Briggs: Moral victory for the Russians, but everyone doubts the value of it all.
Maude: Appearance of the field at the end of the battle. Doubts maturing in every soul. Only a little further effort needed to secure victory but such effort impossible. Could Napoleon have used his Old Guard? The Russians had gained a moral victory
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Further reflections on the battle. Moral victory of the Russians.
Translation:
XXXIX.
A few dozen thousand persons lied dead in different positions and uniforms on the fields and meadows owned by the masters of Davydov and governmental peasants, on those fields and meadows, in which for hundreds of years at the same time collected harvests and herded cattle the peasants of the villages of Borodino, Gorky, Shevardin and Semenovsky. At the dressing points, at the dessiatina places, the grass and land was soaked in blood. A crowd of wounded and uninjured different teams of people, with scared faces, with one party wandered backwards to Mozhayck, with a different party backwards to Valuev. Another crowd, plagued and hungry, slaves of the chiefs, went forward. A third were standing in places and continued to fire.
Above all the field, before the funnily beautiful, with its sequins of bayonets and smoke in the morning sun, stood now a haze of dampness and smoke, and it smelled of the strange acid of saltpeter and blood. Gathered clouds, and it began to sprinkle rain on the slain, on the wounded, on the scared and on the exhausted, and on the doubting people. As if it spoke: "Quit, quit, people. Stop... come to your senses. What do you do?"
Exhausted, without food and without recreation, these people and other parties began to equally come to doubt whether they should still exterminate each other, and on all faces was a noticeable hesitation, and in each soul equally lifted the question: "what for, for whom do I kill and be murdered? Kill whom you want to, do what you want to, but I do not want more!" This idea in the evening equally matured in each soul. At all moments could all these people be terrified of what they did, throw all and run where it was horrible.
Yet although now to end the battle people felt all the horror of their acts, although they gladly would have stopped, some incomprehensible, mysterious power still continued to lead them, and the mist, in gunpowder and blood, remained one in three of the artillerists, and although stumbling and gasping for breath from fatigue, they brought charges, charged, induced, applied wicks; and shots also fast and cruelly flew over from both parties and flattened the human body, and continued to be committed to that scary business, which was committed not by the will of people, but by the will of whom leads people and worlds.
That who would look at the disturbed backside of the Russian army, would say that the French stood to do still one small effort, and the Russian army would disappear; and that who would look at the backside of the French, would say that the Russians stood to do still one small effort, and the French would die. Yet the French, or the Russians did not make these efforts, and the flame of the battle slowly burned out.
The Russians did not make these efforts, because of how they did not attack the French. At the beginning of the battle, they were only standing by the road to Moscow, blocking it, and exactly so the same they continued to stand at the end of the battle, as they were standing at the beginning of it. Yet if even would the objective of the Russians have consisted so that to knock down the French, they could not have made this latter effort, because of how all the troops of the Russians were smashed, there was not one part of the troops not affected by the battle, and the Russians staying in their places had lost half of their troops.
The French, with the memory of all the former fifteen years of victories, with the certainty in the invincibility of Napoleon, with the consciousness that they got a hold of part of the field of battle, that they had lost only one quarter of the people, and that in them still was the twenty thousand, untouched guard, it was easy to do this effort. The French, attacking the Russian army with the purpose to knock it down from its positions, it must make this effort because of how since, while the Russians, exactly so the same as before the battle, obstructed the road to Moscow, the objective of the French was not achieved, and all their efforts and losses went for nothing. Yet the French did not make these efforts. Some historians speak that Napoleon stood to give his untouched old guard so that the battle was won. To speak about what would be, if Napoleon would have given their guard, all care what they speak about what would be, if you made autumn spring. This could not be. Napoleon did not give his guard, because of how he did not want this, but this could not be to do. All generals, officers, and soldiers of the French army knew that this cannot be to do because of how the fallen spirit of troops did not allow this.
Not only did Napoleon feel that similar to a dream feeling that his terrible swing of his hand fell powerlessly, but all generals, all the participated and not participated soldiers of the French army, after all the experiences of the former battles (where after ten times less efforts, the enemy ran) tested an equal feeling of horror before that enemy, which, having lost half of their troops, stood so the same menacingly at the end, as at the beginning of the battle. The moral power of the French, the attacking army was exhausted. Not that victory, which was defined by picked up pieces of matter on sticks, called henchmen, and by that space on which were standing and stood troops, but the victory of the moral, that which convinces the adversary in the moral superiority of their enemy and at their impotence, was won by the Russians under Borodino. The French invasion, as a furious animal, receiving at its runaway a deadly wound, felt its death; but it could not stay, so the same as could not stay the twice weaker Russian army. After this push, the French army still could come down to Moscow; but there, without new efforts to the parties of the Russian troops, it must die, shedding blood from the deadly, inflicted at Borodino, wounds. The direct consequence of the Borodino battle was the unreasonable escape of Napoleon from Moscow, returning by the old, Smolensk road, the death of five hundred thousand invaders, and the death of Napoleonic France, in which for the first time under Borodino was laid the hand of a stronger heart of an adversary.
