Chapter 28 Chapter Twenty Eight

Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and if he had not had a cold, his operational orders before and during the battle must have been more genius, and the Russians must have lost, et la face du mondee ute tech changee.Some historians believe that the creation of Russia was due to the will of one person—the will of Peter the Great, the change of France from a republic to an imperial system, and the march of French troops into Russia was also due to the will of one person—the will of Napoleon, Russia It was so powerful because Napoleon had a bad cold on August 26. These conclusions are undoubtedly logical in the eyes of some historians.

-------- ①French: And the face of the world will change. If the launching of the Battle of Borodino depended on Napoleon's will, and the giving of this or that order depended on his will, then the common cold, which obviously affected his will, might have been the cause of Russia's salvation. A school of Taoism based on the theories of Laozi and Zhuangzi.Lao Tzu advocated that the servant who forgot to give Napoleon waterproof boots on the 24th was also the savior of Russia.The conclusions drawn in this line of thought are beyond doubt, just as Voltaire joked (he did not know what) that Bartholomew's Night was caused by Charles IX's gastrointestinal disturbance. beyond doubt.However, some people do not believe that the creation of Russia was solely due to the will of Peter the Great, nor was the formation of the French Empire and its war with Russia due to the will of Napoleon alone. In the eyes of these people, the above conclusions are not only incorrect , unreasonable, and contradicts the real life of the entire human race.Another answer to the question of the causes of historical events is this: the course of events in this world is ordained, it depends on the coincidence of the arbitrary actions of those who take part in these events, the influence of such persons as Napoleon on the course is superficial, false.

-------- ①Bartolomew's Night refers to the massacre of Gonoists by the Catholic Church in Paris on the eve of August 24, 1572. There is a notion that seems strange at first glance, that the massacre on Bartholomew's night, although it was Charles IX who ordered it, did not happen according to his will, but he just felt that he ordered it The massacre of 80,000 people in Borodino did not happen according to Napoleon's will (although he issued the orders for the start of the war and the battle).For example, when discussing the essence of life, he just thinks that he issued the order——no matter how strange this view is, human dignity tells me that each of us, as a human being, is no better than the great Napoleon. In any case, it will not be much worse than him. Human dignity tells us to look at things this way, and historical research has fully affirmed this view.

In the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon didn't shoot anyone, he didn't kill a single person, everything was done by soldiers.It can be seen that it was not him who killed him. French soldiers massacred Russian soldiers at the Battle of Borodino not at the behest of Napoleon, but voluntarily.The whole army: the French, the Italians, the Germans, the Poles - hungry, ragged, worn out from the march - see the troops that prevent them from going to Moscow, and they feel, levinesttireetqu'ilfautleboire① .If Napoleon had forbidden them to fight the Russians, they would have killed him and gone to fight the Russians, because that's what they had to do.

When they heard Napoleon tell them in his orders that posterity would be comforted by the fact that they fought, died and were wounded at the gates of Moscow, they cried: "Vivel'empereur!" The portrait of stabbing the earth with a small stick (Lokayata) (carvaka) is transliterated as "Lujiayeduo".aka, just as they shout: "Vivel'empereur!", just as they cry out whatever meaningless words they hear? "Vivel'empereur!" Same.They had nothing to do but cry "Vivel'empereur!" and go to war, in order to be fed and rested in Moscow as conquerors.From this it appears that they did not kill their own kind at the behest of Napoleon.

-------- ①French: When the cork is opened, the wine must be drunk. ② French: Long live the emperor. It was not Napoleon who gave the order throughout the battle, for none of his battle plans were carried out, and in the midst of the battle he was ignorant of what was ahead of him.Therefore, those people killed each other not according to Napoleon's will, but independently of him, according to the will of hundreds of thousands of people participating in the common action.It's just that Napoleon felt that everything was going according to his will.Therefore, Napoleon's cold has no greater historical significance than the cold of the smallest transport soldier.

Some authors also say that because of Napoleon's cold, his deployments and orders in battle were not as good as they used to be, which is simply not true.This is what makes Napoleon's cold of August 26 meaningless. The disposition quoted here is no worse than all the previous battle dispositions he has won, and even better.Those imaginary orders in battle are no worse than before, exactly the same as before.The dispositions and orders seemed worse than before only because Borodino was Napoleon's first defeat.Dispositions and orders, no matter how good and well thought out, so long as battles are lost on the basis of them, seem to be very bad, and every military scientist criticizes them with seriousness , as if it were so good, that serious scholars have written voluminous books arguing for its virtues.

Weiröthel's disposition for the battle of Austerlitz is a perfect example of such a work, but it is still criticized, for its perfection, for its undue tediousness. Napoleon fulfilled his role as representative of power at Borodino no worse, if not better, than in other campaigns.He did not do anything to impede the progress of the battle; he listened to what was more reasonable; he did not rush, contradict himself, panic, or flee from the field, but exercised his great temperance and combat experience. , played his seemingly commander-in-chief role calmly and solemnly.