If Napoleon had not reached the Kolocha on the evening of the 24th and had not ordered an immediate attack on the redoubt, if he had launched his attack the following morning, no one would have had any doubt that the Shevardino redoubt was the left flank of the Russian position, and the battle would have gone ahead as anticipated. In that case we would probably have defended the Shevardino redoubt even more stubbornly, it being our left flank; we would have attacked Napoleon in the centre or from the right, and the general engagement would have been fought out on the 25th in a location that had been anticipated and fortified. But since the attack on our left flank occurred in the evening following the retreat of our rearguard, that is, immediately after the action at Gridneva, and since the Russian generals would not or could not undertake a general engagement that same evening, the 24th, the first and most important action in the battle of Borodino was already lost on the 24th, a loss that clearly led straight to the débâcle that occurred on the 26th.
Following the loss of the Shevardino redoubt, on the morning of the 25th we found ourselves without a position for the left flank, and we were forced to let the left wing curl back, fortifying it where and when we could.
So it wasn’t just a question of our Russian troops being protected on the 26th of August by nothing but flimsy, unfinished earthworks; the disadvantage of their position was aggravated by the Russian generals’ failure to grasp what had actually happened (the loss of the left-flank position, and the whole field of the battle-to-be swinging from right to left), which left them holding their extended line all the way from Novoye to Utitsa, and that meant they had to transfer troops from right to left in mid-battle. As a result of this, throughout the entire battle the Russians had to face the whole French army bearing down on our left wing, with our forces doubly disadvantaged.
(Poniatowski’s action against Utitsa and Uvarov’s action against the French on the right flank were outside the general course of the battle.)
And so the battle of Borodino was fought quite differently from the way it is normally described (by historians so anxious to gloss over the blunders of our generals they detract from the glorious achievements of the Russian army and the Russian people). The battle of Borodino was not fought out in a carefully selected and well-fortified location with some slight disadvantage in numbers on the Russian side. Following the loss of the Shevardino redoubt the battle of Borodino was fought out in an open location with almost no entrenchments, with Russian forces doubly disadvantaged vis-à-vis the French, in other words under conditions that made it unthinkable even to get through three hours without the army being utterly defeated and put to flight, let alone keep on fighting for ten hours and still leave the issue in doubt.
CHAPTER 20
It was the morning of the 25th, and Pierre was on his way out of Mozhaysk. When he got to the point where the road out of town meandered steeply downhill, Pierre got out of his carriage and walked past a cathedral on the right-hand side at the top of the slope, where a service was being held and the bells were ringing. One of the cavalry regiments was following him downhill, with the singers out in front. Coming up the hill towards them was a train of carts filled with casualties from the previous day’s engagement. The peasant drivers were running this way and that, urging the horses on and wielding their whips. The carts, each carrying three or four wounded soldiers stretched out or sitting up, jolted over the stones that had been thrown down to make some sort of road up the hill. The wounded men, white-faced and bandaged with rags, clung to the sides wincing and scowling as they were shaken and thrown about in the carts. Almost all of them gawped at Pierre in his white hat and green swallowtail coat with the simple-minded curiosity of children.
Pierre’s driver yelled furiously at the casualty convoy to keep to one side of the road. The cavalry regiment marching on downhill in step with the singers soon caught up with Pierre’s carriage and this blocked the road. Pierre stopped and squeezed back to the edge of the road that had been dug into the hill. The slope of the hillside kept the sun off the cutting, and it was cold and damp down there, but overhead the bells sang out merrily on a bright August morning. A cart with wounded men on it came to a standstill at the edge of the road right in front of Pierre. The driver in his bark-fibre shoes ran round the back of his cart, and with much puffing and panting shoved some stones under the back wheels, which had no tyres on them; then he set to tightening his horse’s harness.
A wounded veteran with his arm in a sling, who had been walking along behind the cart, took hold of it with his good arm, and looked round at Pierre.
