Battle of Borodino

Background

Relations between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I broke down after Russia left the Continental System, the blockade of British trade, at the end of 1810. On 24 June 1812 Napoleon crossed the Niemen with about 615,000 men, fewer than half of them French. The Russian armies in the west were outnumbered and divided: Barclay de Tolly's 1st Western Army of about 129,000 and Bagration's 2nd Western Army of about 58,000. They fell back rather than be beaten in detail, while starvation, disease and desertion cost the invaders some 100,000 men in the first month.

The two Russian armies united at Smolensk in early August and fought there on 16–18 August before retreating again. The long retreat was deeply unpopular in the army and at court, and on 29 August the 65-year-old Prince Mikhail Kutuzov arrived to take overall command. Under pressure to fight before Moscow itself was threatened, he chose a position near the village of Borodino, about 124 km west of the city, astride the New Smolensk road to Moscow, and moved the army into it on 3 September.

The Russians fortified the line with field works: a large battery in the centre, later known as the Raevsky redoubt, and three arrow-shaped earthworks on the left, the Bagration flèches. On 5 September the French advance guard stormed an advanced redoubt at Shevardino, in front of the Russian left, at a cost of about 4,000 French and 6,000 Russian casualties. The loss disordered the Russian left, which was pulled back towards the village of Utitsa. The 6th was quiet; Kutuzov had the icon of the Smolensk Mother of God carried along his lines.

The armies

Napoleon had about 130,000 men and 587 guns, with some 28,000 cavalry. Davout's I Corps and Ney's corps were to make the main effort against the flèches, Eugène de Beauharnais's IV Corps faced Borodino village and the Raevsky redoubt, Poniatowski's Polish V Corps worked through the woods on the far right towards Utitsa, and Junot's Westphalians and Murat's reserve cavalry corps supported the centre. The Imperial Guard, about 18,500 men with 109 guns, stood in reserve. The army was a multinational one, and months of marching had worn down its men and especially its horses.

Kutuzov's army numbered about 120,000 regulars and 640 guns on most counts, with Cossacks and militia raising some estimates above 150,000. Barclay's 1st Army, about 80,000 men, held the right and centre behind the Kolocha stream; Bagration's 2nd Army, about 34,000, held the weaker left around the flèches and Semyonovskaya. Tuchkov's force of about 23,000, roughly half of it untrained militia, covered the Old Smolensk road at Utitsa. Raevsky's VII Corps held the great redoubt. The line ran about 8 km from the Moskva river to Utitsa, with thick woods on the left and centre that hampered any attacker. Many Russian guns, around 300 on one count, were held back in reserve.

The battle

CDB90 records the battle as a single engagement, number 134 (BORODINO), from 06:00 to 18:00. Times below are approximate, and sources differ by up to an hour.

Opening bombardment and Borodino village (06:00–07:30). At about 06:00 a French grand battery of around 100 guns opened on the Russian centre. Half an hour later Eugène's IV Corps attacked Borodino village on the French left and drove out the Russian Guard Jäger. His troops pushed on towards the Gorki heights, were counter-attacked and fell back to Borodino, which they held from about 07:30.

The flèches (06:00–11:30). On the French right-centre, Davout sent Compans's division against the southern flèche with Dessaix's division on its left; both generals were wounded. Davout committed three divisions, about 22,000 men, in all. By about 07:30 the French held all three flèches, but Bagration counter-attacked and the earthworks changed hands several times as Ney's corps joined the assault. Bagration was mortally wounded by shell splinters in mid-morning, and the Russian left lost heart; by about 11:30 Friant's division held the forward Russian position around Semyonovskaya, after reinforcements sent by Barclay were shattered by artillery.

Utitsa (from about 07:00). On the far French right, Poniatowski's Poles, about 10,000 strong, struggled through the woods and pushed Tuchkov out of Utitsa. A Russian counter-attack retook the village by about 08:00 and Tuchkov was mortally wounded. Junot's Westphalians came up in support, the village was later retaken and set on fire, and fighting here went on all day without a decisive result.

