ar that flouted all the old traditions of warfare. The burning of towns and villages, the retreat after every battle, the blow administered at Borodino followed by yet another retreat, the abandoning and burning of Moscow, the hunting down of looters, the interception of transport - all of this went against the rule-book.
Napoleon could sense this, and from the moment he took up the proper stance for a fencer, in Moscow, only to see a club raised against him instead of his opponent's sword he never stopped complaining to Kutuzov and Tsar Alexander that this war wasn't following the rule-book. (As if rules existed for the killing of people!)
Despite French complaints that they weren't keeping to the rules, despite misgivings among some highly placed Russians over the rather shady practice of fighting with a club instead of following the rule-book and standing there in carte or tierce, or making a skilful thrust in prime, and so on, the people's war club was raised with all its menace, majesty and might, and indiscriminately, with no thought for the niceties of proper procedure, it rose and fell with brainless simplicity but remarkable effectiveness, hammering the French until the entire invading force was finished off.
Happy the people who, unlike the French in 1813, refuse to salute the magnanimous conqueror by following the rules laid down for this form of art and offering him the sword hilt-first with elegance and courtesy. Happy the people who, when put to the test, ask no questions about other people's behaviour under similar circumstances, but pick up the first club that comes to hand in one simple, easy movement and hammer away with it until the humiliation and vengeance deep in their hearts give way to contempt and compassion.
CHAPTER 2
One of the most obvious and successful infringements of the so-called 'rules of war' is the action of scattered groups of individuals ranged against men working together in a dense mass. This type of action is always seen in war where nationality is at stake. In this kind of fighting, instead of ganging together to attack another crowd, men split up into small groups, attack in ones and twos and run away immediately they are attacked by superior forces, only to mount another attack when chance permits. This is how the guerrillas operated in Spain, the hills-men in the Caucasus and the Russians in 1812.
This has come to be known as 'guerrilla warfare' on the assumption that to name it is to define it. But in fact, this kind of warfare, far from obeying any laws or rules, is a flagrant contradiction of a well-known law of tactics which tends to be thought of as infallible. This law states that the attacking party shall concentrate its forces in order to be stronger than the enemy when battle begins.
Guerrilla warfare (invariably successful, as history shows) is a flagrant infringement of this rule.
The infringement arises from an assumption, made by military science, that military effectiveness is commensurate with numerical strength. Military science maintains that the greater the numbers, the greater the strength. As the saying goes, God is on the side of the big battalions.
In saying this, military science is behaving like a specialist in mechanics who bases his definition of momentum on mass alone and claims that momenta are equal or unequal only in so far as their masses are equal or unequal.
But momentum (the measurement of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.
In warfare the strength of an army is the product of its mass multiplied by something else, an x factor.
Military science, observing in history innumerable instances of armies in which size does not correspond with strength, and in which small numbers defeat large ones, vaguely acknowledges the existence of this unknown multiplier, and tries to locate it. Could it perhaps reside in some geometrical disposition of the troops, or better weaponry, or - the most popular explanation - military genius on the part of the leaders? But none of these attempts to define the multiplier comes up with results that agree with the facts of history.
Yet all you have to do to discover the x factor is repudiate the false view (so gratifying for heroes) that acknowledges the effectiveness of steps taken by the higher authorities during a war.
This x factor is army morale, a greater or lesser willingness to fight and face danger on the part of all the men who make up the army, whether or not they are fighting under leaders of genius, with clubs or guns that fire thirty rounds a minute. Men with the greatest desire to fight always steal the advantage when it comes to fighting. Morale is the factor which, when multiplied by mass, gives you the strength of the force. The intellectual problem is to define and express the significance of this unknown factor, morale.
This problem can be solved, but only when we stop the arbitrary business of ignoring the x factor and concentrating on circumstances in which military strength shows itself (decisions taken by a general, military equipment, etc.) and fully acknowledge the role of this unknown factor, the greater or lesser willingness to fight and face danger. Only then, by expressing the known historical facts in equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor, can we hope to define it.
Imagine a situation in which ten men, battalions or divisions take on and defeat fifteen men, battalions or divisions, killing or capturing everybody while sustaining only four losses themselves; they have lost four to the other side's fifteen. The ratio, four to fifteen, may be expressed as: 4x = 15y. In other words: x:y = 15:4. This equation may not give us the value of an unknown factor, but it does give the ratio between two unknowns. And by expressing a whole range of historical data (battles, campaigns, periods of war) in equations like these, we can obtain sets of figures that must contain laws, and these laws should be discoverable.
The law of tactics that tells armies to group together for attacking purposes and split up for retreat amounts to nothing more than unwitting confirmation of the truth that the strength of an army depends on the state of its morale. To lead men into action under fire calls for greater discipline (attainable only by grouping together) than is needed for self-defence under attack. But since this rule makes no allowance for troop morale, it constantly turns out to be unreliable, and comes to grief most of all in wars where nationality is at stake and there has been a strong rise or fall in army morale.
