What
Kutuzov got was a position near the village of Borodino, 124 kilometres from
Moscow. For the Russian staff officers who initially viewed this position from
the main highway – the so-called New Smolensk Road – first impressions were
very good. Troops standing on either side of the highway would have their right
flank secured by the river Moskva and their front protected by the steep banks
of the river Kolocha. Problems became much greater when one looked carefully at
the left flank of this position, south of the main road. Initially the Russian
army took up position on a line which ran from Maslovo north of the road,
through Borodino on the highroad itself and down to the hill at Shevardino on
the left flank. The centre of the position could be strengthened by the mound
just to the south-east of Borodino which became the famous Raevsky Redoubt.
Meanwhile the left could be anchored at Shevardino, which Bagration began to
fortify.
Closer
inspection soon revealed to Bagration that the position on the left assigned to
his army was very vulnerable. A ravine in his rear impeded communications. More
important, another road – the so-called Old Smolensk Road – cut in sharply
behind his line from the west, joining with the main highway to the rear of the
Russian position. An enemy pushing down this road could easily roll up
Bagration’s flank and block the army’s line of retreat to Moscow. Faced by this
danger, Bagration’s army began to withdraw to a new position which abandoned
Shevardino and turned sharply southwards from Borodino in a straight line to
the village of Utitsa on the Old Smolensk Road. On 5 September Bagration’s
troops at Shevardino fought off fierce French attacks in order to cover the
redeployment to this new line, losing 5,000–6,000 men and inflicting perhaps
slightly fewer casualties on the enemy.
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Having defeated the retreating Russians at
Smolensk and capturing that city in August, Napoleon closely pursued the 1st
and 2nd Armies of the West, under Kutuzov, who succeeded General Barclay de
Tolly as commander in chief on 20 August. While Barclay urged immediate
confrontation with the French, then steadily advancing east, Kutuzov decided
instead to withdraw to Borodino, there to make a stand, a decision made as a
result of political pressure urging the defense of Moscow. The main part of the
Grande Armée duly followed, with an Austrian auxiliary corps under Karl Philipp
Fürst zu Schwarzenberg and French general Jean Reynier observing Alexander
Tormasov’s 3rd Army of Observation and Pavel Chichagov’s Army of the Danube far
to the south, while Marshal Macdonald’s corps kept watch on the Russians
situated far to the north.
Although the French had left the vicinity
of Smolensk with 156,000 men as recently as 19 August, by the time they reached
the outskirts of Borodino on 5 September they were down to 133,000 fit for
action (86,000 infantry, 28,000 cavalry, and 16,000 artillerists) and 587 guns,
all units depleted by disease and generally wearied by the laborious march deep
into Russia that had begun on 22 June. The Russians mustered about 155,000 men,
of whom 115,000 were regulars (the remainder were Cossacks and militia) plus
they were more rested and enjoyed a numerical superiority in artillery, with
640 guns. Nevertheless, the Russian total included a proportion of virtually
untrained militia known as Opelchenie, about the same number of new recruits in
the regular army, and a large body of Cossacks who could not be relied upon to
execute orthodox charges against formed troops. Thus, the two armies stood on
approximately equal terms.
The French advance guard made contact with
the Russians on 5 September when they came in sight of the Shevardino redoubt,
a forward earthwork manned by General Dmitry Neverovsky’s division, supported
by light infantry and cavalry, which the Russians had constructed about 3 miles
southwest of Borodino.
Afternoon was passing, and Napoleon needed to take the position so that he
could deploy his men to face the rest of the Russian army waiting for him a
mile-and-a-half beyond the redoubt. He ordered in Compans' 5th division of Davout's
1st Corps, supported by two cavalry corps. At the same time the Emperor ordered
Poniatowski's Polish Corps to circle to the south and take the position from
the flank.
The French came
on in skirmish formation and poured a terrific fire into the Russians. The
latter responded as best they could, with most damage coming from their cannon.
The time had come to take the redoubt, and Compans sent in his best troops. At
the point of the bayonet, the Terrible 57th Line swept the flanking defenders
away and entered the redoubt.
They found not a
single man standing left to oppose them. The sun was setting and Prince
Bagration mounted an attempt to retake the bloody position. His cavalry had a
terrific clash with the French and got the best of it, but could not follow up
in the darkness. Bagration claimed to have taken the redoubt and then
withdrawn, but their relatively small losses suggest they did little more than
skirmishing. What is clear is that the Russians had a stiff fight over a
relatively useless position.
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