by Franz Kafka
2. He could have known what awaited him. Lieutenant-Colonel de Pouthon, who had spent several years on military duty with the Russians, begged him on his knees to give it up. The obstacles he cited were: the apathy and lack of cooperation to be expected from the Lithuanian provinces, which had been subjugated by Russia many years ago; the fanaticism of the Muscovites; the lack of food and forage; the desolate countryside; roads that the lightest rain made impassable to artillery; the severity of the winter; the impossibility of advancing in the snow, which fell as early as the beginning of October – Napoleon allowed himself to be influenced in the contrary direction by Maret, the Duke of Bassano, and Davout.
3. He failed to appoint the Prussian Crown Prince to his headquarters’ staff, despite his having been asked to do so. He should have weakened Austria and Prussia as much as possible by demanding large contingents of additional troops from them, instead asked only 30,000 men from each. He should have used them in the front ranks, instead placed them on his flanks, the Austrians under Schwarzenberg facing Volhynia, the Prussians under Macdonald at the Niemen; in this way they were spared and he made it possible for them to block, or at least to endanger, his retreat, which is what actually happened – in November, after England had arranged peace between Russia and Turkey, so freeing Chichekov’s army for service elsewhere, the Austrians permitted it to move north through Volhynia unmolested, and this was responsible for the disaster at the Beresina.
4. In each corps were included great numbers of the untrustworthy allies (Badenese, Mecklenburgers, Hessians, Bavarians, Württembergers, Saxons, Westphalians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Illyrians, Swiss, Croats, Poles, Italians) and in that way the corps’ unity was weakened. Good wine spoiled by mixing it with murky water.
5. He set his hopes on Turkey, Sweden, and Poland. The first made peace because England paid it to do so. The treacherous Bernadotte deserted him and with England’s aid concluded an alliance with Russia; Sweden, it is true, lost Finland, but was promised Norway in return – Norway would be taken from the Danes, who remained devoted to Napoleon. The Poles: Lithuania was too closely tied to them by its forty years’ annexation to the Russian state. The Austrian and Prussian Poles did go with him, but without enthusiasm; they feared for the devastation of their country; only what was now the Saxon Grand Duchy of Warsaw could be counted upon to some extent.
6. From Vilna he wanted to organize conquered Lithuania to his own advantage. He might perhaps have received assistance, 300,000 men, if he had proclaimed a Kingdom of Poland (including Galicia and Posen) – a national assembly in Warsaw had in fact already issued proclamations to that effect – but that would have meant war with Prussia and Austria (and would have made peace with Russia more difficult). Besides, even then the Poles would probably have been undependable. The Vilna district mustered only twenty men as bodyguard for Napoleon. Napoleon chose the middle road, promised a kingdom if they cooperated, and so achieved nothing. In any case Napoleon would not have been able to equip a Polish army, for he had had no supplies of weapons and clothing sent to the Niemen after him.
7. He gave Jerome Bonaparte, who had no military experience, the command of an army of 60,000 men. Immediately upon entering Russia Napoleon had split the Russian army. Tsar Alexander and Field Marshal Barclay marched north along the Dvina. Bagration’s corps was still at Mir on the lower Niemen. Davout had already occupied Minsk, and he threw Bagration, who sought to pass north that way, back toward Bobruisk in the direction of Jerome. If Jerome had cooperated with Davout – but he did not find that compatible with his royal dignity – Bagration would have been destroyed or forced to capitulate. Bagration escaped, Jerome was sent to Westphalia, Junot replaced him, only shortly to commit a serious error too.
8. He appointed the Duke of Bassano civil governor and General Hogendorp military governor of the province of Lithuania. Neither knew how to create a reserve force for the army. The Duke was a diplomat, understood nothing of administration; Hogendorp was unacquainted with French customs and military regulations. He spoke French very badly, thus found sympathy neither with the French nor with the local nobility.
