The Battle of Borodino or the Battle of the Moskva took place on the outskirts of Moscow near the village of Borodino on 7 September 1812, during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The Grande Armée fought against the Imperial Russian Army.
After the Russian retreat at the Battle of Smolensk, the road to Moscow lay open. Napoleon fought against General Mikhail Kutuzov, whom the Emperor Alexander I had appointed to replace Barclay de Tolly on 29 August after Smolensk was razed and captured by the French and Polish forces. Approximately a quarter of a million soldiers were involved in the battle, and it was the bloodiest single day of the Napoleonic Wars. In the battle, up to 50 French generals and marshals were killed or wounded, as well as 29 Russian generals; hence Sir Robert Wilson referred to it as the Battle of the Generals.
After the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon remained on the battlefield with his army; the Imperial Russian forces retreated southwards. What followed was the French occupation of Moscow, while the retreating Russians resorted to scorched earth tactics to trap Napoleon and his men within their own largest city. The main results of the battle were that Napoleon managed to take the Russian strong but unfinished defensive positions: the redoubt and the flèches, though he was unable to end the war as he hoped. In particular, Napoleon's reluctance to deploy his Imperial Guard, as he wished to negotiate with Alexander to make him re-join against the British, has been widely criticized by historians as a large blunder, as it allowed the Russian army to retreat into territory increasingly hostile to the French.
Background
Napoleon's invasion of Russia
Napoleon with the French Grande Armée began his invasion of Russia on 24 June 1812 by crossing the Niemen river.
As his Russian army was outnumbered by far, Mikhail Bogdanovich Barclay de Tolly successfully used a "delaying operation", defined as an operation where a force under pressure trades space for time by slowing down the enemy's momentum and inflicting maximum damage on the enemy without, in principle, becoming decisively engaged, using a Fabian strategy as a defence in depth by retreating further eastwards into Russia without giving battle.
After the Battle of Smolensk, the Tsar replaced the unpopular Barclay de Tolly with Mikhail Kutuzov, who on 18 August took over the army at Tsaryovo-Zaymishche and ordered his soldiers to prepare for battle. Kutuzov understood Barclay's decision to retreat was correct, but the Tsar, the Russian troops and Russia could not accept further retreat. A battle had to occur in order to preserve the morale of the soldiers and the nation. He then ordered not another retreat, but a search for a battleground eastwards at Gzhatsk on 30 August, thus using Barclay's delaying operation again, by which time the ratio of French to Russian forces had shrunk from 3:1 to 5:4. The main part of Napoleon's army had entered Russia with 286,000 soldiers, but by the time of the battle was reduced mostly through starvation and disease.
Kutuzov's army established a defensive line near the village of Borodino. Although the Borodino field was too open and had too few natural obstacles to protect the Russian center and the left flank, it was chosen because it blocked both Smolensk–Moscow roads and because there were simply no better locations. Starting on 3 September, Kutuzov strengthened the line with earthworks, including the Raevsky redoubt (named after Nikolay Raevsky who was in charge of its defence) in the center-right of the line, and three open, arrow-shaped "Bagration flèches" (named after Pyotr Bagration) on the left.
Battle of Shevardino
The initial Russian position, which stretched south of the new Smolensk Highway (Napoleon's expected route of advance), was anchored on its left by a pentagonal earthwork redoubt erected on a mound near the village of Shevardino. The Russian generals soon realized their left wing was overly exposed and vulnerable, so the Russian line was moved back from this position, but the redoubt remained manned – according to Kutuzov, this was simply to delay the advance of the French forces. Historian Dmitry Buturlin reports it was used as an observation point to determine the course of the French advance. Historians Witner and Ratch, and many others, reported it was used as a fortification to threaten the French right flank, despite being beyond the effective reach of guns of the period.
The Chief of Staff of the Russian 1st Army, Aleksey Yermolov, said the Russian left was shifting positions when the French Army arrived sooner than expected; thus, the Battle of Shevardino became a delaying effort to shield the redeployment of the Russian left. The construction of the redoubt and its purpose is disputed by historians to this day.
The battle began on September 5 when Marshal Joachim Murat's French forces met Pyotr Konovnitsyn's Russians in a massive cavalry clash, the Russians eventually retreating to the Kolorzkoi Cloister when their flank was threatened. Combat resumed the next day but Konovnitsyn again retreated when Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais' Fourth Corps arrived, threatening his flank. The Russians withdrew to the Shevardino Redoubt, where a pitched battle ensued. Murat led Nansouty's First Cavalry Corps and Montbrun's Second Cavalry Corps, supported by Compans's Division of Davout's First Infantry Corps against the redoubt. Simultaneously, Prince Józef Poniatowski's Polish infantry attacked the position from the south. The fighting was heavy and very fierce, as the Russians refused to retreat until Kutuzov personally ordered them to do so. The French captured the redoubt at the cost of 4,000–5,000 French and 6,000 Russian casualties. The small redoubt was destroyed and covered by the dead and dying of both sides.
The unexpected French advance from the west and the fall of the Shevardino redoubt threw the Russian formation into disarray. Since the left flank of their defensive position had collapsed, Russian forces withdrew to the east, constructing a makeshift position centered around the village of Utitsa. The left flank of the Russian position was thus ripe for a flanking attack.
Opposing forces
Russian forces
A series of reforms to the Russian army had begun in 1802, creating regiments of three battalions, each battalion having four companies. The defeats of Austerlitz, Eylau and Friedland led to important additional reforms, though continuous fighting in the course of three wars with France, two with Sweden and two with the Ottoman Empire had not allowed time for these to be fully implemented and absorbed. A divisional system was introduced in 1806, and corps were established in 1812. Prussian influence may be seen in the organizational setup. By the time of Borodino the Russian army had changed greatly from the force which met the French in 1805–1807.
