War And Peace полностью

In the disposition the first thing said is: Batteries installed in locations chosen by Napoleon, along with cannons of Pernetti and Fouché, coming into line with them, one hundred and two pieces in all, to open fire and bombard the Russian flèches and redoubts. This could never have happened because from the locations set by Napoleon the Russian earthworks were out of range, and these one hundred and two pieces were wasting their fire until the nearest officer ignored Napoleon’s instructions and had them moved forward.

The second instruction was: Poniatowski to advance through the wood, take the village and turn the Russian left flank. This was not done, and never could have been, because as Poniatowski advanced through the wood towards the village he found his way blocked by Tuchkov, which meant that he could not and did not turn the Russian position.

The third instruction was: General Compans to advance through the wood and take the first fortification. Compans’ division did not take the first fortification; it was forced back because as it emerged from the wood it had to re-form under a hail of grapeshot, which Napoleon knew nothing about.

The fourth instruction was: Viceroy to take the village (Borodino) and cross by the three bridges, then keep level with Morand’s and Gérard’s divisions (nothing about when and where they were to move), all three advancing on the redoubt under his command and coming into line with the rest of our troops.

As far as we can tell, not from the meanderings of this senseless prose but from the Viceroy’s actual attempts to carry out his orders, he was supposed to advance through Borodino and attack the redoubt from the left, while the divisions of Morand and Gérard advanced simultaneously from the front.

All of this, like the other instructions, failed to come about, and never could have come about. The Viceroy did get through Borodino, but was driven back at the Kolocha, and could make no further progress. The divisions under Morand and Gérard failed to take the redoubt; they were driven back, and at the end of the day the redoubt was seized by the cavalry (something almost certainly unforeseen by Napoleon, and never reported to him).

So it turns out that not one of the Emperor’s instructions was carried out, and none of them ever could have been. But in the disposition it was stated that with the battle under way further instructions would be issued in response to enemy movements, so you might well imagine that all necessary arrangements were actually made by Napoleon in mid-battle. But this was not the case, and never could have been, because during the battle Napoleon was so far away that (as it later emerged) he could not have known how things were going, and not a single instruction issued by him during the battle could possibly have been carried out.

CHAPTER 28

Many historians tell us that the French failed to win the battle of Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and if he hadn’t had a cold the orders he issued before and during the battle would have marked him out even more clearly as a genius, and Russia would have been destroyed and the face of the world would have been changed. To those historians who maintain that Russia was formed by the will of a single man, Peter the Great, and France was turned from a republic into an empire, and the French army marched into Russia all by the will of a single man, Napoleon, the argument that Russia retained power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the 26th of August must seem highly persuasive.