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By English mediation, also, a peace was arranged between Turkey and Russia, thus releasing Tchitchagoff, who promptly joined Tormassoff, and opposed Schwarzenberg on the extreme French right with nearly two to one. Meanwhile Kutusoff had taken a position at Tarutino, where he commanded the left flank of the main French army, and daily received new recruits, who flocked to fill his depleted ranks.
"That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today. But people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking about or deliberately deceive themselves.
The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had in view to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the dispositions; nor that which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had in view to take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor the aim of the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got, and so on.
Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would have happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern provinces.
Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one formerly brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no question of peace. Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of Broussier's division had been seen at Forminsk and that being separated from the rest of the French army they might easily be destroyed.
But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and what all the Russians of that day desired to drive the French out of Russia and destroy their army it is quite clear that the battle of Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was wanted at that stage of the campaign.
The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the most important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the Russian army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino camp the so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River.
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