Russian forces present at the battle included 180 infantry battalions, 164 cavalry squadrons, 20 Cossack regiments and 55 artillery batteries (637 artillery pieces). In total, the Russians fielded 155,200 troops. There were 10,000 Cossacks and 33,000 Russian militiamen in the area who did not participate in the battle, for a total of 43,000 irregulars. After the battle the militia units were broken up to provide reinforcements for depleted regular infantry battalions. Of the 637 Russian artillery pieces, 300 were held in reserve and many of these were never committed to the battle.
French forces
According to historian Alexander Mikaberidze, the French army remained the finest army of its day by a good margin. The vast French military resources in manpower, horsepower, and firepower along with fusion of the Ancien Régime's legacy with the formations of the French revolution and Napoleon's reforms transformed it into a military machine that had dominated Europe by 1799. Each corps of the French army was in fact its own mini-army capable of independent action. Nonetheless, the French military had been in decline since the Battle of Austerlitz due to spending military resources in the Peninsular War, and losing many French veterans in battles such as Eylau, Aspern, and Wagram.
French forces included 214 battalions of infantry, 317 squadrons of cavalry and 587 artillery pieces totaling 128,000 troops. However, the French Imperial Guard, which consisted of 30 infantry battalions, 27 cavalry squadrons and 109 artillery pieces – a total of 18,500 troops – never committed to action.
Battle
Position
According to Carl von Clausewitz, although the Russian left was on marginally higher ground, this was but a superficial matter and did not provide much of a defensive advantage. The positioning of the Russian right was such that for the French the left seemed an obvious choice. The Russian position at Borodino consisted of a series of disconnected earthworks running in an arc from the Moskva River on the right, along its tributary, the Kolocha (whose steep banks added to the defense), and towards the village of Utitsa on the left. Thick woods interspersed along the Russian left and center (on the French side of the Kolocha) made the deployment and control of French forces difficult, aiding the defenders. The Russian center was defended by the Raevsky Redoubt, a massive open-backed earthwork mounting nineteen 12-pounder cannons with a clear field of fire all the way to the Kolocha's banks.
Kutuzov was very concerned the French might take the New Smolensk Road around his positions and on to Moscow, so he placed the more powerful 1st Army under Barclay on the right, in positions which were already strong and virtually unassailable by the French. The 2nd Army under Bagration was expected to hold the left. The fall of Shevardino unanchored the Russian left flank but Kutuzov did nothing to change these initial dispositions despite the repeated pleas of his generals to redeploy their forces.
Thus, when the action began and became a defensive rather than an offensive battle for the Russians, their heavy preponderance in artillery was wasted on a right wing that would never be attacked, while the French artillery did much to help win the battle. Colonel Karl Wilhelm von Toll and others would make attempts to cover up their mistakes in this deployment and later attempts by historians would compound the issue. Indeed, Clausewitz also complained about Toll's dispositions being so narrow and deep that needless losses were incurred from artillery fire. The Russian position therefore was just about 8 kilometres (5 mi) long with about 80,000 of the 1st Army on the right and 34,000 of the 2nd Army on the left.
Bagration's flèches
The first area of operations was on the Bagration flèches, as was predicted by both Barclay de Tolly and Bagration. Napoleon, commanding the French forces, made errors similar to his Russian adversary, deploying his forces inefficiently and failing to exploit the weaknesses in the Russian line. Despite Marshal Davout's suggestion of a maneuver to outflank the weak Russian left, the Emperor instead ordered Davout's First Corps to move directly into the teeth of the defense, while the flanking maneuver was left to the weak Fifth Corps of Prince Poniatowski.
The initial French attack was aimed at seizing three Russian positions collectively known as the Bagration flèches, three arrowhead-shaped, open-backed earthworks which arced out to the left en échelon in front of the Kolocha stream. These positions helped support the Russian left, which had no terrain advantages. There was much to be desired in the construction of the flèches, one officer noting the ditches were much too shallow, the embrasures open to the ground, making them easy to enter, and they were much too wide, exposing infantry inside them. The flèches were supported by artillery from the village of Semyanovskaya, whose elevation dominated the other side of the Kolocha.
The battle began at 06:00 with the opening of the 102-gun French grand battery against the Russian center. Davout sent Compans's Division against the southernmost of the flèches, with Dessaix's Division echeloned out to the left. They were opposed by Vorontsov's and Neverovsky's divisions. When Compans exited the woods on the far bank of the Kolocha, he was hit by massed Russian cannon fire; both Compans and Dessaix were wounded, but the French continued their assault. Davout, seeing the confusion, personally led the 57th Line Regiment (Le Terrible) forward until he had his horse shot from under him; he fell so hard General Jean-Barthélemot Sorbier reported him dead. General Jean Rapp arrived to replace him, only to find Davout alive and leading the 57th forward again. Rapp then led the 61st Line Regiment forward when he was wounded (for the 22nd time in his career).
By 07:30, Davout had gained control of the three flèches. Prince Bagration quickly led a counterattack that threw the French out of the positions, only to have Marshal Michel Ney lead a charge by the 24th Regiment that retook them. Although not enamoured of Barclay, Bagration turned to him for aid, ignoring Kutuzov altogether; Barclay, to his credit, responded quickly, sending three guard regiments, eight grenadier battalions and twenty-four 12-pounder cannons at their best pace to bolster Semyаnovskaya. Colonel Toll and Kutuzov moved the Guard Reserve units forward as early as 09:00.