The Battle of Borodino

Revisiting Napoleon's Bloodiest Day

Epilogue for a Draw

by LTC Villahermosa and Matt DeLaMater
artwork by Mark Churms and Steven Palatka

In The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966), David Chandler concluded:

"Although technically a victory, Borodino cannot be represented as the decisive battle so long desired by Napoleon. True, it finally opened the road to Moscow and made French occupation of the Kremlin practically a certainty, but the fact that Kutuzov was able to withdraw 90,000 troops [a debatable figure] from the battlefield in good order meant that the military power of Russia was far from destroyed.

"Seventy-five miles and seven days later, the Grande Armee entered Moscow. It would retreat through Borodino seven weeks later to find some 30,000 unburied corpses still littering the battlefield."

Borodino: "'Bloodiest" Battle of the Napoleonic Wars?

Borodino was the third largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, but its estimated 72,000 plus casualties included more killed and wounded than the larger 1809 battle of Wagram.

(The latter battle's casualty total was about the same, but it included 18,000 Austrian prisoners whereas the Russians had far fewer men captured at Borodino.) Borodino may also be able to claim being the "bloodiest" battle since all of its killed, wounded and missing occurred on just one day. Leipzig, the largest engagement of the period (1813) had its casualties steadily grow over three days, and Wagram was a two-day fight.

By the time Napoleon's Grande Armee reached Borodino 76 days after the campaign started, it had only about 130,000 men with which to fight. Of the 600,000 French and allied soldiers that crossed into Russia on 23 June, thousands were left behind to garrison captured towns, several corps were guarding the flanks of the main army, thousands were lost in the battles at Smolensk, Lubino, etc., and thousands more had succumbed to heat and disease (20,000 horses alone had been lost by the time the French reached Vilna - only 50 miles into Russia).

Instead of 200,000 regulars and opolchenie (militia) he thought he should have, Kutuzov commanded a force only 120,000 strong at Borodino. Heat, disease, combat, desertion, and straggling had taken their toll of the Russian army as well.

The battle of Borodino opened the gates of Moscow to the French, but at a heavy price in dead and wounded. It deprived Napoleon of almost a third of the effective strength of the main army still marching on Moscow, complicating the task of holding that city and making it difficult to intimidate Tsar Alexander into coming to terms. Conversely, although the French army succeeded in inflicting even heavier casualties on Kutuzov's army, it failed to destroy it, allowing the Russians to escape. This failure would have the gravest consequences for the Grande Armee.

Borodino and the French capture of Moscow galvanized Russia, unifying it as never before. Rather than sue for peace, Tsar Alexander I vowed to continue fighting until the French were expelled from Russia.. His determination led to the remarkable decision that the Russians would burn down their own great city of Moscow in order to deprive the French of its resources. Such an unprecedented act of arson certainly upset Napoleon's rational calculus, and could hardly have been foreseen.

Within three months of the battle, Napoleon's Grande Armee of more than 600,000 had been virtually wiped out in Russia - disease and starvation eliminating ten men for every one lost in battle. Another way to gauge the enormity of the disaster is by comparing it to the Peninsular War, often referred to as Napoleon's Spanish ulcer. It took the British, Spanish and Portuguese more than five years to evict the French Army from Iberia while inflicting roughly half the casualties Napoleon lost in Russia.

The destruction of the Grande Armee ultimately galvanized the nations of Europe against France and her remaining allies. The defection of the Prussians during the campaign along with the declaration of neutrality of the Austrians were merely harbingers of a much broader and deeper anti-Napoleon sentiment running throughout Europe. Napoleon's defeat in Russia would encourage a Sixth Coalition to be formed against France in 1813.

Napoleon would hold his enemies at bay for fifteen months, but weight of numbers and luck were against him. He would be forced to abdicate on 6 April 1814 and went into exile at Elba. Borodino was the major battle of the 1812 campaign, and Napoleon's failure to achieve a decisive victory there led to his army's doom. It is therefore regarded as one of the great turning points of history.

Suggested Reading List

Austin, Paul Britten, 1812: The March on Moscow, Greenhill Books and Stackpole, 1993.
Paul Austin's montage style provides an excellent cross-section of eyewitness accounts which impart the horror and spectacle of the campaign.

Cate, Curtis, The War of the Two Emperors: The Duel Between Napoleon and Alexander, Random House, NY, 1985
Extremely well-written account of the high level decision making and immediate personalities and events surrounding Alexander and Napoleon. Highly recommended.

Clausewitz, Karl von, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia, Da Capo Press, NY, 1995.
Clausewitz participated in the 1812 campaign and makes many sharp observations about the decision-making of the Russian high command.

Duffy, Christopher, Borodino: Napoleon Against Russia 1812, Scribner's, NY, 1973.
The best overview in English, a bit dated now. Duffy is an elegant writer who nicely balances detail and narrative flow.

Nafziger, George, Napoleon's Invasion of Russia, Presidio, 1988.
Strong on detail and short on analysis, Nafziger's robust work provides comprehensive orders of battles and intricate military accounts.

Smith, Digby, Great Battles: Borodino, Windrush Press, 1998.
Smith's blatant anti-Bonapartism is distracting and taints his otherwise lucid overview. Some excellent transcriptions from Russian and French sources and a few good maps make this a worthwhile primer.

More Battle of Borodino

Back to Table of Contents -- Napoleon #14
Back to Napoleon List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1999 by Napoleon LLC.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
The full text and graphics from other military history magazines and gaming magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com
Order Napoleon magazine direct