Time: undefined, see previous chapter
Mentioned: fifteen years
Locations: Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, Semenovskoe
Mentioned: Mozhaysk, Valuevo, Russian, French, Moscow, Smolensk
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: We are to the fact that where these dead bodies lie is owned by the Davydov family, and similar to earlier in the novel with the old miller, we see that this is where many peasants work everyday.
On the rain: "It was as if it were saying: "Enough, enough, men. Stop now...Come to your senses. What are you doing?"
Despite the fact that the soldiers feel that there is no reason for them to continue fighting, "some incomprehensible, mysterious power still went on governing them...and the terrible thing continued to be accomplished, which was accomplished not by the will of men, but by the will of Him who governs people and worlds."
Tolstoy then summarizes why the Russians and then the French could not make that final push to win the battle outright. "To talk of what would have happened if Napoleon had sent in his guard is the same as talking about what would happen if autumn became spring."
The experience of the battle is described as "dreamlike". "It was not the sort of victory that is determined by captured pieces of cloth on sticks, known as standards...The French invasion, like an enraged beast mortally wounded as it charges, sensed its destruction; but it could not stop, just as the twice weaker Russian army could not help moving aside."
End of Part II.
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 *):
Messrs. Davydov (as in Wiener. "M. Davydow" in Bell. "Mr. Davuidof" in Dole. "Davydov family" in Mandelker, Edmonds, and Dunnigan.)
Napoleon (and his Old Guard and generals.)
Abridged Versions: End of Part Second in Dole. End of Part the Tenth in Wiener. End of Part Ten in Garnett. End of Part Two in Briggs, Dunnigan, Mandelker, and Edmonds. End of Volume Two in Maude.
End of Chapter 8 in Bell.
Gibian: Chapter 39: end of Book Ten.
Fuller: Chapter is preserved, though an additional line break, between "Him who sways men and worlds" and "Any one looking at the disorder in the rear". End of Part Seven.
Komroff: Start of Book Eleven. Though we get a description of the dead and wounded and those still fighting, we do not get told who owns the land. The Russian side for why they didn't make the push and the moral victory they gained is all removed and the French side is reduced to concentrate on the fifteen years of victories and Napoleon's Guards, which are not talked about here as why they weren't sent, but is worded as to them still having the ability to attack. No line break.
Kropotkin: Chapter 24: Chapter is preserved. End of Part Tenth.
Bromfield: We flip to Pierre for a paragraph as he is too exhausted to move and still hears the cannons, which transitions to the ideas of the this chapter in the latter version more smoothly. We do not get the information about who owns the land or the additional description of the dead but start with the clouds and the rain metaphorically speaking to everyone. We move from there not to the overall description of the Russian moral victory or why the Russians or French could not win the battle and why Napoleon did not send his old Guard, but to Napoleon frowning that the Russians are still holding. We then go back to Pierre, who has heard that Kutaisov, Bagration, and Bolkonsky had been killed. Pierre does not go see Prince Andrei, but tries to sleep. He wakes up the next day to see "It was still the same war. End of Chapter 13.
Simmons: Chapter 39: the beginning of the chapter that sets up who owns the land that Borodino was fought on is removed. The section about why the Guards were not sent is removed as well. End of Book Ten.
Additional Notes:
Troubetzkoy: Page 10: His father (Davidov), a well-to-do landowner from a good family, had served under the famous Russian General Suvorov, and had attained the rank of brigadier before being suddenly cashiered from the army in 1798.
Herold: Page 355: separate actions of the several corps on both sides were so confused or ill-synchronized that each time the opportunity was missed. Slumped on his camp chair, looking sick and miserable, his eyes dulled by fever, almost indifferent to what was going on, Napoleon stubbornly refused to listen to his generals and aides, who impored him to commit his sacred reserve, the Old and the Young Guard...Technically Borodino was a French victory...The mood at French headquarters was one of horror, consternation, and sorrow.”
Montefiore: Page 304: “at Borodino...The fighting, often hand to hand, bayonet to bayonet, was primal in its savagery”
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