Not only on that day, as Napoleon rode over the battlefield strewn with
men killed and
maimed (by his will as he believed), did he reckon as
he looked at them how many Russians there were for each Frenchman and,
deceiving
himself, find reason for rejoicing in the
calculation that there were five Russians for every Frenchman. Not on
that day alone did
he write in a letter to Paris that "the battle
field was superb," because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on
the island of St.
Helena in the peaceful solitude where he
said he intended to devote his leisure to an account of the great deeds
he had done, he
wrote:
The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern
times: it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the
tranquillity and security of all; it was purely pacific and
conservative.
It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the
beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening
out, full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system
was already founded; all that remained was to organize it.
Shevardino, and Semenovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their
cattle. At the
dressing stations the grass and earth were
soaked with blood for a space of some three acres around. Crowds of men
of various
arms, wounded and unwounded, with frightened
faces, dragged themselves back to Mozhaysk from the one army and back to
Valuevo
from the other. Other crowds, exhausted and
hungry, went forward led by their officers. Others held their ground and
continued to fire.
A lucky incident helped the Russian redouts to keep their positions;
General Ermolov
was sent to help the 2nd Army. On
his way, his divisions were supposed to pass near Gorizki. Ermolov saw
the dangerous
situation of Russian army at that
point, and making a decision that he would be more helpful here, he
attacked the French
troops. Around midday, the
Russian army was still holding its position on the battlefield, and kept
attacking. All the
Russian fortifications were
protected except the fleshes and Semenovsk. General Plantov suggested
that Kutuzov
attack the left wing of the French.
He was so successful with this unexpected attack that he was able to pass
Kolocha and
continue his attack. Napoleon
was ready to attack the center and was bringing reinforcements to the
center instead of
keeping his left wing. Kutuzov
foresaw this strategy and reallocated more divisions to the middle.
Napoleon initiated the second part of the battle, by attacking the center
of the Russian
forces, as well as Raevsky's
battery. The French division was ordered to attack Raevsky's battery at
1:00 in the
afternoon. The French general
Sorbie noticed the reallocation of the Russian forces to the center.
Thinking the Russians
were about to attack, Sorbie
brought in his reserves toward the center as well. Napoleon assumed the
Russian middle
was still weak, and hoped to
break through with one swift attack. He had fresh troops that had not yet
fought, but the
attack was delayed because of
news about the French retreat around Kolocha. The surprise attack by the
Russian
captain Uvarov forced this French
retreat. Napoleon stopped the central attack and sent reinforcements to
Kolocha. The
Russian army used this time,
almost 2 hours, to move more divisions into position around the center
and Raevsky's
battery; thus there were no breaks
between the center and the battery. Realizing the attack at Kolocha was
organized by a
very small Russian division,
Napoleon then continued his main attack at the center. This attack was
successful, and
the Russian army suffered many
losses. It seemed this was the climax of the battle, because forces were
not equal and the
Russians could not defend
against the overpowering French army. At this time, Barkly-de-Tolli and
his divisions
came to aid in the retreat of the
Russian cavalry and troops. De-Tolli slowed the French and allowed the
Russians to
escape an even worse defeat.
Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter of
bayonets and
cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now
spread a mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of saltpeter and
blood. Clouds
gathered and drops of rain began to fall on
the dead and wounded, on the frightened, exhausted, and hesitating men,
as if to say:
"Enough, men! Enough! Cease... bethink
yourselves! What are you doing?"
To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest, it
began equally to
appear doubtful whether they should continue
to slaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the
question arose in
every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and
be killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don't want to do
so anymore!"
By evening this thought had ripened in every
soul. At any moment these men might have been seized with horror at what
they were
doing and might have thrown up everything
and run away anywhere.
But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the horror of
what they were
doing, though they would have been glad to
leave off, some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to control
them, and they
still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed,
and applied the match, though only one artilleryman survived out of every
three, and
though they stumbled and panted with fatigue,
perspiring and stained with blood and powder. The cannon balls flew just
as swiftly and
cruelly from both sides, crushing human
bodies, and that terrible work which was not done by the will of a man
but at the will of
Him who governs men and worlds continued.
Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would have
said that, if only
the French made one more slight effort, it
would disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French army would
have said that
the Russians need only make one more
slight effort and the French would be destroyed. But neither the French
nor the Russians
made that effort, and the flame of battle
burned slowly out.
The Russians did not make that effort because they were not attacking the
French. At the
beginning of the battle they stood blocking
the way to Moscow and they still did so at the end of the battle as at
the beginning. But
even had the aim of the Russians been to
drive the French from their positions, they could not have made this last
effort, for all the
Russian troops had been broken up, there
was no part of the Russian army that had not suffered in the battle, and
though still
holding their positions they had lost ONE HALF
of their army.
The French, with the memory of all their former victories during fifteen
years, with the
assurance of Napoleon's invincibility, with the
consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield and had lost
only a quarter of
their men and still had their Guards intact,
twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort. The French
had attacked the
Russian army in order to drive it from its
position ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians
continued to block the
road to Moscow as before, the aim of the
French had not been attained and all their efforts and losses were in
vain. But the French
did not make that effort. Some historians say
that Napoleon need only have used his Old Guards, who were intact, and
the battle would
have been won. To speak of what would
have happened had Napoleon sent his Guards is like talking of what would
happen if
autumn became spring. It could not be.
Napoleon did not give his Guards, not because he did not want to, but
because it could
not be done. All the generals, officers. and
soldiers of the French army knew it could not be done, because the
flagging spirit of the
troops would not permitit.
It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling of
the mighty arm
being stricken powerless, but all the
generals and soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the
battle or not, after all
their experience of previous battles- when
after one tenth of such efforts the enemy had fled- experienced a similar
feeling of terror
before an enemy who, after losing HALF his
men, stood as threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle.
The moral force
of the attacking French army was exhausted.
Not that sort of victory which is defined by the capture of pieces of
material fastened to
sticks, called standards, and of the ground on
which the troops had stood and were standing, but a moral victory that
convinces the
enemy of the moral superiority of his opponent
and of his own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodino. The
French invaders,
like an infuriated animal that has in its
onslaught received a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but
could not stop, any
more than the Russian army, weaker by one
half, could help swerving. By impetus gained, the French army was still
able to roll
forward to Moscow, but there, without further
effort on the part of the Russians, it had to perish, bleeding from the
mortal wound it had
received at Borodino. The direct
consequence of the battle of Borodino was Napoleon's senseless flight
from Moscow, his
retreat along the old Smolensk road, the
destruction of the invading army of five hundred thousand men, and the
downfall of
Napoleonic France, on which at Borodino for the
first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit had been laid.
HELP