的力量，在极大的混乱，在损失微不足道的情况下，在整个战役中得到了最好的结果，这就是，使退却转为进攻，暴露了法国人的弱点，对拿破仑军队即将逃跑一事起推动作用。