According to the laws of tactics, in 1812 the retreating French ought to have defended themselves by splitting up, but no, they huddled together in a crowd because their morale had sunk so low it was only their numbers that kept them going. Conversely, according to the laws of tactics the Russians ought to have attacked en masse, but they didn't, they broke down into small groups because their morale was so high that individual men could be relied on to attack the French without waiting for orders, and nobody needed to be forced into hardship and danger.
CHAPTER 3
The so-called 'guerrilla' war had begun the moment the enemy marched into Smolensk. Before it was officially recognized as such by our government many thousands of enemy soldiers - stragglers caught looting or foraging - had been eliminated by Cossacks and peasants, who killed these men off instinctively, like dogs rounding on a mad stray. Denis Davydov, every inch an intuitive Russian, was the first to realize the value of this terrible weapon as an instrument for annihilating the French with no questions asked about the niceties of the military art, and he must be credited with having taken the first step towards the legitimization of this method of warfare. The first guerrilla detachment, formed on the 24th of August, was Davydov's; others soon followed. As the campaign went on, more and more such detachments were formed.
The guerrillas destroyed the Great Army bit by bit. They swept up the fallen leaves that were dropping off the withered tree, and sometimes they shook the tree itself. By October, when the French were on the run, heading back to Smolensk, there were hundreds of these detachments, varying in size and each with its own character. Some retained army methods, and still had their own infantry, artillery, staff-officers and all amenities. Some consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were also little bands of footsoldiers and horsemen working together, peasant groups and obscure detachments got up by landowners. One band was commanded by a deacon, and they took hundreds of prisoners in a single month. There was a village elder's wife called Vasilisa who killed Frenchmen in hundreds.
Guerrilla warfare was at its height towards the end of October. The first stage of this war was long gone, the time when the guerrillas had been amazed at their own audacity, in constant fear of being surrounded and captured by the French, never unsaddling, hardly ever dismounting as they hid away in the woods, fully expecting imminent pursuit. Guerrilla activity had now assumed a definite shape; they all knew what they could, and could not do, to the French. By now only staff-officers and commanders of units operating by the rule-book some way away from the French considered anything to be impossible. The long-established smaller bands who had been keeping a close eye on the French found it possible to do things the leaders of larger companies wouldn't have dared to undertake. For the Cossacks and peasants, who stole in and out among the French, anything was possible now.
On the 22nd of October Denisov, one of these irregulars, was out with his party at a time when guerrilla blood was up. From early morning he and his men had been on the move, working their way through the woods that skirted the high road and stalking a big French convoy of cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners that had become detached from the other French troops and was heading for Smolensk - under a strong escort, if the reports from scouts and prisoners were anything to go by. Denisov and Dolokhov (who was also a leader of a small band operating in the same area) were not the only ones who knew about this convoy. Some of the generals in charge of larger units, working with staff-officers, also knew of its existence, and Denisov claimed they were all salivating at the prospect of attacking it. Two of these generals - one a Pole, the other a German - had sent word at virtually the same time, each inviting Denisov to join his detachment and mount an attack.
'Oh no, bwother, you don't catch me like that!' said Denisov as he read these missives. He wrote back to the German that in spite of a burning desire to serve under such a brilliant and famous general he had to forgo the pleasure because he was already committed to serving under the Polish general. He wrote the same thing to the Pole, informing him that he was already serving under the German.
With this settled, Denisov now intended to bypass the higher authorities and join forces with Dolokhov to attack this transport convoy and capture it with his own small band of men. On the 22nd of October the convoy was making its way from the village of Mikulino to another one called Shamshevo. There were thick woods all down the left-hand side of the road, in some places skirting the road itself and in others receding half a mile or more away. Denisov had taken a small party and spent the whole day riding up and down through these woods, plunging deep into their centre, then emerging again near the edge, and never losing sight of the moving Frenchmen. That morning, just outside Mikulino, at a place where the wood ran close to the road, the Cossacks of Denisov's party had pounced on two French baggage-wagons loaded with cavalry saddles that had got stuck in the mud, and taken the saddles off into the wood. From that time until late afternoon they had been watching the movements of the French without attacking. The plan was to avoid alerting them and let them go quietly on to Shamshevo, where Denisov could join up with Dolokhov (who was due to meet them that evening for a conference in a watchman's hut in the wood, less than a mile from Shamshevo), and wait till dawn before coming down on them like an avalanche from two sides at once, killing and capturing the lot of them in one fell swoop.
Six Cossacks had been posted in the rear just over a mile outside Mikulino, where the wood skirted the road, and they were to bring word at once if any fresh French columns turned up.
Ahead of Shamshevo Dolokhov had the same task of watching the road to find out how far away any other French troops might be. At a rough estimate the convoy had fifteen hundred men in it. Denisov had two hundred men, and Dolokhov perhaps the same. But Denisov was not interested in numerical superiority. The only thing he still needed to know was who these troops were, and in order to find out Denisov needed an informer, someone from the enemy column. The attack on the wagons in the morning had been carried out with such speed they had killed all the French soldiers in charge of the wagons, and the only person captured alive had been a little drummer-boy who had lost touch with his own regiment, and couldn't tell them anything definite about the troops that made up the column.
