The Battle of Borodino was a major battle that was fought between the First French Empire and the Russian Empire on 7 September 1812 during the French invasion of Russia. Emperor Napoleon I defeated the Russians outside Moscow, but his inability to decisively destroy Mikhail Kutuzov's army allowed the Imperial Russian Army to continue its retreat into hostile territory and evade destruction.
Napoleon and his Grande Armee initiated their invasion of Russia on 24 June 1812, and, while he initially planned to envelop and destroy Barclay de Tolly and Pyotr Bagration's armies in separate battles, Barclay employed a Fabian strategy and refused to give battle to the French as the latter outran their supply lines. After the Battle of Smolensk, Czar Alexander I of Russia replaced Barclay with Mikhail Kutuzov, whom he instructed to hold his ground and cease retreating. Kutuzov established a defensive line outside Moscow near the village of Borodino, strengthening the line with earthworks starting on 3 September; among these were the Raevsky Redoubt and the arrow-shaped "Bagration fleches."
Napoleon's army arrived sooner than the Russians expected, and the French threw the Russian formation into disarray at the Battle of Shevardino, capturing a redoubt on the Russian army's left flank and forcing the Russian left to relocate to Utitsa. This position left them ripe for a flanking attack, and the French attacked on 7 September. The Russians fielded 180 infantry battalions, 164 cavalry squadrons, 20 Cossack regiments, and 55 artillery batteries, a total of 155,200 troops (plus 10,000 Cossacks and 33,000 Russian militiamen held in reserve). The French army included 214 infantry battalions, 317 squadrons of cavalry, and 587 artillery pieces, a total of 128,000 troops. Crucially, however, the Imperial Guard's 30 infantry battalions, 27 cavalry squadrons, and 109 artillery pieces never committed to action.
The Russians deployed most of their artillery to guard their right wing, which would not be attacked during the battle. Napoleon similarly erred by failing to outflank the weak Russian left, instead ordering Louis-Nicolas Davout's First Corps to attack the teeth of the defense as Prince Jozef Poniatowski's weak Fifth Corps launched the flanking maneuver. The French soldiers were decimated by massed Russian cannon fire as they advanced on the Bagration fleches, and, while Bagration led a counterattack that threw the French out of three of the fleches, Marshal Michel Ney led a counterattack that retook them. During the confused fighting, soldiers battled in the impenetrable smoke of artillery and musketry fire, and the French launched seven failed assaults against the fleches. Bagration was wounded in the leg by cannonball splinters, but he insisted on staying on the field to observe a Russian cavalry attack. Bagration's wounding caused morale to collapse, and the Russians began to fall back in confusion. However, the confused French field commanders did not comprehend the poor state of the Russian army, and Napoleon - sick with a cold and far from the action - refused to send in the Imperial Guard to finish off the Russians. Meanwhile, Eugene de Beauharnais captured Borodino from the Egersky Guards Regiment of jaegers, but they were repulsed by fresh Russian assault columns. French artillery wreaked havoc on the Russians during the fighting for the Raevsky redoubt, and, while Ataman Matvei Platov's Cossacks threatened the French supply train and forced Eugene to withdraw his corps from the battle, they were unable to achieve much else due to their lack of infantry. Napoleon then ordered a final assault on the Raevsky redoubt, and the French took the redoubt after heavy losses. At Utitsa, the Russian Opelchenie militia under General Nikolay Tuchkov, backed up by grenadiers and jaegers, held off Prince Poniatowski's division for hours until Jean-Andoche Junot's Westphalians joined the attack and helped capture the village.
After the Russian redoubts were taken, the Russians withdrew to the next ridge-line in disarray. Napoleon refused to risk his Imperial Guard in a final assault, even despite the poor positioning of the Russian troops. Kutuzov took advantage of Napoleon's inaction to evacuate Moscow, determining that he did not have enough forces to protect the city. Of the 250,000 troops involved in the battle, 68,000 were killed and wounded, making it the deadliest single-day battle of the Napoleonic Wars and among the deadliest in history until the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. The French lost the Generals of Division Auguste-Jean-Gabriel de Caulaincourt, Louis-Pierre Montbrun, Jean Victor Tharreau and Generals of Brigade Claude Antoine Compère, François Auguste Damas, Léonard Jean Aubry Huard de Saint-Aubin, Jean Pierre Lanabère, Charles Stanislas Marion, Louis Auguste Marchand Plauzonne and Jean Louis Romeuf during the battle, among a total of 49 Grande Armee generals killed or wounded. The French proceeded to occupy Moscow and await a surrender that would never come, and the Russians instead set fire to their "second capital" to deny its use to the French.
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