The Sneeze of History
It was the opinion of Leo Tolstoy that even Napoleon was never master of his own destiny.
1812
By Vasily Vereshchagin, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Napoleon Bonaparte before the Battle of Borodino, as imagined by Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904) in 1897. Borodino lies some 70 miles west and a little south of Moscow, and victory there on August 26th (September 7th N.S.), 1812, allowed Napoleon to enter Moscow in short-lived triumph. His subsequent retreat led to abdication and exile to Elba in 1814; defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington the following year, at the Battle of Waterloo, ended his dream of a single European empire based in Paris.
Introduction
Thomas Carlyle was a famous proponent of the ‘Great Men’ theory of history, which holds that world-changing events are moved by bold, iron-willed men of vision. Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was not of this brotherhood. In his classic War and Peace, he reminded us that even a man as great as Napoleon is much less in control of his own destiny than we might imagine.
MANY historians say that the French did not win the battle of Borodino because Napoleon had a cold,* and that if he had not had a cold the orders he gave before and during the battle would have been still more full of genius and Russia would have been lost and the face of the world have been changed.
To historians who believe that Russia was shaped by the will of one man — Peter the Great — and that France from a republic became an empire and French armies went to Russia at the will of one man — Napoleon — to say that Russia remained a power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August may seem logical and convincing.*
If it had depended on Napoleon’s will to fight or not to fight the battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended on his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of his will might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who omitted to bring Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth would have been the saviour of Russia.
The Battle of Borodino took place some seventy miles west of Moscow in 1812. Napoleon did win the day and gain entry to Moscow, but for some reason he did not pursue his advantage as ruthlessly as on similar occasions, and was soon afterwards forced into a humiliating retreat which led to his (temporary) abdication as French Emperor on April 6th, 1814. See our story Retreat from Moscow.
The date of the battle itself was August 26th, 1812, ‘Old Style’ (i.e. on the Julian Calendar in use in Russia until 1918, and in England until 1752). That same day was September 7th ‘New Style’.