It was Denisov's view that another attack would be too risky - it might stir up the whole column - so he sent a peasant by the name of Tikhon Shcherbaty on to Shamshevo to see if he could manage to capture at least one French quartermaster who had been sent on ahead.
CHAPTER 4
It was a warm, rainy, autumn day. The sky and horizon were the colour of muddy water. The weather alternated between a kind of rolling mist and torrents of driving rain.
Dressed in a felt cloak and fur cap, both streaming with rain, Denisov was riding a thin thoroughbred with sunken sides. Like his horse, which had its head turned to one side and its ears laid back, he shrank away from the driving rain and peered anxiously ahead. There was a look of annoyance on his face, which was rather thinner than before and covered with a thick black stubble.
Alongside Denisov, also wearing a felt cloak and fur cap, and mounted on a strong, sleek Don horse, rode a Cossack hetman who was working with him.
Hetman Lovaysky the Third was a gangly creature, as straight as a plank, with a pale face, fair hair, light-coloured, close-set eyes and an expression of calm self-confidence in his face and his bearing. It would have been difficult to detect anything special between horse and rider, but you could tell at a glance that Denisov, looking wet through and uncomfortable, was a man sitting mounted on a horse, whereas the hetman, calm and comfortable as always, was not just a man sitting mounted on a horse, but a man who formed a unified whole with his horse and thus possessed a twofold strength.
Shortly ahead of them walked a peasant guide, also wet through, in his grey kaftan and white woollen cap.
Shortly behind, on a skinny, scraggy Kirghiz pony, with a huge tail and mane and a mouth flecked with blood, rode a young officer in a blue French greatcoat. Beside him rode a hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and blue cap perched behind on the crupper of his horse. The boy's hands were red with cold as he hung on to the hussar, waggling his bare feet to try and warm them up, and his eyebrows stood up high as he gazed round in bewilderment. This was the French drummer-boy who had been taken prisoner that morning.
Further back there were some hussars riding along the narrow, muddy, churned-up forest path in threes and fours, and some Cossacks wearing an assortment of cloaks, French greatcoats and horse-cloths pulled up over their heads. All the horses, chestnut and bay, looked black with the rain streaming down them. Their necks looked curiously thin because of their soaking manes, and steam rose from them in clouds. Clothes, saddles, bridles, everything was as wet, slippery and dank as the earth and fallen leaves strewn across their path. They sat hunched up in the saddle, trying not to move, so as to keep some warmth in the water that had got through to their skin, and stop any more cold rain trickling in anywhere under their seats, behind their knees or down their necks. In the middle of a long line of Cossacks two wagons drawn by French horses and Cossack saddle-horses rumbled over tree-stumps and branches, and splashed through ruts and puddles.
Denisov's horse tried to avoid a puddle in the track, and in doing so banged his rider's knee against a tree.
'Ow, blast you!' cried Denisov angrily. Baring his teeth, he lashed his horse three times with his whip, spattering himself and his comrades with mud. Denisov was feeling low, partly from the rain and hunger (no one had eaten since first thing that morning), but mostly because there had been no word from Dolokhov, and the man sent to catch an informer hadn't come back.
'There'll never be a chance like this to attack that wagon-twain. It's too wisky to attack on our own, but if we put it off some of the big boys will gwab the spoils wight under our noses,' said Denisov to himself, constantly peering ahead in the hope of seeing the messenger he was expecting from Dolokhov.
Emerging into a clearing with a good long open view to the right, Denisov came to a halt.
'Someone coming,' he said.
The hetman looked in the direction where Denisov was pointing.
'Two of them. An officer and a Cossack. But we can't conjuncture it's the colonel himself,' said the hetman, a great user of unfamiliar words.
The two figures rode downhill, disappeared from sight and came back up into view a few minutes later. The first one was an officer, looking all dishevelled and dripping wet, with his trousers working their way up above his knees, and he was lashing his horse into a weary gallop. Behind him came a Cossack, standing up in the stirrups and riding at a trot. The officer, only a youngster, with a broad, rosy face and sharp, cheery eyes, galloped up to Denisov and handed him a sopping-wet packet.
'From the general,' he said. 'I'm sorry it's got a bit wet . . .'
Denisov took the envelope with a frown and broke the seal.
'They kept on saying how dangerous it was,' said the officer, turning to the hetman while Denisov was reading the letter. 'But we were ready, me and Komarov.' He nodded to the Cossack. 'We have both two pist . . . Hey, what's all this?' he asked, seeing the French drummer-boy. 'Have you got a prisoner? Have you been into battle? May I talk to him?'
'Wostov! Petya!' Denisov suddenly called out, after a quick skim through the letter. 'Why didn't you say who you are?' And Denisov turned towards him with a smile, holding his hand out. The officer was Petya Rostov.
All the way there Petya had been rehearsing how to behave with Denisov, as one adult officer to another, with no reference to their previous acquaintance. But the moment Denisov smiled at him Petya beamed, blushed with delight, forgot all his carefully rehearsed formalities and launched into an account of how he had ridden past the French, how pleased he was to