the civil administration of the Moscow province explained the lack of carts by noting that the districts closest to the theatre of war were placed under the authority of the Ministry of War, while the military administration found very few people remaining in the villages, since the majority had escaped to the woods fearing the enemy invasion.
Kutuzov’s repeated pleas to Governor Rostopchin for carts and horses had gone unheeded and many wounded were eventually abandoned in Mozhaisk.
The Russian Army was spared the sight of the carnage that reigned on the battlefield, vividly recorded in the memoirs of Allied soldiers who stayed behind. ‘Nothing could have been more depressing than the appearance of the battlefield covered with groups occupied in carrying away the thousands of wounded, and in taking from the dead the few provisions remaining in their haversacks,’ noted Lejeune, adding that
Some of the wounded dragged themselves towards Kolotskoy, where Baron Larrey had set up an ambulance, whilst others were carried thither by their comrades in one way or another. Very soon an immense number were waiting attention, but, alas, everything needed for them was wanting, and hundreds perished of hunger, envying the happier lot of those who had been killed on the spot.
A Pyrrhic Victory
On the morning after the battle, Napoleon reviewed the field, which as Armand de Caulaincourt described, was ‘thickly strewn with dead’. Napoleon carefully examined every portion of this battlefield and, as Caulaincourt wrote, ‘at each point he demanded minute details of everything that had happened, dealt out praise and encouragement, and was greeted by his troops with all their wonted enthusiasm’. Ségur also accompanied the Emperor on his tour of the battlefield:
Never did [a battlefield] present so horrible an appearance. Every thing concurred to make it so; a gloomy sky, a cold rain, a violent wind, houses burnt to ashes, a plain turned topsy-turvy, covered with ruins and rubbish, in the distance the sad and sombre verdure of the trees of the North; soldiers roaming about in all directions amidst the dead, and hunting for provisions, even in the haversacks of their dead companions; horrible wounds, for the Russian musket-balls are larger than ours; silent bivouacs, no singing or story-telling – a gloomy taciturnity!
According to Ségur, Napoleon observed the surviving officers and soldiers gathering around their eagles,
their clothes torn in the fury of the combat, blackened with powder, and spotted with blood; and yet, in the midst of their rags, their misery, and disasters, they had a proud look, and at the sight of the Emperor, uttered some shouts of triumph, but they were rare …
Approaching the Grand Redoubt, Caulaincourt was overwhelmed with emotion and could not describe
my feelings as I passed over the ground which had been dyed by my brother’s blood. If the eulogies and the justice rendered by an entire army to the memory of a brave man could have consoled me, I ought to have had peace in my heart …
Bausset, standing nearby, could see as ‘M. de Caulaincourt and M. de Canouville, with tears in their eyes, turned away from the spot that contained the glorious remains of their brothers.’ Meanwhile, Ségur noted that:
it was impossible, no matter how careful one was, always to walk on the ground. The Emperor, I saw, was still ill, and the only animated gesture I saw him make was of irritation. One of our horses, striking one of these victims, had drawn a groan from him, albeit it was I who had caused it. Upon one of us remarking that the dying man was a Russian, the Emperor retorted, ‘There are no enemies after a victory!’ and immediately had Roustam [Napoleon’s manservant] pick the man up and give him to drink from his own flask, which the Mamluk always carried on him.527
Dedem could barely contain himself while observing ‘the most disgusting sight’ he had ever seen. ‘Mountains of dead on both sides,’ he reminisced, ‘the wounded calling for help …’
The Württemberg Captain von Kurz, saw the wounded, both the French and Russian, lying ‘one on top of the other, swimming in pools of their own blood, moaning and cursing as they begged for death’.
Brandt, who spent the night ‘surrounded by the dead and dying’, witnessed how
the agonized and tormented wounded began to gather until they far outnumbered us. They could be seen everywhere like ghostly shadows moving in the half-light, creeping towards the glow of the fire. Some, horribly mutilated, used the last of their strength to do so. They would suddenly collapse and die, with their imploring eyes fixed on the flames. Others retained some stamina but still seemed more like ghosts than living men.
Brandt observed Napoleon’s examination the Grand Redoubt:
I saw him deep in conversation with one of his staff officers who then went into the redoubt with some of the Guard Chasseurs. They marked out a square and then counted the number of corpses in the square. They repeated this at a number of different points and I understand that using this mathematical technique, they got an approximate idea of the number of victims. Whilst all this was going on, Napoleon’s face was quite impassive but he did look a little pale.
