From the end of 1811, the armies of Western Europe began to build up and gather strength.In 1812 these armed forces—millions of men (including those carrying and securing supplies) moved from west to east toward the Russian frontier.And from 1811 onwards Russian troops were also massing on its borders.On June 12, Western European troops crossed the Russian border, and the war began.That is, an event has occurred that violates human reason and all human nature.Millions of people have turned against each other and committed innumerable crimes, cheating, treachery, theft, counterfeiting, producing counterfeit money, robbery, arson, murder.The court chronicles of the world could not collect these crimes in centuries.In this regard, those who did these things at the time did not regard it as a crime.

What caused this unusual event?What are the reasons?Naive and confident historians say that the cause of this event was the insult of the Duke of Oldenburg, the violation of the Continental system, the corruption of Napoleon, the inflexibility of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomats, etc. So only if Metternich Rumyantsev makes an effort to write the official documents more subtly during the Emperor's visits and receptions, or Napoleon writes a letter to Alexander: Monsieur, monfrere, jeconsensarendreleducheaudued' Oldenbourg, there would be no war. Evidently, that was how the matter was viewed in those days; Napoleon, of course, believed that British intrigue was the cause of the war (his critique of realism arose in Germany and Austria at the end of the nineteenth century on the sacred island of Saint Lena, The beginning of the 20th century, said so); members of the British House of Representatives believed that the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; the Duke of Oldenburg believed that the atrocities committed against him were the cause of the war; The system is the cause of war; to the veteran and the generals, keeping him occupied was the chief cause of war; All this because the Russian-Austrian alliance of 1809 was not able to deceive Napoleon very skillfully, and Memorandum No. 178 was poorly worded.Evidently, people of that age believed that there were many other reasons besides these, depending on innumerable different points of view; For descendants of meaning—these reasons are not sufficient.What we don't understand is that millions of Christians killed and abused each other because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander was tough, British policies were cunning and the Duke of Oldenburg was insulted.It is incomprehensible how these circumstances have anything to do with the fact of the massacres and atrocities themselves; why thousands of people from the other side of Europe came to massacre and destroy the people of Smolensk and Moscow because of the humiliation of the duke, and were in turn murdered by these killed by people.

-------- ① French: Your Majesty, my brother, I agree to return the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg. ②French: good principles. For us—not historians, not obsessed with the process of investigation, and therefore have a sane mind to observe events—the causes of war are numerous.The deeper we go in probing the causes of war, the more we discover, each isolated cause or series of causes which we acquire is true in itself, but insignificant insofar as it appears insignificant when compared with events. In other words, these causes are equally false, and to the extent that they were not sufficient to cause the event (if there were no coincidence of other causes), they are equally untrue.Just as Napoleon refused to withdraw his army to Wisla and return the Duchy of Oldenburg, so we may regard a French sergeant's willingness to perform a second military service as reasons of this kind: for, if he refuses to serve, the first The second, the third, and the thousandth sergeant and soldier were unwilling to serve, and Napoleon's army was short of a thousand men, so the war would have been impossible.

There would be no war if Napoleon had not been insulted by the demand that he withdraw to Wisla, and had not ordered the army to attack; Intrigues would have been possible without the Duke of Oldenburg, without the sense of humiliation of Alexander, without the despotism in Russia, without the French Revolution with its attendant personal dictatorship and monarchy and all the factors that gave rise to the French Revolution, etc. Similarly, war cannot break out. As long as any one of these reasons is missing, nothing will happen.It follows that all these causes—billions of them—coincided to cause what happened.So no event is unique in its cause, and an event should happen only because it had to.Millions of people who gave up human feelings and their own reason went from west to east to slaughter their own kind, just as hordes of people went from east to west to slaughter their own kind centuries ago.

The event seemed to depend on a word from Napoleon and Alexander—and their behavior was as involuntary as that of every soldier who goes out by lot or recruit.This cannot but be the case, for the will of Napoleon and Alexander (as if they were the ones who determined events) would have to be the coincidence of an infinite number of events (without which one event could not have occurred).There must be millions of men with strength in their hands, soldiers who can shoot, carry supplies, and guns, who must agree to carry out the will of this weak man, and for countless complicated and various reasons. They have to.

In order to explain these irrational phenomena (that is, we do not understand their rationality), historical fatalism must be drawn.The more we try to rationalize these historical phenomena, the more irrational and incomprehensible they seem to us. Everyone lives for himself, he uses freedom to achieve his own ends, and feels with all his body and mind, now he may or may not act in a certain way; but once he does this, then, at a certain time An act done at a specific moment becomes irreversible and at the same time a part of history in which he is not autonomous but predestined. Every man has two lives: a private life, which is freer the more abstract its meaning; and a natural communal life, in which each must obey the laws prescribed for him. .

Man lives consciously for himself, but as an unconscious instrument for historical, all-human ends.We cannot undo a completed deed, and one man's deed coincides with the deeds of millions of others at a given time to have historical significance.The higher a man stands on the social stage, the more people are involved, the more obvious is the doom and inevitability of his every act. "The king's heart is in the hands of God." Kings - slaves of history. History, that is, the unconscious collective life of mankind, uses the every moment of the lives of kings as a means to its own ends.

Now, in 1812, although Napoleon felt more than ever that Verser or not Verserlesangdesespeuples depended on him (as Alexander wrote in his last letter to him), Napoleon never felt like Now this is more subject to the law of necessity which obliges him to do what must be done for the common cause, for history (while for himself he feels that he is acting as he pleases). -------- ① French: to shed the blood of the people of all nationalities in the country, or not to shed the blood of the people of all nationalities in the country. People from the West marched to the East to fight with the Easterners.And according to the law of causal coincidence, a thousand small causes combined with this event led to this march and war: accusations of non-compliance with the Continental system, the Duke of Oldenburg, the march on Prussia (as Napoleon felt) only to achieve peace by marching, the French Emperor's propensity and habits of war coincided exactly with the wishes of his people, and his fascination with the spectacle of preparations, for the expenses of preparations, demanded to obtain reimbursement for these expenses interests, his intoxicating honor in Dresden; diplomatic negotiations that contemporaries believed to be a sincere peace but only hurt the self-esteem of both parties, and tens of millions of people who echoed existing events and coincided with them reason for counting.

When an apple is ripe, it falls from the tree - why does it fall?Is it because of the attraction of the earth's gravity?Is it because the apple stems are drying up?Is it because of the sun or its own weight, or the wind blowing it?Or is it because the kid standing under the tree wants to eat an apple? For no reason.All this is just the coincidence of the conditions under which various life-related, organically connected, natural events take place.The botanist was right to find that the apple fell due to something like the breakdown of the cellular tissue, as was the child standing under the tree.The child said that the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it.Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and he destroyed because Alexander wanted him to.It is both true and false to say that, as it is true and false to say that a mountain weighing a million poods and hollowed out below collapsed because of the final blow of the last worker with a pickaxe at the foot of the mountain.In many historical events, those so-called great men are only labels named after the event, and like this label, they have little connection with the event itself.

Every one of their actions, they think is their own arbitrariness, but in fact, from the perspective of history, they cannot do whatever they want.Each of their actions is linked to the course of history and is predetermined.