The Battle of Borodino: Napoleon Against Kutuzov

by Alexander Mikaberidze

  Mayevsky also complained that Konovnitsyn was ‘ridiculously pedantic’ and ‘acting under the Yellow Book, interrogated me and then took me as a captive, fearing deception or treason’.273 According to Vistitsky, ‘Bagration sent several requests to [Tuchkov] to attack into the rear and the flank of the enemy from Utitsa but the latter, sadly, brushed him off noting that “he is an experienced general and knows what to do.’’ ‘274

  Bagration then appealed for help to Kutuzov, who initially refused it, since his attention was diverted by Eugène’s attack on Borodino. But as the combat in this sector died down, Kutuzov realized there was little chance of a major French attack from this direction and the weakness of the left wing became more apparent. Bagration was promised the II Corps, which started a long march from the extreme right to the left. Yet it would take at least one hour before it would arrive, thereby providing the French with time to prepare and launch another attack.

  Bennigsen had travelled to the left wing that morning and, despite the early morning mist, he was able to observe French forces advancing against Bagration. As he recalled

  I rushed back to Prince Kutuzov and told him, ‘If you do not want to have your left wing routed […] you need to hurry up with dispatching your troops from the right flank. If only they could arrive there in time.’275

  Kutuzov listened to him and ordered General Lavrov to move part of his V Corps closer to the left lank. Bennigsen’s testimony should be seen in light of Lavrov’s subsequent battle report, which claimed that he was acting on the orders of Colonel Toll, who was sent by Barclay de Tolly.276 Yet the Guard regiments were moved from reserve without Barclay de Tolly’s knowledge. Kutuzov issued the order on his behalf and Toll delivered it to Lavrov. Furthermore, Bennigsen also instructed Lavrov, circumventing Barclay de Tolly, to send the Life Guard Izmailovsk and Lithuanian Regiments, and the Combined Grenadier Brigade […] to the left wing.277 The precise timing of the Guard units’ departure is hard to determine. Lavrov claimed it was around 5am, but this would not explain Bagration’s urgent appeals for more troops. Colonel Kutuzov of the Life Guard Izmailovskii Regiment reported that: ‘around 6am, Colonel Khrapovitsky ordered to arrange Battalion columns for attack and leave the reserve, where we remained until then, to assume position in the front line’.278 One can assume that the troops would have taken about an hour to change their position and reached Semeyonovskoye after 7am.

  It remains unclear which units were dispatched in this first wave of reinforcements. Toll noted that Kutuzov dispatched three regiments of the 1st Cuirassier Division, eight guns of the Guard Horse artillery, the Life Guard Izmailovskii and Litovskii Regiments, and two artillery companies. However, Toll’s information seems incomplete. Buturlin, based on Lavrov’s report, acknowledged all of these units, plus a brigade of combined grenadiers. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky referred to Borozdin Il’s brigade, the Life Guard Izmailovskii and Litovskii Regiments, and three artillery companies. Bernhardi referred to the Izmailovskii, Litovskii and Finlyandskii Regiments, eight battalions of combined grenadiers and two Guard battery companies.

  Neither Kutuzov nor Bennigsen took the trouble of informing Barclay de Tolly of these changes. That morning, as ‘cannon-balls and grenades literarily exploded the earth all around’, Barclay de Tolly rode southward to inspect the troops, coming across the Life Guard Preobrazhenskii and Semeyonovskii Regiments from Lavrov’s V Corps. The soldiers greeted him:

  calmly, standing with a true military bearing. Enemy cannon-balls already began to devastate their ranks but they remained steadfastly and silently with their muskets and quietly closed their ranks as soon as cannon-balls hit their victims.

  After directing the artillery fire, Barclay de Tolly dispatched his adjutant, Löwenstern, to tell Lavrov ‘not to dispatch any units of his corps under any pretext and let the troops rest as much as possible, and remain ready to advance at the first order’. Löwenstern was surprised to find Lavrov ‘in [a] most miserable condition: he was paralysed and could not move his legs, move or ride a horse. In [a] physical sense, he embodied powerlessness itself’. Lavrov told him that he could not carry out Barclay de Tolly’s order since Toll had already moved regiments to support Bagration. Learning of this, Barclay de Tolly ‘lost his usually impassiveness, his eyes burning with anger’, and he exclaimed:

  So, Kutuzov and Bennigsen consider this battle already lost while it is just starting. At nine o’clock in the morning, they already commit reserves that I wanted to commit no earlier than 5 or 6 o’clock in the evening.