The number of the dead also stunned Boulart, who found it ‘hard to move without stepping on corpses […] whole squares were traced by the dead or wounded left there’. Labaume could see ‘mounds of cadavers, and the little spaces where there were not any were covered with debris of arms, lances, helmets or cuirasses, or by cannon-balls as numerous as hailstones after a violent storm’.
In some places, soldiers gathered in groups to discuss the exploits of previous days or search for missing friends. Le Roy managed to reunite with his son and as thy were speaking, surrounded by a few officers, he felt a soft pinch in the back. It was a Russian bullet and fortunately for Le Roy, it was already spent ‘after lying for over quarter of a lieue’ [approximately half a mile]. Less fortunate was Vossen’s friend (a sergeant in the 111th Line) who was killed by a stray bullet late at night, while preparing roll-calls of surviving troops.
Meanwhile, Dumonceau lamented the loss of thousands of horses:
One could see some which, horribly disembowelled, nevertheless, kept standing, their heads hung low, drenching the soil with their blood, or, hobbling painfully in search of some pasture, dragged beneath them shreds of harness, sagging intestines or a fractured member, or else, lying lat on their sides, lifted their heads from time to time to gaze on their gaping wounds.528
Soltyk recounted a conversation between Murat and Ney after the battle:
The two heroes of the battle greeted each other amicably, and the King [Murat] said to the Marshal, ‘Yesterday was a hot one. I have never seen a battle like it for artillery fire. At Eylau the guns fired as many rounds but it was cannon-balls. Yesterday the armies were so close that most of the firing was with grapeshot.’ The Marshal responded, ‘We did not break any eggs. The enemy’s losses must be huge and his morale has undoubtedly been seriously damaged. We must pursue him and exploit our victory.’ ‘However, the Russians retired in good order,’ added the King. ‘I find that hard to believe,’ replied the Marshal. ‘How could they, after such a pounding march?’ Yet, Ney was mistaken and the Russians indeed made an orderly withdrawal.529
After his ‘sombre review’, Ségur recorded that Napoleon
in vain sought to console himself with a cheering illusion, by having a second enumeration made of the few prisoners who remained, and collecting together some dismounted cannon: from seven to eight hundred prisoners, and twenty broken cannon, were all the trophies of this imperfect victory.530
The Allied wounded were gathered and tended in several hospitals organized on the battlefield, the main ones being set up at the Kolotsk Monastery and in Mozhaisk. Conditions were appalling and hundreds died over the next few weeks. Generals Teste and Compans were placed in the same room with about a dozen other wounded; the next day, everyone except for generals, was dead. Captain François spent the night in a room with twenty-seven wounded, seven of whom died that same night and many more followed them over the next two weeks. The wounded General Dessaix refused surgeons
’ suggestions to amputate his hand, which eventually healed itself quite well. Yet, General Romeuf was less fortunate and, as Larrey describes it, he died of his horrendous wounds caused by a round-shot later than night.
Conditions in hospitals quickly deteriorated and Lejeune was stunned to see ‘our troops using horseflesh as food’ in Mozhaisk two days after the battle. According to Ségur:
The Russians were seen dragging themselves along to places where dead bodies were heaped together, and offered them a horrible retreat. It has been affirmed by several persons, that one of these poor fellows lived for several days in the carcase of a horse, which had been gutted by a shell, and the inside of which he gnawed. Some were seen straightening their broken leg by tying a branch of a tree tightly against it, then supporting themselves with another branch, and walking in this manner to the next village. Not one of them uttered a groan.
And yet, a more gruesome picture awaited Alexandre Bellot de Kergorre, a young commissaire des guerres at Mozhaisk, who left a vivid description of thousands of wounded lying throughout the town and dying of hunger and thirst.531
Napoleon remained in Mozhaisk for three days, quartered in a house near the main square. His sore throat quickly turned to laryngitis and the Emperor could no longer speak or dictate his orders, which forced him to scribble down all his instructions. This brief respite also allowed him to regroup his troops after the bloodletting at Borodino and gather more ammunition and supplies. His advance guard, meantime, pursued the Russian Army.
