The Modern Library In Search of Lost Time, Complete and Unabridged : 6-Book Bundle (162 page)

“I’m not surprised,” was Saint-Loup’s comment, “as he’s a sensible man. But in spite of everything he’s blinded by the prejudices of his caste, and above all, by his clericalism. By the way,” he turned to me, “Major Duroc, the lecturer on military history I was telling you about—there’s a man who is whole-heartedly in support of our views, or so I’m told. And I should have been surprised to hear that he wasn’t, for he’s not only a brilliantly clever man, but a Radical-Socialist and a freemason.”

Partly out of courtesy to his friends, to whom Saint-Loup’s professions of Dreyfusard faith were painful, and also because the subject was of more interest to me, I asked my neighbour if it were true that this major gave a demonstration of military history which had a genuine aesthetic beauty.

“It’s absolutely true.”

“But what do you mean by that?”

“Well, all that you read, let us say, in the narrative of a military historian, the smallest facts, the most trivial happenings, are only the outward signs of an idea which has to be elucidated and which often conceals other ideas, like a palimpsest. So that you have a field of study as intellectual as any science you care to name, or any art, and one that is satisfying to the mind.”

“Give me an example or two, if you don’t mind.”

“It’s not very easy to explain,” Saint-Loup broke in. “You read, let us say, that this or that corps has tried … but before we go any further, the serial number of the corps, its order of battle, are not without their significance. If it isn’t the first time that the operation has been attempted, and if for the same operation we find a different corps being brought up, it’s perhaps a sign that the previous corps has been wiped out or has suffered heavy casualties in the said operation, that it’s no longer in a fit state to carry it through successfully. Next, we must ask ourselves what this corps which is now out of action consisted of; if it was made up of shock troops, held in reserve for big attacks, a fresh corps of inferior quality will have little chance of succeeding where the first has failed. Furthermore, if we are not at the start of a campaign, this fresh corps may itself be a composite formation of odds and ends drawn from other corps, and this provides an indication of the strength of the forces the belligerent still has at its disposal, and the proximity of the moment when its forces will definitely be inferior to the enemy’s, which puts the operation on which this corps is about to engage in a different perspective, because, if it is no longer in a condition to make good its losses, its successes themselves will, with arithmetical certainty, only bring it nearer to its ultimate destruction. Moreover, the serial number of the corps that it has facing it is of no less significance. If, for instance, it is a much weaker unit, which has already accounted for several important units of the attacking force, the whole nature of the operation is changed, since, even if it should end in the loss of the position which the defending force has been holding, simply to have held it for any length of time may be a great success if a very small defending force has been sufficient to destroy considerable forces on the other side. You can understand that if, in the analysis of the various corps engaged on both sides, there are all these points of importance, the study of the position itself, of the roads and railways which it commands, of the supply lines which it protects, is of even greater consequence. One must study what I may call the whole geographical context,” he added with a laugh. (And indeed he was so delighted with this expression that, every time he employed it, even months afterwards, it was always accompanied by the same laugh.) “While the operation is being prepared by one of the belligerents, if you read that one of its patrols has been wiped out in the neighbourhood of the position by the other belligerent, one of the conclusions which you are entitled to draw is that one side was attempting to reconnoitre the defensive works with which the other intended to resist the attack. An exceptional burst of activity at a given point may indicate the desire to capture that point, but equally well the desire to hold the enemy in check there, not to retaliate at the point at which he has attacked you; or it may indeed be only a feint, intended to cover by an intensification of activity withdrawals of troops in that sector. (This was a classic feint in Napoleon’s wars.) On the other hand, to appreciate the significance of a manoeuvre, its probable object, and, as a corollary, other manoeuvres by which it will be accompanied or followed, it is not immaterial to consult, not so much the announcements issued by the High