  Incensed, Barclay de Tolly spurred his horse towards Kutuzov’s encampment. The Russian Commander-in-Chief, surrounded by a ‘numerous and glittering suite’, was sitting on a horse near the village of Gorki. Löwenstern could see from a distance that

  Barclay de Tolly told him something in [a] passionate manner; I could not hear what they discussed but it appeared that Kutuzov tried to calm Barclay. A few minutes later, the latter galloped back, telling me, ‘At least, they now will not waste the rest of the reserve.’

  The fact that Kutuzov committed his reserves – and élite Guard units at that – right at the very beginning of the battle was later concealed. As one Russian historian argued:

  a firmly established legend that the Russian Guard units entered the fight for the village of Semeyonovskoye only around noon was invented in order to conceal the time when it became necessary to use this ‘privileged force’; at the same time, questions could have been raised at Kutuzov’s complete ‘carelessness’ towards the most exposed sector in the Russian position.279

  Ney’s troops reached the Russian positions between 7.30-8am. Ney let the 11th Division (Razout) carry the northern flèche while he turned the 10th and 25th Divisions south to support Davout’s already fatigued soldiers in securing the southern flèche. Ney’s decision to divert two divisions south to support Davout and the entire VIII Corps to assist the Poles was of great importance. As a result, he weakened his forces marching towards their main goal of Semeyonovskoye. In addition, the troops of I and III Corps became intermingled and, with many officers disabled, the command structure became increasingly confused. Rapp warned Ney of the danger of having his ‘troops mixed up with my own’. Meanwhile, with two marshals and an imperial aide-de-camp present, the overall chain of command also became convoluted.

  As Pelleport described, Ledru’s division advanced through thick brushwood on the right lank of III Corps, and then turned right to meet up with Davout’s men. As it turned out, Ney arrived in time to drive the Russians back from the southern flèche, which ‘was attacked at the same time by the troops of the I Corps’.280 According to Bogdanovich: ‘Ney, at the head of the 24th Light, and supported by the 57th Line [from Compans’ Division] seized the outmost [left] flèche. Meantime, other regiments of Ledru’s division broke into the right flèche.’281

  But the French now discovered there was a third fortification built behind the front two. The flèches occupied by the French were open in the rear and afforded no protection from the heavy artillery directed against them. Ney himself reported that the Russians, ‘recovering from their first shock, turned around and went back to retake the lèche. But the 25th Division marched at that same moment to support the 10th Division and the enemy was repulsed’. He also acknowledged the bitter fighting around the right flèche, which was seized by Razout’s troops: ‘The enemy’s renewed efforts, although making successively several charges of infantry and cavalry, were in vain …’282 Captain Bonnet (4th battalion of the 18th Line) provided further details:

  By a movement to our right, we passed through some bushes and came close to the first flèches, which was carried by our leading troops. Whereon the regiment marched on the second [rear] flèche, its four battalions in line one behind another and the leading battalions seized the lèche together with four damaged guns. Half-way between the first and the second redoubts Commandant Fournier was wounded and I took command of the battalion, reforming it into column on the ditch of the re
doubt we have just taken. I have got the flag and was awaiting the moment to act. The colonel [Pelleport] approached me on foot and I asked his permission to send the lag back to that part of the regiment which was close to the first redoubt and in sight of the copse from which we emerged. It was done.

  Musket and artillery fire combined with hand-to-hand combat to create carnage all around the flèches, inflicting heavy casualties on both sides. The scene appalled a Russian participant, who exclaimed:

  A hellish day! I have gone almost deaf from the savage, unceasing roar of both artilleries. Nobody paid any attention to the bullets, which were whistling, whining, hissing, and showering down on us like hail. Even those wounded by them did not hear them: we had other worries!283

  Dreyling, standing amidst Kutuzov’s suite, could observe from a distance as the French ‘advanced with reckless courage against our batteries [flèches]; drenched in blood, they were seized by the enemy and then recaptured by our troops on several occasions’.284 Bagration later reported: ‘The battle was the most savage, desperate and murderous that I have witnessed. Enemy corpses were piled [in front of us] and this place became a graveyard for the French. We, however, suffered equally heavy casualties …’285

