What Was the Battle of Borodino?
The Battle of Borodino was fought on 7 September 1812 (26 August old style) between the Russian army under Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov and Napoleon’s Grande Armée under the Emperor Napoleon, near the village of Borodino about 125 km west of Moscow. The battle involved about 130,000 French troops and about 120,000 Russian troops, with a combined artillery of about 1,200 pieces, and produced casualties of about 30,000 French and 45,000 Russian. The battle was the largest single engagement of the Napoleonic Wars and one of the bloodiest of the nineteenth century. Tactically the result was indecisive, but strategically it confirmed Napoleon’s failure to pin down and destroy the Russian army, and it set the stage for the destruction of the Grande Armée (see Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon, 2009).
The background
The battle was the consequence of the Russian strategy of strategic retreat. After the French invasion of 24 June 1812, the Russian army under the war minister Michael Barclay de Tolly had withdrawn, drawing the French forces deeper into Russian territory. The strategy was deeply controversial: the Russian public and the Russian army command demanded a stand. The command was given to Kutuzov in August 1812, with the agreement that the army would make a stand before Moscow. The stand was made at Borodino, on a position that Kutuzov had chosen for the defensive terrain and the proximity to Moscow.
The Russian position at Borodino was organised in three principal positions. The left flank was anchored on the Bagration flèches, a series of arrow-shaped earthworks named after the Russian general Pyotr Bagration. The centre was held by the Raevsky redoubt, also known as the Great Redoubt, a key Russian defensive position. The right flank was held by a line of earthworks and a wooded area. The Russian army was deployed in a relatively straight line of about 8 km; the French army, under Napoleon, was arrayed opposite (Zamoyski, 1812, 2007).
The battle
The battle began in the early morning of 7 September 1812, with a major French attack on the Russian left flank, supported by about 590 French guns. The attack was repulsed by the Russian 2nd and 4th Infantry Corps, but the fighting was ferocious and the losses on both sides were heavy. The French forces, under Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout, took the Bagration flèches after several hours of close combat, but the Russian forces held a line in the rear. The Russian counter-attack recovered some of the lost positions, but the flèches were eventually lost.
The fighting at the Raevsky redoubt was equally ferocious. The French forces, under Marshal Michel Ney, took the redoubt in the early afternoon, but the Russian forces counter-attacked and recovered it. The redoubt changed hands several times during the afternoon. The fighting on the Russian right flank was less intense, but the French forces were able to advance in some sectors. The battle ended in the late afternoon with neither side in a position to claim a clear tactical victory. The Russian forces held their main positions, but the French forces had inflicted heavy casualties (Zamoyski, 2007).
The aftermath
The day after the battle, the Russian army began a strategic retreat, and Kutuzov ordered the evacuation of Moscow. The Russian army withdrew in good order, and the French army, despite the heavy losses of the battle, was unable to follow up its advantage. The fall of Moscow on 14 September 1812, which the Russian army had abandoned after the battle, was an important political event, but it was not the decisive moment of the campaign. Napoleon entered Moscow expecting Alexander I to negotiate; the Russian emperor refused. The fires that broke out in Moscow shortly after the French occupation destroyed much of the city and undermined French morale.
The retreat of the Grande Armée began in October 1812. Of the more than 600,000 men who had crossed the Neman in June, fewer than 100,000 recrossed it in December. The destruction of the Grande Armée was the central fact of the 1812 campaign, and it was the central fact of the Napoleonic Wars. The European campaigns of 1813-1814, in which the Russian army played a central role, were the consequence of the Russian victory. The Russian army entered Paris on 31 March 1814 (Lieven, 2009).
The legacy
The battle has been the subject of extensive historical and literary treatment. The most famous literary treatment is found in the third volume of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which provides a vivid and detailed account of the battle and the campaign. The painter Vasily Surikov painted The Morning of the Streltsy Execution (1881) and other works on the Napoleonic period. The Borodino Panorama Museum, established in 1962 on the 150th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812, houses a panoramic painting of the battle that the Russian artist Franz Roubaud created for the centennial in 1912. The battle is still studied in Russian military schools as an example of strategic defence.
The battle has been an important event in Russian national memory. The 1912 centennial was the occasion of an important Russian national celebration, and the Borodino Memorial, on the battlefield, was unveiled in 1834. The battle has been the subject of major paintings, novels, and films. The Russian commemoration of the battle has been, in this sense, a touchstone of the Russian national memory of the Napoleonic period (Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 2002).