9. He spent nineteen days in Vilna, seventeen in Vitebsk, until 13 August, thus lost thirty-six days (a reproach that other writers make against him, not Marbot). But it can be explained: he had still hoped to come to terms with the Russians, wanted to hold a central position from which to command the corps occupying the country behind Bagration, and wanted to spare his troops. Difficulties of supply developed too; every evening, at the end of their day’s march, the troops were compelled to fetch their own provisions, often over very great distances. Only Davout had a supply train and cattle for his corps.
10. Unnecessarily great losses at the siege of Smolensk, 12,000 men. Napoleon had expected no such energetic defence. If they had bypassed Smolensk and pressed along Barclay de Tolly’s line of retreat, they could have taken it without a struggle.
11. He has been reproached for his failure to act during the Battle of Borodino (7 September). He walked back and forth in a gully all day long, only twice climbing to a hilltop. In Marbot’s opinion this was no error; Napoleon had been ill that day, had had severe migraine. On the evening of the 6th he had received reports from Portugal. Marshal Marmont, one of the generals in whom Napoleon had been mistaken, had been badly defeated by Wellington at Salamanca.
12. In principle the retreat from Moscow had been quickly decided upon. Many things made it necessary: the fires, the fighting in Kaluga, the cold, the desertions, the menace to his line of retreat, the situation in Spain, a conspiracy that was uncovered in Paris – but in spite of all this Napoleon remained in Moscow from 15 September until 19 October, still hoping to come to terms with Alexander. Kutusov did not even reply to his last offer to negotiate.
13. He tried to withdraw by way of Kaluga, though that meant taking the roundabout route. He hoped to get provisions there, his line of retreat through Mozhaisk extended a great distance on either side. After a few days, however, he realized that he could not continue this route without giving battle to Kutusov. He therefore turned back along the former line of retreat.
14. The big bridge across the Beresina was covered by a fort and protected by a Polish regiment. Confident that he would be able to use the bridge, Napoleon had all the pontoons burned to lighten and speed the march. But meanwhile Chichekov had taken the fort and burned the bridge. In spite of the extreme cold the river had not frozen. The lack of pontoons was one of the chief causes of the disaster.
15. The crossing over the two bridges thrown across at Studzianka was badly organized. The bridges were thrown across on 26 November, at noon. (If they had had pontoons they could have begun the crossing at daybreak.) They were unmolested by the Russians until the morning of the 28th. Nevertheless, only part of the corps had crossed by then and thousands of stragglers had been left two days on the left bank. The French lost 25,000 men.
16. The line of retreat was not protected. Except at Vilna and Smolensk, there were no garrisoned towns, no depots, no hospitals, from the Niemen to Moscow. The Cossacks were roving all through the intervening countryside. Nothing could reach or leave the army without running the danger of capture. And for that reason not one of the approximately 100,000 Russian prisoners of war was brought across the frontier.
17. Scarcity of interpreters. The Partouneaux division lost its way on the road from Borisov to Studzianka, ran into Wittgenstein’s army, and was destroyed. They simply could not understand the Polish peasants who should have served as guides.
Paul Holzhausen, Die Deutschen in Russland 1812. Wretched condition of the horses, their great exertions; their fodder was wet green straw, unripe grain, rotten roof thatchings. Diarrhoea, loss of weight, constipation. Used smoking tobacco for enemas. One artillery officer said his men had to ram the length of their arms into the horses’ rumps to relieve them of the mass of excrement accumulated in their bowels. Their bodies were bloated from the green fodder. Galloping them could sometimes
cut it. But many succumbed; there were hundreds with burst bellies on the bridges of Pilony.
They lay in ditches and holes with dim, glassy eyes and weakly struggled to climb out. But all their efforts were in vain; seldom did one of them get a foot up on the road, and when it did, its condition was only rendered worse. Unfeelingly, service troops and artillery men with their guns drove over it; you heard the leg being crushed, the hollow sound of the animal’s scream of pain, and saw it convulsively lift up its head and neck in terror, fall back again with all its weight and immediately bury itself in the thick ooze.
Despair even when they set out. Heat, hunger, thirst, disease. A non-commissioned officer who was exhorted to set an example. The next day a Württemberger first-lieutenant, after a dressing-down by the regimental commander, tore a bayonet out of the hands of the nearest soldier and ran himself through the breast.