Casualties
Battle reports revealed immense casualties on both sides, placing the Battle of Borodino among the bloodiest combats in history. In his letter to Alexander, Kutuzov described it as ‘the bloodiest of all the battles known in modern times’.532 One Russian officer, who went on to serve in the 1813–14 campaigns, reflected the prevailing opinion on Borodino when he noted: ‘In my life I participated in a whole series of general engagements as well as a variety of other operations, and I discovered that they stood in the same relation to Borodino as peacetime manoeuvres did to the realities of war itself.’
The precise number of casualties is hard to establish and estimates vary between sources, causing one modern historian to note that casualty estimates oftentimes are ‘guess-timates’.533 Many French documents perished during the dreadful winter retreat of 1812, while Russian roll-calls and battle reports are often incomplete or vague, while some have been lost.
Besides the problem of sources, there is an issue of contrasting viewpoints of the battle – the French (and English) participants and then scholars considered the battles of Shevardino and Borodino as separate actions, while the Russians believed, and still do, that they constitute parts of one major engagement. Thus, Russian studies often refer to Borodino as a two-day battle fought on 24–26 August (5–7 September). This is an important distinction, since the French data on casualties usually includes only those suffered on 7 September, while the Russians combined losses sustained in the actions of 5 and 7 September.
Two days after the battle, in a letter to his father-in-law, Emperor Francis of Austria, Napoleon acknowledged 8,000–10,000 French losses and ‘40,000–50,000 Russians killed and wounded, sixty guns and many prisoners’. The 18th Bulletin, issued on 10 September, claimed that
12,000 to 13,000 men, and from 8,000 to 9,000 Russian horses, have been counted on the field of battle: sixty pieces of artillery and 5,000 prisoners have remained in our power. We have had 2,500 killed and thrice that number wounded. Our total loss may be estimated at 10,000, that of the enemy at from 40,000 to 50,000. Never was there seen such a field of battle. Out of every six dead bodies, there were five Russians for one Frenchman.
That same day, however, Kutuzov penned his own report and, after claiming victory, he acknowledged his heavy losses (without specifying them) and estimated Napoleon’s loss at 40,000. The official battle account, prepared after the battle but not made public until many years later, recognized 25,000 killed and wounded in the Russian Army and over 40,000 in the French.534
Russian imperial scholars estimated between 44,000 and 55,000 Russians losses and 28,000–50,000 French casualties. Bogdanovich’s figures – 44,000 Russian and over 28,000 French casualties – were largely accepted by later historians until the establishment of the USSR. Soviet scholars produced figures driven by ideological concerns and claimed some 58,500–60,000 French losses. Scholars deviating from this line were pressured to adhere to it. Thus, in 1943, Eugène Tarle referred to some 50,000 French and 58,000 Russian losses, but was then forced to revise his figures to 58,500 on the French side and 42,000 on the Russian for his 1962 study.
The figure of over 58,000 French casualties was first made public in 1813, when a Swiss officer Alexander Schmidt defected to Russia and claimed that he had served under Berthier. Schmidt, remarkably, could recall the precise number of losses Napoleon’s troops suffered at Borodino, though his reliability should have been doubted after he claimed that Reynier VII Corps was present there! Despite such fraudulency, Governor Rostopchin of Moscow utilized Schmidt’s figures in his propaganda publications, hoping to boost Russian morale. In subsequent decades, some scholars, seeking to embellish Russian actions, based their estimates on Rostopchin’s pamphlets, gradually making the figure of over 58,000 French losses seem genuine. Modern Russian historians revised these figures and their current estimates place Russian losses between 45,000 and 50,000 and those of the French at approximately 35,000. Each side had about 1,000 men captured.
