Briggs: The battle proceeds in its own way despite the many orders issued.
Maude: The course of the battle. Difficulty of discerning what was going on. Things take their own course apart from the orders issued
Pevear and Volokhonsky (Chapters 33-34): Napoleon during the battle. His generals ask for reinforcements. He reflects on the difference between the battle and all his previous ones.
Translation:
XXXIII.
The main action of the battle of Borodino happened in a space of 1000 sazhen between Borodino and the flushes of Bagration. (Beyond this space, from one party was made Russian in the half day demonstration of the cavalry of Uvarov, from another party behind Utitsy was the collision of Ponyatovsky with Tuchkov; but these were two separate and weak actions in comparison with that what was happening in the middle of the field of battle.) In the field between Borodino and the flushes, in the forest, in the open and prominent with both parties throughout, happened the main action of the battle in a very simple, ingenuous way.
The battle started in a cannonade from both parties from several hundred cannons.
Then, when the smoke covered all the field, in this smoke moved (with the parties of the French) right two divisions of Desse and Compana to the flushes, and the left regiments of the vice-king, to Borodino.
From the Shevardin redoubt, at which stood Napoleon, the flushes were found out at distant versts, but Borodino was more than two versts in distance by the straight lines, and because Napoleon could not see what was happening there the more that the smoke merged with the fog, hiding all the terrain. The soldiers of the division of Desse, directed at the flushes, were visible only to those while they had not come down below the ravine separating them from the flush. As soon as they came down at the ravine, the smoke of the shots of guns and cannon on the flushes had become so thick that it covered all the lifting of those parties of the ravine. Through smoke flashed there something black, probably, the people, and sometimes the shine of bayonets. Yet whether they moved or were standing, whether this was French or Russian, could not be seen from the Shevardin redoubt.
The sun rose light and beat oblique rays on all the face of Napoleon, watching from below his hand at the flushes. The smoke laid down before the flushes, and then it seemed that the smoke moved, then it seemed that the troops moved. Heard sometimes from behind the shots was the shouting of people, but it could not be known what they did there.
Napoleon, standing up on the mound, watched in a pipe, and in the little circle of the pipe he saw smoke and people, sometimes theirs, sometimes Russians; but where was that what he saw, he did not know, when he watched again with simply his eyes.
He came down from the mound and began to back and forward walk before it.
Occasionally he stopped, listened to shots and peered at the field of the battle.
Not only from this place downwards, where he stood, not only from the mound, on which were standing now some of his generals, but from the very flushes, on which were found out now together alternately Russian, then French, dead, wounded and living, frightened or maddened soldiers, could it be understood what was done in that location. In the continuation of several hours in this location, among unceasing shooting guns and cannons, appeared only Russian, then only French, then infantry, then cavalry soldiers; appearing, falling, firing, colliding, not knowing what to do with each other, shouting and running backwards.
From the field of the battle incessantly galloped over to Napoleon his sent adjutants and orderlies of his marshals with reports about the course of affairs; but all these reports were false: because of how in the heat of the battle it was impossible to say what was going on in a given moment, and because of how many adjutants did not ride as far as to the current place of the battle, but delivered that what they had heard from others; and still because that while the adjutant was driving through those two to three versts which separated him from Napoleon, circumstances changed, and the news which he carried already had become wrong. So from the vice-king jumped up an adjutant with news that Borodino was occupied and the bridge at Koloch was in the hands of the French. The adjutant asked Napoleon whether he ordered the troops to go over. Napoleon ordered to line up on that side and wait; but not only at that time as Napoleon gave back this order, but even when the adjutant had only drove off from Borodino, the bridge now was repulsed and burned by the Russians, at that very fight, at which Pierre participated in at the very beginning of the battle.
Rode up from the flush, with a pale, scared face an adjutant denouncing to Napoleon that the attack was repulsed, and that Comlan was injured and Davout was killed, but between those flushes were busy with another part of the troops, at that time as the adjutant said that the French were repulsed, Davout was alive and had only a little contusion. Contemplating with the same necessarily false reports, Napoleon made his orders, which now were executed before he did them, or the same could not be and were not executable.