Command, which may be intended to deceive the enemy, to mask a possible setback, as the manual of field operations in use in the country in question. We are always entitled to assume that the manoeuvre which an army has attempted to carry out is that prescribed by the rules in force for analogous circumstances. If, for instance, the rules lay down that a frontal attack should be accompanied by a flank attack and if, this flank attack having failed, the High Command claims that it had no connexion with the main attack and was merely a diversion, there is a strong likelihood that the truth will be found by consulting the field regulations rather than the statements issued from Headquarters. And there are not only the regulations governing each army to be considered, but their traditions, their habits, their doctrines. The study of diplomatic activity, which is constantly acting or reacting upon military activity, must not be neglected either. Incidents apparently insignificant, misinterpreted at the time, will explain to you how the enemy, counting on support which these incidents prove to have been denied him, was able to carry out only a part of his strategic plan. So that, if you know how to read your military history, what is a confused jumble for the ordinary reader becomes a chain of reasoning as rational as a painting is for the picture-lover who knows how to look and can see what the person portrayed is wearing, what he has in his hands, whereas the average visitor to a gallery is bewildered by a blur of colour which gives him a headache. But just as with certain pictures it isn’t enough to observe that the figure is holding a chalice, but one must know why the painter chose to place a chalice in his hands, what it’s intended to symbolise, so these military operations, quite apart from their immediate objective, are habitually modelled, in the mind of the general who is directing the campaign, on earlier battles which represent, so to speak, the past, the literature, the learning, the etymology, the aristocracy of the battles of today. Mind you, I’m not speaking for the moment of the local, the (what shall I call it?) spatial identity of battles. That exists also. A battlefield has never been, and never will be throughout the centuries, simply the ground upon which a single battle has been fought. If it has been a battlefield, that was because it combined certain conditions of geographical position, of geological formation, even of certain defects calculated to hinder the enemy (a river, for instance, cutting it in two), which made it a good battlefield. And so what it has been it will continue to be. You don’t make an artist’s studio out of any old room; so you don’t make a battlefield out of any old piece of ground. There are predestined sites. But, once again, that’s not what I was talking about so much as the type of battle a general takes as his model, a sort of strategic carbon copy, a tactical pastiche, if you like. Battles like Ulm, Lodi, Leipzig, Cannae. I don’t know whether there’ll ever be another war, or what nations will fight in it, but, if a war does come, you may be sure that it will include (and deliberately, on the commander’s part) a Cannae, an Austerlitz, a Rossbach, a Waterloo, to mention a few. Some people make no bones about it. Marshal von Schlieffen and General von Falkenhausen have planned in advance a Battle of Cannae against France, in the Hannibal style, pinning their enemy down along his whole front, and advancing on both flanks, especially on the right through Belgium, while Bernhardi prefers the oblique advance of Frederick the Great, Leuthen rather than Cannae. Others expound their views less crudely, but I can tell you one thing, my boy, and that is that Beauconseil, the squadron commander I introduced you to the other day and who’s an officer with a very great future before him, has swotted up a little Pratzen attack of his own which he knows inside out and is keeping up his sleeve, and if he ever has an opportunity to put it into practice he won’t miss the boat but will let us have it good and proper. The breakthrough in the centre at Rivoli, too—that will crop up again if there’s ever another war. It’s no more obsolete than the
Iliad
. I may add that we’re more or less condemned to frontal attacks, because we can’t afford to repeat the mistake we made in ’70; we must assume the offensive, nothing but the offensive. The only thing that troubles me is that although I see only the slower, more antiquated minds among us opposing this splendid doctrine, nevertheless one of the youngest of my masters, who is a genius, I mean Mangin, feels that there ought to be a place, provisional of course, for the defensive. It isn’t very easy to answer him when he cites the example of Austerlitz, where the defensive was simply a prelude to attack and victory.”

