The Battle of Borodino: Napoleon Against Kutuzov

by Alexander Mikaberidze

  The Borodino Museum, designed by architect V. Voyeikov, houses an impressive collection of some 40,000 items, including personal items of Emperors Napoleon and Alexander, Generals Kutuzov, Barclay de Tolly, Bagration and others, uniforms and weaponry of both armies and trophies captured during the French retreat. Among its exhibitions are ‘Borodino – The Battle of Giants’ in the central building of the museum, ‘Leo Tolstoy and the Battle of Borodino’ and ‘House-Museum of Mother Superior Maria’ at the Borodino Saviour Monastery. The museum-preserve also showcases events of World War II and houses display ‘Borodino during the Great Patriotic War.’ Among its minor but illuminating expositions are ‘Russian and Western European Uniforms of the early XIX century’ and ‘Military Portraiture in Russia in the first half of the XIX century.’

  With one of the best-preserved battlefields in Europe, the Borodino museum-preserve is visited by some 300,000 persons every year. It organizes annual celebrations and re-enactments, including the Day of Borodino (1st Sunday in September) that draws hundreds of re-enactors and thousands of spectators. The museum also hosts several historical conventions, including international conference ‘Patriotic War of 1812: Sources, Monuments, Problems.’

  After Likhachev was taken away, Napoleon decided to survey the results of the charge on Rayevsky’s Redoubt. ‘He mounted his horse with dificulty, and rode slowly along the heights of Semenowska,’ wrote Ségur. After observing the redoubt, Napoleon crossed the Kamenka and travelled towards the flèches in the south. Von Roos saw him, surrounded by a large entourage, slowly moving with calm appearance. According to Pelet, the Emperor inspected the lèches and visited Semeyonovskoye. The Russians noticed a group surrounding a small figure in a grey coat in the centre of the battlefield, and directed their fire towards it. Concerned about the safety of the Emperor, his adjutants persuaded Napoleon to leave. According to Pelet, a few moments after Napoleon left this spot, the Russian canister ploughed the ground thereabouts. As Lejeune informs us: ‘The Emperor, satisfied with all that had already been accomplished […] now thought the right moment had come to send his whole Guard to complete the victory.’ However, he was advised against it. According to Ségur, Bessières, ‘continuing to insist, as he always did, on the importance of this corps d’élite’, objected, noting the lack of reinforcements and the necessity to safeguard some reserves. Berthier argued that: ‘it was too late [and] the enemy was strengthening himself in his last position; and that it would require a sacrifice of several more thousands, without any adequate results’.502 Thus, the option to commit the Guard was declined.

  Instead of his Imperial Guard, Napoleon turned to artillery and instructed Lejeune to order Sorbier ‘to extend sixty guns at right angles with the enemy’s line, so as to crush him by a lank fire’. Lejeune quickly delivered the order to Sorbier, who, ‘incredulous of my message, did not give me time to explain it, but broke in with the words, “We ought to have done that an hour ago!”‘ Sorbier’s battery ascended the Semeyonosvkoye ridge, where it took up a new position and began ‘to pour out volleys of grapeshot, shells, and balls on the enemy’s lines …’

  Meanwhile, in the distance, Lejeune could see

  King Murat caracoling about in the midst of the mounted skirmishers well in advance of his own cavalry, and paying far less attention to them than to the numerous Cossacks who, recognizing him by his bravado, as well as by his plumed helmet, and a short Cossack mantle made of goat’s skin with long hair resembling their own, surrounded him in the hope of taking him prisoner, shouting, ‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Murat!’ But none of them dared even venture within a lance’s length of him, for they all knew that the King’s sword would skilfully turn aside every weapon, and with the speed of lightning pierce to the heart the boldest amongst his enemies.

