The Scorched Earth Policy.

I love history.  I thought about majoring in it at college, until I took my first History class, sophomore year, and listened to my prof rail on and on about how much he hated students.  I survived that class, and then promptly never took another one.  I don’t regret the experience, I learned a lot about Greek and Roman history, and I think we ended up making it through the Merovingian kings or something.  (Knowledge made useful at the advent of the lastest Matrix movies.)  I do so love trivia.  Anyways.

One of the most intriguing stories in history, I think, is the way that Napoleon terrorized Europe for that series of years leading up to his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815.  The man had no real stature or bearing that anyone would follow him, but he had an iron will.  Many think Napoleon’s reign of terror over Europe started to end when he decided to attack Russia in 1812.  Of course, many of you know that Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture is written in celebration of Napoleon’s leaving of Moscow to head back to France, but that is not what is the most interesting aspect of this part of the story to me.  As you may have guessed by now, the part of this that interests me is the tactic employed by the Russian commanders of destroying the land before the oncoming army, so as to make the land of no use to the invading army.  Of course, in that day, and in most of the wars of that period, armies lived off whatever supplies they could carry or have delivered to them, but these rations were augmented by whatever the troops could glean from the surrounding land.  By deciding to destroy the land before the oncoming French troops, the Russians made a bold and previously unheard of move, destroying their own country rather than letting the French make use of it for their own designs.  Very, very interesting.

Also interesting is the man who devised the plan to destroy the land rather than allow it to be used by the invaders, Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, a Scottish general in the Russian army at the time.  If you get curious about the guy, you can check him out.  The information that I wonder about hasn’t been in any of the preliminary sources I’ve checked, but I confess I haven’t done much research on the man.  My questions are many, and mostly existential in nature.  What kind of impossible odds would lead a general to destroy the land he’s supposed to protect?  It strikes me that only a singular kind of man, a very realistic and cynical kind of man, would look at the odds of a battle, decide that victory was impossible, and go so far as to destroy his own land to draw an enemy further into the interior.  How did the man come to the conclusion that burning anything of use would draw an army in?  Was that really what he intended?  I don’t have any answers for either of these questions, nor do I have any real thoughts about them.  I guess I just find the tactic remarkable.  Of course, it did cost the general his commission, and he was soon replaced.

As you may well have guessed by now, I have no real intention to talk about history, I’m going to make an analogy with this extraordinary policy.

I really think, in retrospect, that about five or so years ago, when my whole withdrawal process started, I instituted this policy in my own life, in regards to any kind of emotional or real attachment I had to the majority of people in my life.  I literally made myself useless to the world, a listless, frustrated, depressed, melancholy shell of a man with little or no hope to speak of.  The attempt was very clear in it’s purpose and intent–if you make yourself appear to be completely obliterated to those who might wish you harm, they might ignore you out of the belief that there is no further damage they could do to you.  In other words, if you play opossum, and pretend to be dead, maybe they’ll stay their hand from the killing blow.  Of course, it becomes clear that only a very certain type of person, namely a very cynical, pessmistic and hopeless one, would ever resort to such a tactic.  After the disasters of my 15-19 years, that’s exactly where I stood.  And I literally burned a lot of stuff.  Anything that would remind me or could be used to trip me up, I burned.  I burned the love letters, the poems, the stories, the lists of things I loved…I burned it all.  I anestitized my life.  And after it was done, there was only a numbing pain, like that of a burn, but there was nothing that could touch the burn, and so the healing began.

Of course, as anyone who knows a lick about science or nature can tell you, after an ecosystem has burned, there is first a shock period, where the ecosystem adjusts to the death cycle that has just come upon it.  But if you go to a place that gets enough rainfall, sunlight, etc, what you will find either the following spring or the next spring after that, is something quite remarkable.  The ecosystem rebounds, and the burned areas end up providing the fertilizer for another time of growth and regeneration.  New sprouts come out of the ground, and the green returns.  The scars upon the land may remain, but the green returns.

Such is my life.  I think there has been growth, coming out of the shock of the burn, for the last couple of years or so.  Continuing with the metaphor, I think spring is full on in swing.  It will be interesting to see how the growth continues.  I’m not sure how to feel about it.  A part of me is glad to be alive again, but in the same token, it’s frightening to think about the possibility of burning it again.  Luckily, I won’t be the one lighting the match this time, that makes it easier.  I’ve learned the dangers of the self-burn, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.  There is a peculiar pain that comes when you realize you’ve gone further than anyone else ever would have in the destruction, and then you’re left looking yourself in the mirror, realizing that you’re the one that did it.  I wonder if Barclay, the Russian general, ever went back to the areas he burned as a tactic against the French.  What did he think of the destruction he caused?  How did he view it?  Did he see it as a necessity or an overcorrection?  We may never know.