  Bonnet, whom we just saw proudly holding the flag of the 18th Line, soon saw the Russian sharpshooters ‘arriving in good order to the left and a dense infantry column to our right. I deployed my battalion and, without firing, marched strait at the column. It recoiled.’ However, the French were now exposed to the Russian artillery and Bonnet’s battalion was soon ‘failing and being breached like a crenulated wall. But we still went on.’ The 18th Line soon run into another Russian column that was ‘marching gravely and without hurry’ and had to turn around and slowly withdraw back into the lèche. Yet, as Bonnet tells us, ‘the place, being open on its side, was untenable. I was the last to jump up on to its parapet, just as a Russian was about to grab my greatcoat. In one leap, I jumped the ditch. They must have fired 20 shots at me, without hitting anything except my shako. We withdrew as far as to the bushes near the first redoubt.’ But even here the 18th Line could not find a safe spot. It was charged by the Russian cuirassiers and driven further back to the woods. With his men scattered all over the field, the regiment could rally no more than one battalion by late morning.

  Meantime, on the Russian side, Vorontsov, leading his battalions in a desperate charge to reclaim the flèches, was seriously wounded in the leg and would later declare that ‘my resistance was not of long duration but it stopped only after my division ceased to exist’.286 Neverovsky recalled ‘leading several bayonet charges’, while his division ‘performed its duty of honour and gallantry here, thwarting several enemy attempts to recapture the flèches’.287 The continuous attacks indulged in by both sides only increased the butcher’s bill. As one officer of the 27th Division described: ‘Our division was virtually annihilated […] When the remaining troops were rallied, only 700 men gathered […] Just 40 men survived from my regiment …’288 Vorontsov summed it up:

  Fate cast me the lot of being the first in the long list of generals who were disabled that dreadful day […] An hour after the fighting began my division ceased to exist. Out of about 4,000 men, there were less than 300 at the evening roll-call and out of eighteen staff officers only three survived, and only one of them was not wounded […] We did not perform any great feats but there was not a single man amongst us who fled the battle or surrendered. If I were asked the following day where my division was, I would have responded as did Count [Pedro Henriquez d’Azevedo y Toledo] of Fuentes at the Battle of Rocroi [in 1643], pointing my finger to our position and proudly declaring, ‘Here it is.’289

  As Vorontsov’s and Neverovsky’s men were dying around the flèches, the Novorosiiskii Dragoon and the Akhtyrskii Hussar Regiments, which Bagration earlier ordered Sievers to commit, arrived in time to engage the French.290 The French quickly countered Bagration’s cavalry charge with the 14th Light Cavalry Brigade of Beurmann, who formed his troops into three ranks, with the 4th Chasseurs a Cheval in the first, followed by the 2nd Leib Württemberg Chevau-léger and 1st Prinz Heinrich Württemberg Chevau-léger. The Russian cavalry routed the 4th Chasseurs a Cheval -already in disorder due to the Russian canister fire – and as the French troopers quit, they spread disorder to 2nd Leib Württemberg Chevau-léger Regiment behind. But Colonel von Falkenstein of the 1st Württemberg Chevau-léger Regiment, standing in the third line, quickly opened intervals to let the chasseurs through, and then supported the 2nd Württemberg Chevau-léger to repel the Russian charge. Sievers observed that: ‘our infantry did not support this attack and [the cavalry] was forced to retreat beyond the rearward flèche’.291 As the French chasseurs rallied behind them, the Württemberg cavalry charged the Russians. Their speed and thrust was strong enough to drive the Russian cavalrymen off the field and gain time for the French infantry to arrive.

  Vasilchikov’s cavalrymen were rescued by the arrival of Duka’s 2nd Cuirassier Division, which attacked the Württembergers in rear and flank. Facing five fresh cuirassier regiments, the Württembergers had no choice but to abandon their trophies and fight their way out. The 3rd Württemberg Horse Artillery Battery was still moving forward to support its compatriots when the Russians suddenly overwhelmed it and seized six guns.292 Girod de l’Ain, marching with Dessaix’s troops between the southern lèche and the woods, described the Russian attack on Pernetty’s battery:

  We had advanced a certain distance and were standing in column on the edge of a wood stretching away to our right, when we saw a charge of Russian cuirassiers coming at us like a tempest. They were not exactly aiming at us, but at a battery […] which under cover of our advance, had come and taken up position a little to our left rear. Although this charge suffered from our ire as it passed us, it did not slow it down […] sabring those gunners who were not able to throw themselves down between the wheels of the guns and ammunition wagons.

