War & Peace (TV Series)

Borodino (1972)

Alan Dobie: Prince Andrei Bolkonsky

Quotes 

• Mikhail Kutuzov : It won't do any good, but we shall have a battle.

  Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : Any good for whom?

  Mikhail Kutuzov : For us or for the French. What could it accomplish? The casualties will be immense. It'll make it more difficult for us to defend Moscow afterwards. And as for the French, they'll risk a major defeat hundreds of miles inside an enemy country.

  Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : Why do you agree then?

  Mikhail Kutuzov : What can I do? Everyone wants it. The Germans say you must have a battle. They've got textbooks to prove it. And the tsar has read them. Everyone's read them, so we have no alternative but to have a battle here at Borodino, because this is where we were when the tsar said, no further.

• Pierre Bezukhov : Wasn't Barclay de Tolly an able general?

  Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : I don't know what is meant by an able general.

  Pierre Bezukhov : Well, one that foresees the adversary's intentions.

  Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : That's really quite impossible for the most part, since the adversary never knows them himself.

  Pierre Bezukhov : Yet they say that war is like a game of chess, don't they?

  Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : Who says it? The people who fight wars from armchairs. In chess you can think over a move as long as you like. In war one doesn't have that luxury. In chess a knight is always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one. In war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division, and sometimes weaker than a company. Relative strengths have very little to do with the issue.

  Pierre Bezukhov : On what does success depend?

  Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : On the feeling that's in him, and in me. The battle is won by the side that's most resolved to win it.

  Pierre Bezukhov : Don't numbers make any difference at all?

  Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : They make very little. Did you ask yourself why we lost at Austerlitz? French casualties were about the same as ours, and we had actually more men than they did. We lost because early on in the day we said to ourselves, we are losing, and we did.

  Timohin : That's true, Your Excellency. We had nothing to fight for, then. We wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as possible. But tomorrow it won't be like this. Fighting on our own soil, it makes a big difference.

• Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : If I had my way, I'd take no prisoners. War is a farce the way we play it. All this magnanimity and chivalry. We make a game of it. What are they doing here, the French? They plunder our homes, kill our wives and children, then talk of honor and the rules of war. I say, no quarter. Kill or be killed. If it were like that, then people would never go to war, except for something worth facing death for. War is the vilest thing in human life. We should have done with the humbug of it. Its aim and end is murder. And those who do it for the living are the most honored of all. Every monarch in the world wears a military uniform, and bestows the highest honors on those people who kill the most. Each side prays to God for victory before the battle and thanks God for victory afterwards if they get it, as if God cares. As if he cares.

• Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : Will we win tomorrow?

  Mikhail Kutuzov : We shall be in exactly the same position tomorrow as we are today. Relatively, that is. We shall be 20,000 men less. But then, so will the French.

  Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : I think the emperor Napoleon would not agree with you.

  Mikhail Kutuzov : Ah, but then he believes he's a military genius. People have been telling him so for years, so naturally he believes it. If he wins decisively tomorrow, people will say they were right. 'I told you so. He's a genius.'

  Prince Andrei Bolkonsky : I think he may not.

  Mikhail Kutuzov : In which case they'll say he had a cold in the head and wasn't thinking very clearly.