The enunciation of these theories by Saint-Loup was cheering. They gave me to hope that perhaps I was not being led astray, in my life at Doncières, with regard to these officers whom I heard being discussed as I sat sipping a Sauterne which bathed them in its charming golden glint, by the same magnifying power that had blown up to such huge dimensions in my eyes, while I was at Balbec, the King and Queen of the South Seas, the little group of the four gastronomes, the young gambler, and Legrandin’s brother-in-law, who were now so shrunken as to appear non-existent. What gave me pleasure today would not perhaps leave me indifferent tomorrow, as had always happened hitherto; the person that I still was at this moment was not perhaps doomed to imminent destruction, since to the ardent and fugitive passion which I felt on these few evenings for everything that concerned the military life, Saint-Loup, by what he had just been saying to me about the art of war, added an intellectual foundation, of a permanent character, capable of gripping me so strongly that I could believe, without any attempt at self-deception, that after I had left Doncières I should continue to take an interest in the work of my friends there, and should not be long in coming to pay them another visit. However, in order to be quite sure that this art of war was indeed an art in the artistic sense of the word, I said to Saint-Loup:

“You interest me enormously. But tell me, there’s one point that puzzles me. I feel that I could become passionately involved in the art of war, but first I should want to be sure that it is not so very different from the other arts, that knowing the rules is not everything. You tell me that battles are reproduced. I do find something aesthetic, just as you said, in seeing beneath a modern battle the plan of an older one; I can’t tell you how attractive the idea sounds. But then, does the genius of the commander count for nothing? Does he really do no more than apply the rules? Or, granted equal knowledge, are there great generals as there are great surgeons, who, when the symptoms exhibited by two cases of illness are identical to the outward eye, nevertheless feel, for some infinitesimal reason, founded perhaps on their experience, but interpreted afresh, that in one case they ought to do this, in another case that; that in one case it is better to operate, in another to wait?”

“But of course! You’ll find Napoleon not attacking when all the rules demanded that he should attack, but some obscure divination warned him not to. For instance, look at Austerlitz, or, in 1806, his instructions to Lannes. But you will find certain generals slavishly imitating one of Napoleon’s manoeuvres and arriving at a diametrically opposite result. There are a dozen examples of that in 1870. But even as regards the interpretation of what the enemy
may
do, what he actually does is only a symptom which may mean any number of different things. Each of them has an equal chance of being the right one, if you confine yourself to logic and science, just as in certain difficult cases all the medical science in the world will be powerless to decide whether the invisible tumour is malignant or not, whether or not the operation ought to be performed. It is his flair, his divination, his crystal-gazing (if you know what I mean) which decides, in the case of the great general as of the great doctor. Thus I explained to you, to take one instance, what a reconnaissance on the eve of a battle might signify. But it may mean a dozen other things, such as making the enemy think you’re going to attack him at one point whereas you intend to attack him at another, putting up a screen which will prevent him from seeing the preparations for your real operation, forcing him to bring up fresh troops, to fix them there, to immobilise them in a different place from where they are needed, forming an estimate of the forces at his disposal, sounding him out, forcing him to show his hand. Sometimes, even, the fact that you deploy an immense number of troops in an operation is by no means a proof that that is your true objective; for you may carry it out in earnest, even if it is only a feint, so that the feint may have a better chance of deceiving the enemy. If I had time now to go through the Napoleonic wars from this point of view, I assure you that these simple classic movements which we study here, and which you’ll come and see us practising in the field, just for the pleasure of an outing, you young rotter (no, I know you’re not well, I’m sorry!), well, in a war, when you feel behind you the vigilance, the judgment, the profound study of the High Command, you’re as moved by them as by the beam of a lighthouse, a purely physical light but none the less an emanation of the mind, sweeping through space to warn ships of danger. In fact I may perhaps be wrong in speaking to you only of the literature of war. In reality, as the formation of the soil, the direction of wind and light tell us which way a tree will grow, so the conditions in which a campaign is fought, the features of the country through which you manoeuvre, prescribe, to a certain extent, and limit the number of the plans among which the general has to choose. Which means that along a mountain range, through a system of valleys, over certain plains, it’s almost with the inevitability and the grandiose beauty of an avalanche that you can predict the line of an army on the march.”