The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow that followed and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is one of the most instructive phenomena in history. Historians agree that the external activity of states in conflict is expressed in wars, and that as a direct result of greater or less success the political strength of nations increases or decreases. Strange as it may be that a king, having quarrelled, kills three, five, or ten thousand men and subjugates millions, the facts of history as we know them confirm that the greater or lesser success of one army against another is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of an increase or decrease in national strength, even though it is unintelligible why the defeat of a hundredth part of a nation should oblige the whole to submit. Napoleon's wars serve the rule: Austria loses rights in proportion to the defeat of its army; Jena and Auerstadt destroy Prussia's independent existence.
Then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow is taken, and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia that ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules, to say the field of Borodino remained in Russian hands, or that after Moscow there were other battles that destroyed Napoleon's army, is impossible. After the French victory there was no general engagement, nor any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist. If this were an example from the history of China, historians might say it was not a historic phenomenon. If it concerned a brief conflict with few troops, we might treat it as an exception. This event occurred before our fathers' eyes, a question of the life or death of their fatherland, in the greatest of all known wars. The campaign from Borodino to the expulsion of the French proved that winning a battle does not produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of conquest. The force that decides the fate of peoples lies not in the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in something else.
French historians, describing the army before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order except cavalry, artillery, and transport: there was no forage. That was a misfortune no one could remedy, for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather than let the French have it. Karp and Vlas, who after the evacuation drove into town to pillage and in general failed to manifest heroic feelings, and the whole innumerable multitude of such peasants, did not bring hay for the high price offered, but burned it. Imagine two men fencing with rapiers according to all the rules. Suddenly one, feeling the matter concerns his life, throws down the rapier and seizes a cudgel. Then imagine that the man who used the simplest means, influenced by traditions of chivalry, insisted he had won with the rapier. The fencer who demanded the rules was the French army; the opponent who snatched the cudgel was the Russian people; those who explain by fencing rules are the historians. From the burning of Smolensk a war began that followed no previous traditions. Napoleon complained to Kutuzov and to Alexander that the war was carried on contrary to all the rules, as if there were rules for killing people. Some highly placed Russians also found the cudgel disgraceful and wanted a pose according to the art. The cudgel of the people's war rose and fell with stupid simplicity, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had perished.
Coming Up in Chapter 300
One of the most obvious departures from the so-called laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men pressed together in a mass. Instead of two crowds opposing each other, the men disperse, attack singly, and run away when stronger forces appear. This was done by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in the Caucasus, and by the Russians in 1812.
