Pyotr Bagration (10 July 1765-24 September 1812) was a Russian general and prince of Georgian origin. He distinguished himself during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars before being mortally wounded at the Battle of Borodino in 1812.
Biography[]
Bagration in 1805
Descended from a line of Georgian princes, Pyotr Bagration cut his teeth as a Russian army officer under Alexander Suvorov. He displayed precocious talents in wars against the Ottoman Turks and the Poles and was a major-general by the time he accompanied Suvorov on his campaigns against the French in Italy and Switzerland in 1799. An impulsive, instinctive fighter endowed with great physical courage, Bagration shone amid the disasters of the Austerlitz campaign in 1805. After a much-admired rearguard action against far superior French forces at Schongrabern, he commanded the Russo-Austrian right wing at Austerlitz, blocking Napoleon's attempted envelopment and covering the withdrawal of the surviving Allied forces. After 1807, when the czar made peace with France, Bagration fought Sweden in Finland and Ottoman Turkey on the Danube, before being appointed to command the Second Western Army confronting Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. However, he failed to cooperate with the commander of the First Western Army, Barclay de Tolly, during a series of withdrawals as the French rolled towards Moscow. When the Russians chose to stand and fight at Borodino in September, Bagration commanded the center and left. A ferocious defense of his field fortifications elicited heroic efforts from his troops, but Bagration was struck by a bullet that lodged in his leg and he died two weeks later.