《War And Peace》 Book14 CHAPTER III
by Leo Tolstoy
THE SO-CALLED “PARTISAN” WARFARE had begun with the enemy's entrance into
Smolensk. Before the irregular warfare was officially recognised by our
government many thousands of the enemy's soldiers—straggling, marauding, or
foraging parties—had been slain by Cossacks and peasants, who killed these men
as instinctively as dogs set upon a stray mad dog. Denis Davydov was the first
to feel with his Russian instinct the value of this terrible cudgel which
belaboured the French, and asked no questions about the etiquette of the
military art; and to him belongs the credit of the first step towards the
recognition of this method of warfare.
The first detachment of irregulars—Davydov's—was formed on the 24th of
August, and others soon followed. In the latter stages of the campaign these
detachments became more and more numerous.
The irregulars destroyed the Grande Armée piecemeal. They swept up the fallen
leaves that were dropping of themselves from the withered tree, and sometimes
they shook the tree itself. By October, when the French were fleeing to
Smolensk, there were hundreds of these companies, differing widely from one
another in number and in character. Some were detachments that followed all the
usual routine of an army, with infantry, artillery, staff-officers, and all the
conveniences of life. Some consisted only of Cossacks, mounted men. Others were
small bands of men, on foot and also mounted. Some consisted of peasants, or of
landowners and their serfs, and remained unknown. There was a deacon at the head
of such a band, who took several hundred prisoners in a month. There was the
village elder's wife, Vassilisa, who killed hundreds of the French.
The latter part of October was the time when this guerilla warfare reached
its height. That period of this warfare, in which the irregulars were themselves
amazed at their own audacity, were every moment in dread of being surrounded and
captured by the French, and never unsaddling, hardly dismounting, hid in the
woods, in momentary expectation of pursuit, was already over. The irregular
warfare had by now taken definite shape; it had become clear to all the
irregulars what they could, and what they could not, accomplish with the French.
By now it was only the commanders of detachments marching with staff-officers
according to the rules at a distance from the French who considered much
impossible. The small bands of irregulars who had been at work a long while, and
were at close quarters with the French, found it possible to attempt what the
leaders of larger companies did not dare to think of doing. The Cossacks and the
peasants, who crept in among the French, thought everything possible now.
On the 22nd of October, Denisov, who was a leader of a band of irregulars,
was eagerly engaged in a typical operation of this irregular warfare. From early
morning he had been with his men moving about the woods that bordered the high
road, watching a big convoy of cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners that had
dropped behind the other French troops, and under strong escort—as he learned
from his scouts and from prisoners—was making its way to Smolensk. Not only
Denisov and Dolohov (who was also a leader of a small band acting in the same
district) were aware of the presence of this convoy. Some generals in command of
some larger detachments, with staff-officers also, knew of this convoy, and, as
Denisov said, their mouths were watering for it. Two of these generals—one a
Pole, the other a German—had almost at the same time sent to Denisov an
invitation to join their respective detachments in attacking the convoy.
“No, friend, I wasn't born yesterday!” said Denisov, on reading these
documents; and he wrote to the German that in spite of his ardent desire to
serve under so brilliant and renowned a general, he must deprive himself of that
happiness because he was already under the command of the Polish general. To the
Pole he wrote the same thing, informing him that he was already serving under
the command of the German.
Having thus disposed of that difficulty, Denisov, without communicating on
the subject to the higher authorities, intended with Dolohov to attack and carry
off this transport with his own small force. The transport was, on the 22nd of
October, going from the village of Mikulino to the village of Shamshevo. On the
left side of the road between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were GREat woods,
which in places bordered on the road, and in places were a verst or more from
the road. Denisov, with a small party of followers, had been the whole day
riding about in these woods, sometimes plunging into their centre, and sometimes
coming out at the edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. In the
morning, not far from Mikulino, where the wood ran close to the road, the
Cossacks of Denisov's party had pounced on two French waggonloads of saddles,
stuck in the mud, and had carried them off into the wood. From that time right
on to evening, they had been watching the movements of the French without
attacking them. They wanted to avoid frightening them, and to let them go
quietly on to Shamshevo, and then, joining Dolohov (who was to come that evening
to a trysting-place in the wood, a verst from Shamshevo, to concert measures
with them), from two sides to fall at dawn like an avalanche of snow on their
heads, and to overcome and capture all of them at a blow.
Six Cossacks had been left behind, two versts from Mikulino, where the wood
bordered the road. They were to bring word at once as soon as any fresh columns
of French came into sight.
In front of Shamshevo, Dolohov was in the same way to watch the road to know
at what distance there were other French troops. With the transport there were
supposed to be fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two hundred men, and Dolohov
might have as many more. But superiority in numbers was no obstacle to Denisov.
There was only one thing that he still needed to know, and that was what troops
these were; and for that object Denisov needed to take a “tongue” (that is, some
man belonging to that column of the enemy). The attack on the waggons in the
morning was all done with such haste that they killed all the French soldiers in
charge of the waggons, and captured alive only a little drummer-boy, who had
straggled away from his own regiment, and could tell them nothing certain about
the troops forming the column.
To make another descent upon them, Denisov thought, would be to risk alarming
the whole column, and so he sent on ahead to Shamshevo a peasant, Tihon
Shtcherbatov, to try if he could capture at least one of the French
quartermasters from the vanguard.
