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THE FAMOUS OBLIQUE MOVEMENT consisted simply in this. The Russian troops,
which had been retreating directly back from the French, as soon as the French
attack ceased, turned off from that direction, and seeing they were not pursued,
moved naturally in the direction where they were drawn by the abundance of
supplies.
If we imagine, instead of generals of genius at the head of the Russian army,
an army acting alone, without leadership of any kind, such an army could have
done nothing else but move back again towards Moscow, describing a semicircle
through the country that was best provided with necessaries, and where supplies
were most plentiful.
So natural was this oblique movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and
Kaluga road, that that direction was the one taken by the flying bands of
marauders from the Russian army, and the one which the authorities in Petersburg
insisted upon Kutuzov's taking. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a
reprimand from the Tsar for moving the army to the Ryazan road, and he was
directed to take up the very position facing Kaluga, in which he was encamped at
the time when the Tsar's letter reached him.
After recoiling in the direction of the shock received during the whole
campaign, and at the battle of Borodino, the ball of the Russian army, as the
force of that blow spent itself, and no new blow came, took the direction that
was natural for it.
Kutuzov's merit lay in no sort of military genius, as it is called, in no
strategic man