War and Peace Bibliomancy Reading
This oracle points to a randomly selected line from War and Peace. The surrounding passages are provided for context.
Your passage is from BOOK TEN: 1812 - CHAPTER XXVIII.
The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories.
For Context: BOOK TEN: 1812 - CHAPTER XXVIII
And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for none of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know what was going on before him.
So the way in which these people killed one another was not decided by Napoleon’s will but occurred independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands of people who took part in the common action.
It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took place by his will.
And so the question whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than the cold of the least of the transport soldiers.
Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was the cause of his dispositions not being as well-planned as on former occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon’s cold on the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.
The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories.
His pseudo-orders during the battle were also no worse than formerly, but much the same as usual.
These dispositions and orders only seem worse than previous ones because the battle of Borodinó was the first Napoleon did not win.
The profoundest and most excellent dispositions and orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist criticizes them with looks of importance, when they relate to a battle that has been lost, and the very worst dispositions and orders seem very good, and serious people fill whole volumes to demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a battle that has been won.
The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of Austerlitz were a model of perfection for that kind of composition, but still they were criticized—criticized for their very perfection, for their excessive minuteness.
Napoleon at the battle of Borodinó fulfilled his office as representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other battles.