  As Armand de Caulaincourt noted:

  Success was hardly won, and the fire was so murderous that generals, like their subordinate officers, had to pay in person for victory. We did all we could for the wounded whilst the battle was raging and during the night that followed, but most of the houses in the vicinity of the battlefield had been burned during the day, and in consequence many casualty stations passed the night without shelter. There were very few prisoners. The Russians showed the utmost tenacity; their fieldworks, and the ground they were forced to yield, were given up without disorder. Their ranks did not break; pounded by the artillery, sabre by the cavalry, forced back at the bayonet point by our infantry, their somewhat immobile masses met death bravely, and only gave way slowly before the fury of our attacks. Several times the Emperor repeated that it was quite inexplicable to him that redoubts and positions so audaciously captured and so doggedly defended should yield us so few prisoners. Several times he asked, of the officers who came with reports of our successes, where the prisoners were who ought to have been captured. He even sent orderlies to the various positions to make sure that more had not been taken. These successes, yielding neither prisoners nor trophies, made him discontented. Several times he said to the prince of Neuchâtel and me, ‘These Russians let themselves be killed like automatons; they are not taken alive. This does not help us at all. These citadels should be demolished with cannon.’

  To support Sorbier’s battery, Napoleon ordered Mortier ‘to make the Young Guard now advance, but on no account to pass the new ravine which separated us from the enemy’. He specified that Mortier was ‘to guard the field of battle [and] that that was all he required of him’. Napoleon even recalled the General shortly after to ask if he had properly understood him.503 As the Vistula Legion of the Young Guard advanced, one of its oficers saw:

  the redoubt and its environs [which] presented a ghastly sight more horrible than anything one could possibly imagine. The earthworks, the ditches and the inside of the redoubt had all disappeared under a mass of the dead and dying piled seven or eight men deep one on top of the other. I shall never forget the sight of a middle-aged staff officer, with a massive head wound, slumped against a Russian howitzer.

  Brandt could see that ‘after unsuccessfully pursuing the Russians, the French cavalry fell back and the Russian infantry began to advance towards us. They paused or hesitated, perhaps overawed by the sheer scale of the fighting.’ To Ségur

  It was impossible to pursue the fugitive Russians; fresh ravines, with armed redoubts behind them, protected their retreat. There they defended themselves with fury […] From this second range of heights, their artillery overwhelmed the first which they had abandoned to us. [Eugène] was obliged to conceal his panting, exhausted, and thinned lines in the hollows of the ground, and behind the half-destroyed entrenchments. The soldiers were obliged to get upon their knees, and crouch themselves up behind these shapeless parapets. In that painful posture they remained for several hours, kept in check by the enemy, who stood in check of them.

  Brandt was in the midst of this bombardment and personally felt

  the terrible artillery duel, of which all historians speak […] The redoubt, which to some extent sheltered us, was torn up by shot and shell. Shots soon began to fall amongst our ranks and our losses began to mount. The soldiers received the order to lie down while the officers ‘awaited death standing,’ as Rechowictz put it. He had just finished speaking when we were both splashed by the blood and brains of a sergeant who had his head blown off by a cannon-ball just as he had stood up to go and talk to a friend. The horrible stains on my uniform proved impossible to remove and I had them in my sights for the remainder of the campaign as a memento mori.504

  Despite the fire of the French batteries, which as Brandt described were ‘extended from the Grand Redoubt as far as the eye could see’, the Russians still tried to counter-attack:

  Suddenly the enemy’s ranks showed movement and it seemed as if the Russians now intended to launch a fresh assault despite the massive weight of artillery deployed against them. They came on in superb order and almost reached the redoubt before we counter-attacked, when they fell back, this time for good, after a violent and
murderous infantry battle in which my regiment suffered heavily.

  As the Russian attack was repelled, Berthier himself approached the redoubt, where he briefly talked to Prince Eugène and ordered to cease firing. According to Labaume, the Russians also decreased the intensity of their fire and then ceased firing altogether. Paskevich described that ‘the terrifying artillery fire’ continued until after 6pm, when it began to cease.505

  One last note should be made on the assault on the Grand Redoubt. Almost immediately after the battle was over, the image of the French cuirassiers, led by Caulaincourt, charging over the parapets of the Russian redoubt and seizing it while their young and gallant commander was killed became firmly established in popular memory and later in participants’ memoirs, negating contributions made by non-French forces. The issue of who seized the redoubt turned into a bitter dispute between the French and their allies, later inflated by national sentiments.

