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The circuit toward Kaluga was first considered as a feint to throw the Russians off the scent; it became a necessity when they assumed the offensive in the unforeseen and unexpected attack on Murat. The Emperor did not dare to expose his flank and rear to an advancing foe, and accordingly his army was assembled on the road toward Kaluga. Should he advance or await a further movement of the enemy?
For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested to him to cross to the Kaluga road, but just then an adjutant gallops up from Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French or retire. An order must be given him at once, that instant. And the order to retreat carries us past the turn to the Kaluga road.
The emperor abruptly terminated the conversation by these words: "Well, then, I will send Lauriston." The latter asserts that he added fresh objections to the preceding, and that, being urged by the emperor, he recommended to him to begin his retreat that very day, by way of Kaluga.
I inquired for the enumerators. "Vanya!" shouted a small man, dressed in German fashion, who was engaged in placing something in a cupboard behind the counter; this was the landlord of the tavern, a Kaluga peasant, Ivan Fedotitch, who hired one- half of the Zimins' houses and sublet them to lodgers. The waiter, a thin, hooked-nosed young fellow of eighteen, with a yellow complexion, hastened up.
Kutusoff, deceived by this feint, was still waiting for the Grand Army on the old road, while, on the 23d of October, the whole of it had been transferred to the new one, and had but one march to make in order to pass quietly by him, and to get between him and Kaluga.
He pushed on in this direction for some hours, declaring that he would go and beat Kutusoff on the very field of his victory. But all at once, about midday, opposite to the castle of Krasnopachra, where he halted, he suddenly turned to the right with his army, and in three marches across the country gained the new road to Kaluga.
I inquired for the enumerators. "Vanya!" shouted a small man, dressed in German fashion, who was engaged in placing something in a cupboard behind the counter; this was the landlord of the tavern, a Kaluga peasant, Ivan Fedotitch, who hired one-half of the Zimins' houses and sublet them to lodgers. The waiter, a thin, hooked-nosed young fellow of eighteen, with a yellow complexion, hastened up.
Why did he not take up a position before reaching Fili? Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to think in that way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which always limit the activities of any commander in chief.
The old Napoleon would have abandoned them and then have attacked Kutusoff even in the forest defiles where he was ensconced; or else he would have pressed on past Kaluga, or would have swiftly wheeled to regain the northern road toward Smolensk.
The peasant of Orel is not tall, is bent in figure, sullen and suspicious in his looks; he lives in wretched little hovels of aspen-wood, labours as a serf in the fields, and engages in no kind of trading, is miserably fed, and wears slippers of bast: the rent-paying peasant of Kaluga lives in roomy cottages of pine-wood; he is tall, bold, and cheerful in his looks, neat and clean of countenance; he carries on a trade in butter and tar, and on holidays he wears boots.
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