Objection to the tenth mistake. Because of the sorry condition of the cavalry and the lack of scouts, the fords about the city were discovered too late.
6 October. Various types of nervousness. I think noises can no longer disturb me, though to be sure I am not doing any work now. Of course, the deeper one digs one’s pit, the quieter it becomes, the less fearful one becomes, the quieter it becomes.
Langer’s stories: A Zaddik is to be obeyed more than God. The Baal Shem once commanded a favourite disciple to have himself baptized. He was baptized, earned great esteem, became a bishop. Then the Baal Shem had him come to him and gave him his permission to return to Judaism. Again he obeyed and did great penance for his sin. The Baal Shem explained his command by saying that, because of his exceptional qualities, his disciple had been greatly set upon by the Evil One, whom it was the purpose of the baptism to divert. The Baal Shem himself cast the disciple into the midst of evil; it was not the disciple’s own fault that he took this step, but because he was commanded to do so, and there seemed nothing more the Evil One could do.
Every hundred years a supreme Zaddik appears, a Zaddik Hador. He need not be a wonder-rabbi, nor even be known, and yet he is supreme. The Baal Shem was not the Zaddik Hador of his day; it was rather an unknown merchant of Drohobycz. The latter heard that the Baal Shem inscribed amulets – as did other Zaddiks too – and suspected him of being an adherent of Sabbatai Zvi and of inscribing his name on amulets. Therefore, from afar, without knowing him personally, he took away from him the power to bestow amulets. The Baal Shem at once perceived the lack of power in his amulets – he had never inscribed anything but his own name on them – and after some time also learned that the man in Drohobycz was the cause of it. Once, when the man from Drohobycz came to the Baal Shem’s town – it was on a Monday – the Baal Shem caused him to sleep an entire day without his being aware of it; as a result the man from Drohobycz fell behind one day in his estimation of the time. Friday evening – he thought it was Thursday – he wanted to depart in order to spend the holiday at home. Then he saw the people going to temple and realized his error. He resolved to remain where he was and asked to be taken to the Baal Shem. Early in the afternoon already, the latter had instructed his wife to prepare a meal for thirty people. When the man from Drohobycz arrived, he sat down to eat immediately after prayers and in a short time finished all the food that had been prepared for thirty people. But he had not eaten his fill, and demanded more food. The Baal Shem said: ‘I expected an angel of the first rank, but was not prepared for an angel of the second rank.’ Everything in the house that could be eaten he now had brought in, but even that was insufficient.
The Baal Shem was not the Zaddik Hador, but was even higher. Witness for this is the Zaddik Hador himself. For one evening the latter came to the place where lived the future wife of the Baal Shem. He was a guest in the house of the girl’s parents. Before going up to the attic to sleep he asked for a light, but there was none in the house. He went up therefore without a light, but later, when the girl looked up from the yard, his room was as bright as a ballroom. Whereupon she recognized that he was an unusual guest, and asked him to take her for his wife. This she was permitted to ask, for her exalted destiny was revealed by her having recognized him. But the Zaddik Hador said: ‘You are destined for one even higher.’ This is proof that the Baal Shem was higher than a Zaddik Hador.
7 October. Was a long time with Miss R. in the lobby of the hotel yesterday. Slept badly. Headaches.
I frightened Gerti by limping; the horror in a clubfoot.102
Yesterday a fallen horse with a bloody knee on Niklasstrasse. I looked away and uncontrollably grimaced in the broad daylight.
Insoluble problem: Am I broken? Am I in decline? Almost all the signs speak for it (coldness, apathy, state of my nerves, distractedness, incompetence on the job, headaches, insomnia); almost nothing but hope speaks against it.
3 November. Went about a great deal lately, fewer headaches. Walks with Miss R. With her at Er und seine Schwester, played by Girardi. (‘Have you talent then?’ – ‘Permit me to intervene and answer for you: Oh yes, oh yes.’) In the municipal reading-room. Saw the flag at her parents’.