  Napoleon naturally attributed the final capture of the redoubt to the French cuirassiers. Marshal Murat, writing his report two days after the battle, described the charge of the 2nd Cuirassier Division and noted that ‘this brave general [Caulaincourt] died gloriously in that redoubt, which was held until the troops of Gerard’s division arrived’. On 10 September the 18th Bulletin further determined the matter. It mentioned the IV Cavalry Corps, which ‘penetrated the breaches that our cannon-shot had made in the condensed masses of the Russians and the squadrons of their cuirassiers’, and then credited the French cuirassiers with the capture of the redoubt:

  Général de division comte Caulaincourt, Governor of the Emperor’s Pages, advanced at the head of the 5th Cuirassier Regiment, overthrew everything, and entered the redoubt on the left by its gorge. From this moment there was no longer any uncertainty. The battle was gained […] Caulaincourt, who had distinguished himself in this fine charge, has terminated his destiny. He fell dead, struck by a bullet. A glorious death, and worthy of envy …

  This version was repeated in the memoirs of almost all French participants, the most influential of them being Vaudoncourt and Chambray. Published in 1817 and 1823 respectively, these works influenced subsequent publications and laid the foundation for the exaltation of Caulaincourt. According to them, Caulaincourt, at the head of the 2nd Cuirassier Division, penetrated the Russian line and then, wheeling left, charged through the troops behind the redoubt, entering it from the rear. After it was seized, Prince Eugène’s troops stormed the redoubt in a frontal assault. Thus, neither Chambray nor Vaudoncourt acknowledged the contribution of the Saxon, Polish or Westphalian troops, who also shed blood in this combat. Thiers, writing a relatively detailed account of the charge in mid-19th century, described Caulaincourt at the head of the 5th, 8th and 10th Cuirassiers, followed by General Defrance with two regiments of carabiniers. According to Thiers, Caulaincourt

  debouched beyond the ravine and overwhelmed some remains of Rayevsky’s corps, which were still upon this part of the field, together with the cavalry of Korf and the Baron de Kreutz, he passed the Grand Redoubt. At this moment, General Caulaincourt, perceiving Likhachev’s infantry, which guarded the redoubt, fell upon it by a sudden movement to the left and sabred it at the head of the 5th Cuirassiers.

  Thiers then described the assault of Prince Eugène’s troops, which secured the redoubt for the French. Non-French troops were ignored once more. Decades later, modern historians Thiry, Tranié, Hourtoulle, Palmer, and Chandler showed their pro-French bias when they repeated this version of the charge in their books.

  But several other versions describe the fall of Rayevsky’s Redoubt. The most vocal and thorough critique of the ‘French version’ came from German participants. One of the first to challenge the official version was Cerrini, who served on the Saxon General Staff and published his works in the early 1820s. Cerrini argued that it was the troops of the Saxon General Thielemann, not the French cuirassiers, who seized the Grand Redoubt. His findings were supported by Burkersroda, who served as an officer in Latour-Maubourg’s corps and published his memoirs (Die Sachen in Russland) in 1846. Most damaging to the official version, however, proved to be Roth von Schreckenstein’s Die Kavallerie in der Schlacht an der Moskva, which appeared in 1856. Based on his own recollections, as well as those of his comrades, Roth von Schreckenstein criticized French claims in detail, making a case in favour of the Saxon capture of the redoubt. He directed his ire mainly at the work of Chambray, which popularized the French version of the attack. He argued that ‘it was only Defrance’s division that assaulted on the right of the redoubt’ and that Wathier’s division ‘attacked it from the direction of Borodino [north-west], while the Saxon cavalry penetrated it from the direction of Semeyonosvkaya [south]’. He also disputed the claim that Caulaincourt overthrew a line of Russian infantry behind the redoubt and criticized Murat’s report, which did not mention the role of Latour-Maubourg’s men. Roth von Schreckenstein suggested that ‘perhaps sections of [Murat’s] report were removed at Napoleon’s instructions to glorify Caulaincourt …’ And noted that:

  According to an eye-witness who related the following to us the next morning, Napoleon was standing by Berthier [at Shevardino] when the latter, squinting through his telescope, said, ‘The redoubt is taken, the Saxon cuirassiers are in it!’ Napoleon took the telescope, peered through it and said: ‘You are wrong, they are dressed in blue; they are my cuirassiers.’ What Napoleon may have seen through his telescope, from his distant vantage point at Shevardino through all the smoke and confusion, was the 14th Polish Cuirassier Regiment, which at that point formed the third rank of Thielemann’s Saxon brigade, as it followed the two Saxon regiments into the battery. The uniform of the Polish cuirassiers was almost identical to that of their French comrades. Or they may have been the Westphalian cuirassiers [of Lepel’s brigade, 7th Division] who followed us.

