1 The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into Smolensk.
2 It did not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or politics, or Napoleon.
3 After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did not follow any previous traditions of war.
4 He regarded the whole business of the war not with his intelligence or his reason but by something else.
5 People have called this kind of war "guerrilla warfare" and assume that by so calling it they have explained its meaning.
6 This being the field marshal's frame of mind he was naturally regarded as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war.
7 But such a war does not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known rule of tactics which is accepted as infallible.
8 One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the so-called laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men pressed together in a mass.
9 And yet with his experience of war he did not order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with those of a certain marshal when approaching Moscow.
10 He alone during the whole retreat insisted that battles, which were useless then, should not be fought, and that a new war should not be begun nor the frontiers of Russia crossed.
11 But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single aim toward which he moved throughout the whole war.
12 Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion that no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of Russia, but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that Russia had gained.
13 The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war another leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing from Kutuzov's and animated by different motives.
14 The burning of towns and villages, the retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodino and the renewed retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the seizure of transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures from the rules.
15 All historians agree that the external activity of states and nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars, and that as a direct result of greater or less success in war the political strength of states and nations increases or decreases.
16 In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was generally the conduct of the war, which all these men believed they were directing; but this affair of the war went on independently of them, as it had to go: that is, never in the way people devised, but flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses.
17 We cannot accurately estimate his genius in Austria or Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French or German sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps without fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans to recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on in Germany.
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