and such maneuvers...

But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were
guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried and
punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and others
were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible
why, the position of the Russian army being what it was at Krasnoe and
at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior forces), the French army
with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not captured, if that was what
the Russians aimed at.

The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military
historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) is unfounded,
for we know that he could not restrain the troops from attacking at
Vyazma and Tarutino.

Why was the Russian army--which with inferior forces had withstood the
enemy in full strength at Borodino--defeated at Krasnoe and the Berezina
by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was numerically
superior?

If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing
Napoleon and his marshals--and that aim was not merely frustrated but
all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled--then this last
period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the French to be a
series of victories, and quite wrongly considered victorious by Russian
historians.

The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims
of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical
rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit
that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for
Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.

But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a
conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French
victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series
of Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the
liberation of their country.

The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the historians
studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns and the generals,
from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth, have attributed to this
last period of the war of 1812 an aim that never existed, namely that of
cutting off and capturing Napoleon with his marshals and his army.

There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have been
senseless and its attainment quite impossible.

It would have been sens