  Despite these possibilities, Napoleon chose to attribute the capture of the redoubt to Caulaincourt. ‘Latour-Maubourg was extremely angry at this misinterpretation of the true events,’ Roth von Schreckenstein noted.

  Roth von Schreckenstein was not the only German officer to come up with such conclusions. Dittfurth noted that Caulaincourt’s initial attack was unsuccessful and the Saxon Gardes du Corps brought the charge to its successful conclusion. According to Meerheim:

  Despite all the perils and obstacles, we were unstoppable and burst over and into the battery, inspired by the examples of our commanders, Generals Latour-Maubourg, Thielemann, and our brigade adjutant von Minkwitz. The interior of the battery was an indescribable mess of infantry and cavalry all intent on killing one another. The [Russian] garrison fought to the last …

  Minkwitz was also quite vocal in denouncing the French attempt to claim the glory of capturing the redoubt. Naturally, such views found their way into the works of many German scholars, especially during the late 19th century and early 20th century, when Franco-German rivalry was at its height. More recently, English-speaking historians – among them Duffy, Cate, Smith and Nafziger – argued in support of the Saxon capture of the redoubt. Duffy noted that: ‘posterity is still wider of the mark when it attributes the whole of the charge to Caulaincourt, who at the most functioned as a brigade commander in Wathier’s division’.

  A lesser known account is that offered by the memoirs of E.F.C.A. Heckens, who served with the 6th Chasseur à Cheval in the 3rd Light Cavalry Division. Heckens highlights the role of Grouchy’s troops in the episode, recording that:

  Caulaincourt’s corps, in the first line, crossed the first ravine but, as it approached the second, it was attacked by the Russian cavalry. The carabiniers, who were moving on [Caulaincourt’s] right flank, charged this cavalry, allowing the cuirassiers to reach the redoubt, which they, however, failed to seize.

  At that moment, Grouchy’s cavalry, moving in the second line, charged forward and seized the Grand Redoubt, which it ‘maintained until the arrival of Viceroy’s troops’.

  The Russian historians rejected the French versio
n of the events almost from the very beginning. Buturlin wrote:

  The French cavalry of the II Corps carried out its orders in most brilliant manner. It daringly crossed the Semeyonovsk ravine and charged the Russian lines. However, the infantry of the IV Corps, especially the Pernovskii, Kexholmskii and 33rd jäger regiment fearlessly met this cavalry and opened continues volleys at it, which it could not withstand. General Caulaincourt, with Wathier’s cuirassier division managed to reach the lunette and even break into it with the 5th Cuirassier Regiment, but was killed there while the cuirassiers had to abandon this fortification.

  Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky’s account is largely based on Barclay de Tolly’s above-cited report, and, in itself, is quite confusing. Thus, the Russian historians described the failure of the initial French attack by Caulaincourt and noted that, after multiple attacks, ‘the Saxon cavalry of Thielemann broke into the redoubt [and] it was followed by the entire corps of Caulaincourt’.

  Another famous Russian historian, Bogdanovich, utilized some German memoirs, which led him to downplay the role of the French cuirassiers in the assault on Rayevsky’s Redoubt. Instead, he directly stated that Thielemann, with the Saxon Gardes Du Corps cuirassiers, broke into the redoubt and seized it. Other Russian imperial historians accepted this account in their studies as well. The Soviet historians largely concentrated on Russian experiences of the battle and described the Allied charge in general – and erroneous – terms. For example, in Borodino, 1812, leading Soviet historians claimed that Thielemann’s Saxon troops were ‘the advance elements of Caulaincourt’s corps’. Unlike them, modern Russian historians, notably Zemtsov, Popov and Vasiliev, are more thorough in their research and highlight the role of the Saxon and Polish troops, who are credited with the capture.