First attacks on the Raevsky redoubt (from about 08:30). Eugène's infantry stormed the great redoubt in the centre but were thrown out by a Russian counter-attack. In this fighting General Kutaisov, the commander of the Russian artillery, was killed; with him gone, much of the Russian gun reserve went unused for the rest of the day.

The Uvarov and Platov raid (about 07:30–midday). Platov's Cossacks found a ford over the Kolocha on the Russian right. Around midday about 8,000 cavalry under Uvarov and Platov fell on the rear of Eugène's corps north of Borodino. Eugène called off his next attack on the redoubt, which was delayed by about two hours and gave the Russians time to reorganise their centre.

The fall of the Raevsky redoubt (14:00–15:30). At about 14:00 Napoleon renewed the assault. Around 400 French guns bombarded the redoubt while the divisions of Broussier, Morand and Gérard attacked frontally, and cuirassiers led by General Auguste de Caulaincourt rode into the work from the flank and rear. Caulaincourt was killed, but by about 15:30 the redoubt had fallen, its defenders almost wiped out and General Likhachyov captured. Barclay formed a new line to the east, and the Russian Guard cavalry checked the French pursuit.

The Guard is held back (about 15:00). As the Russian line bent, Murat, Ney, Davout and others asked Napoleon to commit the Imperial Guard. He refused, unwilling to risk his last reserve so far from France. Instead his artillery pounded the Russian line, where the Russian Guard regiments stood under fire from about 16:00 to 18:00. Napoleon did not press further, and as darkness fell the fighting died away into a cannonade.

Aftermath

Some 250,000–280,000 men fought, and at least 70,000 became casualties in a single day: the deadliest day of the Napoleonic Wars. French losses were around 30,000 by their own staff count and more on other reckonings, with about 49 generals killed or wounded, among them Montbrun and Caulaincourt. The Russians lost 40,000–50,000 or more, with 22 generals killed or wounded; Bagration died of his wounds on 24 September.

Napoleon held the field, but the Russian army withdrew on 8 September in order. At a council at Fili on 13 September Kutuzov decided to abandon Moscow to save the army, and the French entered the city a week after the battle, only to find it abandoned and burnt. No peace offer came from the Tsar. Napoleon ordered the retreat on 18 October, and the Grande Armée was destroyed on the road home.

Kutuzov proclaimed a victory, and Russia has remembered Borodino as one ever since. Napoleon reportedly judged that 'the French showed themselves worthy of victory and the Russians of being invincible', and called it the most terrible of his battles. Lermontov's poem, Tolstoy's War and Peace and Roubaud's centenary panorama of 1912 fixed it in Russian memory. The field is a museum reserve with dozens of monuments, including a French one where Napoleon stood, and the battle is re-enacted each year on the first Sunday in September. Historians still argue over Napoleon's frontal plan and his refusal to commit the Guard.

Wargaming it

Borodino is big but compact: about 250,000 men and over 1,200 guns on a front of about 8 km. That density suits a grand-tactical game with brigades or divisions as units, a whole day's play on one table. Its separate sectors, the flèches, the Raevsky redoubt, Borodino village and Utitsa, also make good stand-alone battalion-level scenarios.

The key terrain is man-made. The flèches and the great redoubt need rules that make earthworks costly to storm without making them impregnable, and the woods around Utitsa should slow and disorder anyone moving through them. Artillery matters more here than in most Napoleonic battles: both grand batteries, the 400 guns turned on the redoubt, and the large Russian gun reserve that went unused after Kutaisov's death.

The decisions are what give the battle replay value. The French player can try Davout's rejected plan, a march through the woods round the weak Russian left instead of the frontal assault. The Russian player can time the Uvarov and Platov raid differently, or commit the reserve guns. Above all, there is the Guard: 18,500 fresh troops and 109 guns that Napoleon kept out of the fight at about 15:00. A scenario that lets the French commit them, perhaps at the cost of a weaker position for the rest of the campaign, tests whether the Russian army could really have been destroyed. Victory conditions should reward breaking the Russian army, not just taking ground, since holding the field was all Napoleon actually won.

Maps and pictures

Paintings and prints

Paintings and prints of the battle, from the time and the century after, by year: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.