The two wonderful sisters, Esther and Tilka; they are like the contrast between a light on and a light off. Tilka especially is beautiful; olive-brown, lowered, curving eyelids, heart of Asia. Both with shawls drawn about their shoulders. They are of average height, short even, and appear as erect and tall as goddesses; one on the round cushion of the sofa, Tilka in a corner on some unrecognizable seat, perhaps on a box. Half asleep, I had a long vision of Esther, who, with the passion she impresses me as having for everything spiritual, had the knot of a rope firmly between her teeth and swung energetically back and forth in the empty room like the clapper of a bell (a film poster I remember).
The two L.’s. The little devil of a teacher whom I also saw in my half-sleep; how she flew furiously along in a dance, a Cossack-like but floating dance, up and down over a somewhat sloping, rough, dark brown brick pavement lying there in the twilight.
4 November. I remember a corner in Brescia were, on a similar pavement but in broad daylight, I distributed soldi to the children. And a church in Verona I forlornly and reluctantly went into, only because of the slight compulsion of duty that a tourist feels, and the heavy compulsion of a man expiring of futility; saw an overgrown dwarf stooped under the holy water font, walked around a bit, sat down; and as reluctantly went out again, as if just such a church as this one, built door to door with it, awaited me outside.
The recent departure of the Jews from the railway station. The two men carrying a sack. The father loading his possessions on his many children, the smallest one as well, in order to mount the platform more quickly. The strong, healthy, young, but already shapeless woman sitting on a trunk holding a suckling infant, surrounded by acquaintances in lively conversation.
5 November. State of excitement in the afternoon. Began with my considering if and how many war bonds I should buy. Twice went to the office to give the necessary order and twice returned without having gone in. Feverishly computed the interest. Then asked my mother to buy a thousand kronen worth of bonds, but raised the amount to two thousand kronen. In the course of all this it was revealed that I knew nothing of an investment I possessed amounting to some three thousand kronen, and that it had almost no effect at all on me when I learned of it. There was nothing in my head save my doubts about the war bonds, which didn’t cease plaguing me even after a half-hour’s walk through the busiest streets. I felt myself directly involved in the war, weighed the general financial prospects, at least according to what information I possessed, increased or diminished the interest that would some day come to me, etc. But gradually my excitement underwent a transformation, my thoughts turning to writing, I felt myself up to it, wanted nothing save the opportunity to write, considered what nights in the future I could set aside for it, with pains in my heart crossed the stone bridge at a run, felt what I had already experienced so often, the unhappy sense of a consuming fire inside me that was not allowed to break out, made up
a sentence – ‘Little friend, pour forth’ – incessantly sang it to a special tune, and squeezed and released a handkerchief in my pocket in accompaniment as if it were a bagpipe.
6 November. View of the antlike movements of the crowd in front of and in the trench.103
At the home of Oskar Pollak’s104 mother. His sister made a good impression on me. Is there anyone, by the way, to whom I don’t bow down? Take Grünberg,105 for instance, who in my opinion is a very remarkable person and almost universally depreciated for reasons which are beyond me – if it were a question, let’s say, of which of the two of us should have to die immediately (no great improbability in his case, for they say he is in an advanced stage of tuberculosis), and the decision lay with me as to which it should be, then I should find the question a preposterous one, so long as it was looked at merely theoretically; for as a matter of course Grünberg, a far more valuable person than I, should have been spared. Grünberg too would agree with me. But in the final desperate moment I should, as everyone else would have done long before, invent arguments in my favour, arguments that at any other time, because of their crudity, nakedness, and falsity, would have made me vomit. And these final moments I am surely undergoing now, though no one is forcing a choice upon me; they are those moments when I put off all external distracting influences and try really to look into myself.
‘Silently the “black ones” sit around the fire. The light of the flames flickers on their sombre, fanatic faces.’
19 November. Days passed in futility, powers wasting away in waiting, and, in spite of all this idleness, throbbing, gnawing pains in my head.
Letter from Werfel. Reply.
At Mrs M-T.’s, my defencelessness against everything. My malicious remarks at Max’s. Disgusted by them the next morning.106
With Miss F. R. and Esther.