The Allied participants give significantly different estimates. Dominique Larrey believed that the French lost 12–13,000 ‘hors de combat’ and 9,500 wounded. Girod de l’Ain estimated some 15,000 losses, Soltyk – 18,000, while Berthezene, noting that some colonels tried to conceal the real figures, referred to 22,600 casualties. Chambray, Meneval and Dedem estimated between 28,000 and 30,000 losses while Lejeune gave the highest estimate with forty-eight generals, ten colonels and some 40,000 soldiers killed or wounded. At the time, the most detailed analysis of French losses was done by Baron Denniée, Inspector of Reviews of the Grand Army, who prepared initial reports for Berthier, but due to the high number of losses they revealed, he was told to keep them secret. Denniée finally made them public in his Itinéraire de l’Empereur Napoléon in 1842, revealing the loss of forty-nine generals (ten killed), thirty-seven colonels (ten killed), 6,547 officers and soldiers killed, and 21,453 men wounded. Denniée’s figures, despite their shortcomings, had a lasting influence, since virtually all subsequent authors accepted and repeated them. Currently, most Western accounts give Napoleon’s losses at 28,000–30,000 men and estimate between 44,000 and 50,000 for Kutuzov’s troops. Denniée’s estimates, however, seem to exclude the losses (4–5,000 men) that the Grand Army suffered on 5 September, since it would be incredible to assume that the French lost less than 25,000 men at Borodino. Therefore, if one adds the casualties of 5 and 7 September – as Russian studies have done for Kutuzov’s army – then the combined French losses sustained on 5–7 September would be in the vicinity of 34,000–35,000 men.
Details on French regimental losses are lacking but some data is available. Hourtoulle’s study showed that the 17th Line lost twenty-five officers killed and forty-six wounded, while the 9th Line had eight officers and seventy-three men killed, thirty-one officers and 713 men wounded. The 30th Line, which had some 3,000 men in late August, tallied less than 300 after the battle. Montesquiou de Fezensac was
struck by the exhaustion of the troops and their numerical weakness […] The 4th Line was reduced to 900 men out of the 2,800 which had crossed the Rhine; thus four battalions now formed but two when mustered, and each company had a double complement of officers and non-commissioned officers. All of their equipment, and particularly their shows, were in a dilapidated state […] Never had we suffered such heavy losses; never had the morale of the Army been so shaken.535
Among the cavalry units, the 4th Chasseurs had one officer killed and ten wound
ed, the 6th Lancers lost four officers killed and four wounded. Roth von Schreckenstein recorded the loss of thirty-nine officers and 287 men killed and twenty-nine officers and 323 men wounded in Thielemann’s Saxon brigade, which also lost 610 horses. Preysing-Moos recorded in his diary that his Bavarian troops lost five officers and around 100 men. According to von Dittfurth, the Württemberg cavalry lost 34 killed, 274 wounded and 10 missing, and lost 323 of its 386 horses; the Württemberg infantry lost fifteen officers and 259 soldiers. The Westphalians fared no better and Junot’s corps had some 3,000 killed, wounded and missing. Linsingen’s regiment had about 700 men in the morning but lost ten officers and 341 men. Maurice Tascher’s regiment, the 12th Chasseurs à Cheval, lost ten officers and eighty-seven soldiers, while Vossler of the 3rd Württemberg Jäger zu Pferde described how
of the 180 men the regiment had been able to muster that morning, half were either dead or wounded. The general commanding our division, General Waltier, and the brigadier of our brigade, as well as their seconds-in-command, had all been wounded and another senior divisional staff officer killed.
Casualties were high also among the carabiniers and as Schehl, of the 2nd Carabiniers, revealed, ‘After the roll call on 8 September, we became aware that 360 troopers and seventeen officers were absent. My company lost all its officers; our sergeant-major led us in the battle.’
According to Brandt, the Polish losses amounted to about 2,000 men, while Marian Kukiel specified that one general, fifty-six officers and some 2,000 soldiers of the V Corps were killed or wounded in the battle.
More specific information is available on Compans’ division, whose battle reports were later published. Thus, according to Charrière’s report, the 57th Line lost over 1,230 men, including 236 missing. Martinien’s study reveals that the regiment lost 14 officers killed and twenty-six wounded. General Guyardet reported that his 61st Line suffered one officer and twenty-nine men killed, twelve officers and 226 men wounded, and seventeen captured in the fighting of 5 September but discusses no casualties for Borodino; based on Martinien’s data on officer casualties, the 61st Line probably lost about 400 men. Discussing the Battle of Shevardino, Longchamp, of the 111th Line, initially reported 157 killed and 600 wounded, including twenty officers. His report was revised on 30 September and showed four officers and eighty-two men killed, fifteen officers and 540 men wounded and thirty-three captured.536 In the 2nd Division, Dedem referred to 1,500 men lost in the 33rd Line, including 404 killed (forty-eight of them officers). His estimates seems exaggerated since Martinien found only nine officers killed and nineteen wounded, which would indicate lower overall loss.
The Battle of Borodino: Napoleon Against Kutuzov Page 34