  Lieutenant Vossen also watched as the ‘enemy cavalry soon counterattacked and penetrated our ranks, capturing both guns and men’.

  Duka’s troops then split up into groups that pursued the enemy and engaged Dessaix’s 4th Division. The 85th Line managed to organize itself against the cuirassiers but the 108th Line suffered from the charge. The fortunes of the battle swung back and forth as both sides sustained many casualties. Louis Planat de la Faye described the horrors of the fight:

  The struggle which developed was one of the most murderous I have ever seen […] The cannon-balls and shells rained down like hail, and the smoke was so thick that only at rare intervals could one make out the enemy masses.

  The 24th Light and survivors of the 57th Line, deployed inside the southern lèche – which, as noted above, was open at the rear – was exposed to the Russian canister ire and barely held ground. The redoubt was soon occupied by the fleeing Württembergers and the pursuing Russian cuirassiers, who trapped some of their enemies inside the fortification. Heavily armoured and with straight-bladed swords, the cuirassiers inflicted heavy casualties on the French, forcing some of them to lee over the shattered ramparts.

  The French inside the southern lèche were rescued by the arrival of the three Württemberg battalions, led by Lieutenant General von Scheeler. The 1st Württemberg Battalion, joined by survivors of the 57th Line, stormed the lèche, driving the cuirassiers out of it. The 72nd Line of the 10th Division also supported this attack. The newly arriving 2nd and 3rd Württemberg Battalions then took up positions to the left and right of the flèche. According to regimental reports of the 61st and 111th Line, some Russian cuirassiers did charge beyond the flèches to threaten a French battery (probably Pernetty) and the 61st and 25th Line, led by Guyardet, deployed between the flèche and the Utitsa woods. The French troops, protecting the battery, opened ire, forcing the cuirassiers to turn left and retreat between the lèche and Guyardet’s troops, who deployed in squares and fired upon them. According to reports, the Russians made several more charges be
fore they were forced to retreat.293

  Falling back before Nansouty’s cavalrymen, some Russian cuirassiers were charged by the 6th Polish Lancer Regiment, and as they retreated, came across the 2nd Württemberg Battalion, deployed outside the flèche. They would have overwhelmed the Württembergers had it not been for the swift reactions of their commander, Colonel von Stockmayer, who ordered his third rank to turn and face the enemy. This crucial manoeuvre was executed with remarkable order and precision and disaster was averted. Meanwhile, the 3rd Württemberg Battalion, deployed nearby, formed square against the Russian horsemen, who now had to endure close-range fire from front and left – courtesy of the Württembergers – while Nansouty’s cavalry charged them from the rear. Girod de l’Ain claimed that out of 1,500 cuirassiers, ‘scarcely 200 got back to their lines. All the rest, men and horses, remained on the ground. I do not recall our taking a single prisoner’. Still, there were some Russians taken, including Colonel Sokovnin, commander of the Novgorod Cuirassier Regiment, who was wounded and captured.

  As the Russian cavalry retreated to regroup, Dessaix’s men could see ‘a mass of infantry’ that had advanced behind the Russian cavalry:

  Left exposed and isolated after the cuirassiers’ retreat, it had halted. And in the same instant we saw it as it were swirling around itself and then retiring in some disorder. As it did so, however, it, in turn, unmasked a battery, which sent us several volleys of grape, causing us considerable losses.

  Among the many dead and wounded was Rapp, as he described:

  Within the space of an hour I was hit four times, first quite slightly by two shots, then by a bullet in my left arm […] Soon afterwards I received a fourth wound, when grapeshot hit me on the left thigh and threw me off my horse.

  This was the twenty-second wound of Rapp’s military career! Forced to retire from the field, Rapp was replaced by General Dessaix, who, for the second time, took command of the 4th and 5th Divisions. When Rapp reached headquarters his wounds were dressed by Napoleon’s surgeon and the Emperor came to see him: ‘So it is your turn again,’ he said, and then inquired about the situation around the flèches. ‘Sire I think you will be forced to send in your Guard,’ Rapp replied, but Napoleon paid no heed to it: ‘I shall take care not to. I do not want it destroyed. I am certain to win the battle without the Guard becoming involved.’