rly the meaning of the fact that, while not
losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino and
less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that place a
hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty thousand.

The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our army
as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference was that
the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of destruction
as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen were left behind
in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind were among their
own people. The chief cause of the wastage of Napoleon's army was
the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing proof of this is the
corresponding decrease of the Russian army.

Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the
movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian
army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at
Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of our
army.

But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of the
army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident, another
reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself to Kutuzov.
The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French. The road the
French would take was unknown, and so the closer our troops trod on
their heels the greater distance they had to cover. Only by following
at some distance could one cut across the zigzag path of the French. All
the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals meant fresh movements of
the army and a lengthening of its marches, whereas the only reasonable
aim was to shorten those marches. To that end Kutuzov's activity was
directed during the whole campaign from Moscow to Vilna--not casually or
intermittently but so consistently that he never once deviated from it.

Kutuzov felt and knew--not by reasoning or science but with the whole of
his Russian being--what every Russian soldier felt: that the French were
beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven out; but at the
same time he like the soldiers realized all the hardship of this march,
the rapidity of which was unparalleled for such a time of the year.

But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian army,
who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody, and for some
reason to capture a king or a duke--it se