The marshals and generals, located in a closer distance from the field of the battle, but so the same as Napoleon not participating in the very battle and only occasionally stopping by under the fire of bullets, not asking Napoleon, made their orders and gave back their orders about what and where from to fire, and where to gallop horses and where to run on foot soldiers. Yet even their orders, exactly so the same as the orders of Napoleon, to the smallest extent and seldom happened to the entrusted. The most part came out disgusting to that what they ordered. The soldiers which were ordered to go forward, hit under grapeshot, ran backwards; the soldiers which were ordered to stand in location, suddenly saw against themselves suddenly appearing Russians, sometimes ran backwards, sometimes threw forward, and the cavalry galloped without orders catching up to the running Russians. So the two regiments of cavalry jumped across Semenovsky ravine, and only now left at the mountain, turned, and in all spirit jumped backwards. so the same moved infantry soldiers, sometimes running over really not there where they were ordered. All the orders about where and when to move the guns, when to send the on foot soldiers — to fire, when the equestrian — trampling the Russians on foot, all these orders made themselves the nearest chiefs parts, formerly in the ranks, not asking even Ney, Davout and Murat, not Napoleon alone. They were not afraid of penalties for the non-performance of orders or for unauthorized dispositions, because of how in the battle business concerns itself with what is dear for humanity — their own life, and sometimes it seems that salvation concludes in flight backwards, sometimes in flight forward, and according to the mood of the minutes acted these people located in the very fervor of the battle. In all these same entities of movements forward and backwards were not facilitated and not changed the situation of troops. All their incursions and swoops on each other almost produced no harm to them, but were harmed, killed and mutilated by the inflicted shot and bullets flying everywhere by that space which rushed about these people. Only as these people exited from this space, by which flew shots and bullets, so the immediately same, standing back, chiefs formed, subjugated discipline and under the influence of this discipline introduced again in the region of fire, at which they again (under the influence of the fear of death) suffered discipline and rushed about by the random mood of the crowd.
Locations: Borodino, Shervadino redoubt
Mentioned: Bagration's fleches, Utitsa, French, Russians, Kolocha, Semenovskoe
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes:
We go back to a birds-eye view of Borodino. "the main action of the battle took place in the most simple, artless way." There is a heavy emphasis on the smoke and the inability to see anything and this is set up so we have Napoleon being unable to see what is going on in the battle. "it was impossible to understand what was happening on that place." All the information Napoleon gets is false or becomes false due to changing circumstances, most importantly the bridge that Pierre was a witness to and a part of.
"For the most part, what came out was the opposite of what they had ordered....in battle it is a matter of what is dearest to a man--his own life--and it sometimes seems that salvation lies in running back, sometimes in running forward...All their assaults and attacks on each other caused almost no harm; the harm, death, and mutilation were caused by the cannonballs and bullets that flew everywhere".
Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):
Bagration
Uvarof
Poniatowski
Tutchkof
Dessaix
Campan
Murat (also "viceroy" and his aide.)
Napoleon (also his aides and his marshals' orderlies.)
Pierre
Davoust
Ney
Abridged Versions: Start of Chapter 5 in Bell with no break at end.
Gibian: Chapter 33.
Fuller: Entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: Only two paragraphs, specifying that Napoleon looks out to the battlefield but cannot see anything while receiving contradictory and untrue reports, is kept. No break.
Kropotkin: Chapter 19: Chapter is preserved until "they did not stop to consult with either Ney or Davoust or Murat, and certainly not with Napoleon." This cuts out the very end of the chapter in which we get what you might call a soldier's perspective in which men do not follow orders but do "whatever disposition was paramount in the throng."
Bromfield: No apparent corresponding chapter.
Simmons: Chapter 33: Entire chapter is cut and replaced with: "Tolstoy explains that it was impossible for Napoleon, from where he was standing on the Shevardino Redoubt, to see what was happening on the field of battle at Borodino, a mile away, especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid the whole locality and that therefore things took their own course apart from the orders issued."
Additional Notes:
Sevastopol in May 1855: Page 59: “It is all very well to call some conqueror a monster because he destroys millions to gratify his ambition, but go and ask any Ensign Petrushev or Sub-Lieutenant Antonov on their conscience, and you will find that everyone of us is a little Napoleon, a petty monster ready to start a battle and kill a hundred men merely to get an extra medal or one-third additional pay.”
Mikaberidze: Page 5: “Thus Joseph de Maistre informed the Sardinian foreign minister that he had heard that ‘by the end of the battle (Borodino) the French had completely run out of ammunition and were throwing stones’..
Roberts: Page 445: “As the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars progressed, the casualty rates in battles incresed exponentially: at Fleurus they were 6% of the total number of men engaged, at Austerlitz 15%, at Eylau 26%, at Borodino 31%, and at Waterloo 45%. This was partly because with ever-larger armies being raised, battles tended to last longer - Eylau was Napoleon’s first two-day engagement since Arcole; Eggmuhl, Aspern-Essling and Wagram in 1809, Desden in 1813 were also two and Leipzig in 1813 went on for three - but mainly because of the huge increase in the numbers of cannon present. At Austerlitz the ratio was two guns per thousand men, but by Eylau this had leapt to nearly 4, and at Borodino there were 4.5. Eylau therefore represented a new kind of battle of the Napoleonic Wars, best summed up by Ney at its close: ‘What a massacre! And without any result!”
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