Page 2045 - war-and-peace

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 dukeit seemed that nowwhen any battle must be hor-
rible and senselesswas the very time to fight and conquer
somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when
one after another they presented projects of maneuvers to
be made with those soldiersill-shod, insufficiently clad, and
half starvedwho within a month and without fighting a bat-
tle had dwindled to half their number, and who at the best
if the flight continued would have to go a greater distance
than they had already traversed, before they reached the
frontier.
This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to
overthrow, and to cut off showed itself particularly when-
ever the Russians stumbled on the French army.
So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one
of the three French columns and stumbled instead on Na-
poleon himself with sixteen thousand men. Despite all
Kutuzov’s efforts to avoid that ruinous encounter and to
preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob of
French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe
for three days.
Toll wrote a disposition: ‘The first column will march
to so and so,’ etc. And as usual nothing happened in ac-
cord with the disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg
fired from a hill over the French crowds that were running

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