Ukraine’s Secret Weapon – “Moral Superiority” – The Health Care Blog

BY MIKE MAGEE

Two hundred and 10 many years back, on September 7, 1812, a Putinesque commander, narrowly received a struggle, but lost a war and entered a downward cycle that finished his reign. The battle was the Struggle of Borodino, a city on the river Moskva, 70 miles west of Moscow. The commander was Napoleon.

The details are obvious-minimize: Napoleon arrived with 130,000 troops, together with his 20,000 Imperial Guards, and 500 guns. Opposing him were being 120,000 Russians with 600 guns. The battle engaged from 6 AM to Noon. The French took 30,000 casualties, although the Russians misplaced 45,000 males, but survived to combat yet another working day.

As Leo Tolstoy describes the scene of carnage on web page 818 of his epic novel, War and Peace, in 1867,  “Several tens of thousands of guys lay useless in different positions and uniforms in the fields and meadows where for hundreds of a long time peasants of the villages…had at the very same time gathered crops and pastured cattle. At the dressing stations, the grass and soil were being soaked with blood more than the area of three acres. Crowds of wounded and unwounded adult males of different units, with frightened faces, trudged on…Over the complete subject, at the time so gaily stunning with its gleaming bayonets and puffs of smoke in the morning solar, there now hung the murk of dampness and smoke and the strangely acidic scent of saltpeter and blood. Small clouds gathered and started to sprinkle on the dead…”

But in the future paragraphs, it will become crystal clear that Tolstoy’s intent and emphasis is not to describe why and how Napoleon had won the Fight of Borodino, but rather how this was the beginning of the end of his army and the Napoleonic reign.

Tolstoy writes: “For the French, with the memory of the preceding fifteen many years of victories, with their confidence in Napoleon’s invincibility, with the consciousness that they experienced taken element of the battlefield, that they had missing only a quarter of their adult men, and that they continue to had the intact twenty-thousand-man guard, it would have been simple to make the effort and hard work (to advance and annihilate the Russians)….But the French did not make that effort….It is not that Napoleon did not send in his guard since he did not want to, but that it could not be done. All the generals, officers, and troopers of the French military realized that it could not be carried out, simply because the army’s fallen spirits did not allow for it….(They have been) dealing with the exact sensation of terror prior to an enemy, which, possessing misplaced fifty percent his military, stood as formidably at the finish as at the commencing of the fight. The moral power of the attacking French was exhausted…(For the Russians, it was) a moral victory, the type that convinces the adversary of the ethical superiority of his enemy and of his have impotence, that was attained by the Russians at Borodino.”

The Russians not only retreated, but did not end in Moscow, continuing yet another 80 miles outside of their beloved metropolis. But as Tolstoy describes, “In the Russian army, as it retreats, the spirit of hostility in direction of the enemy flares up more and extra as it falls again, it concentrates and raises.” 

As for the French, they get Moscow but quit there. All over again from Tolstoy, “During the five months right after that, there is not a solitary battle. The French do not transfer. Like a mortally wounded beast, which, losing blood, licks its wounds, they keep on being in Moscow for 5 weeks without undertaking anything at all, and quickly, with no cause, flee back…without coming into a solitary serious battle…”

Putin’s getting old goals of conquest possible are Napoleonic in scale. But as his hesitant forces observe the Borodino-like human carnage that they have unleashed on Mariupol, at the estuary of the Kalmius and Kalchik rivers, and put together to enter Kyiv, the to start with japanese Slavic condition which, a Millennium in the past, acquired the title “Mother of Rus Cities”, their vulnerability and lack of “moral strength” is presently evident. Lacking a rational mentioned goal other than dominance, the youthful Russian conscripted troopers and their commanders need to undoubtedly mature far more involved day by working day.  They also have turn out to be entrapped, and are “experiencing the exact feeling of terror right before an enemy, which, owning lost 50 percent his military, stood as formidably at the end as at the commencing of the struggle.” 

As for Putin, like Napoleon, he could truly feel the winds of destiny blowing seriously on his shoulders even now. Napoleon did make it again to Paris. But three yrs after the Battle of Borodino and the 5-7 days profession of Moscow, he met his Waterloo on June 16, 1815, at the fingers of the Duke of Wellington.  He died in exile on the island of Helena on May perhaps 5, 1821. In his previous will, he wrote, “I would like my ashes to rest on the banking companies of the Seine, in the midst of that French folks which I have beloved so a lot.”

Putin possible feels a very similar adore for Mom Russia, but ultimately the Russian men and women may perhaps pick out not to return the passion.

Mike Magee, MD is a Clinical Historian and Overall health Economist, and writer of  “CodeBlue: Inside the Professional medical Industrial Elaborate.“