Who won the Battle of Borodino?
Napoleon won a tactical victory at Borodino on 7 September 1812: his troops took the Russian earthworks, he held the field, and the Russians withdrew during the night. Strategically the result is still argued over. Kutuzov's army escaped intact, Moscow brought no peace, and the invasion ended in catastrophe, which is why Russia remembers the day as its own.3
On 7 September 1812 (26 August in the Julian calendar Russia then used), some 110 to 130 km (70 to 80 miles) west of Moscow, roughly 250,000 men fought the bloodiest single day of the entire Napoleonic era. By nightfall 70,000 or more lay dead or wounded. Napoleon held the field at Borodino, yet the victory would help destroy him.4
The road to Moscow
Napoleon invaded Russia on 24 June 1812 with the largest army Europe had ever seen: by Britannica's count about 453,000 men crossed the Neman, and some 612,000 entered Russia over the whole campaign. The Russians refused the great battle he needed, trading space for time and burning the land behind them. The armies finally met at Smolensk on 16 to 18 August; the French took the burning city, but the Russian army slipped away again.5
The retreat cost Barclay de Tolly his command. In August Alexander I gave it to General Mikhail Kutuzov, a veteran in his late sixties who had faced Napoleon at Austerlitz in 1805. At last, to shield Moscow, Kutuzov turned and dug in on the low ridges around the village of Borodino, on a front of about five miles (8 km).6
The contest opened two days early. On 5 September the French attacked the Shevardino redoubt, an outlying Russian earthwork. It changed hands three times before the Russians, on Kutuzov's orders, fell back to their main position late that night, and the losses on both sides were heavy.7
How many soldiers fought at the Battle of Borodino?
Roughly 250,000 to 280,000 men fought at Borodino, supported by well over a thousand guns. Britannica gives Napoleon about 130,000 troops and more than 500 guns against about 120,000 Russians with more than 600 guns; the historian Alexander Mikaberidze counts over 280,000 men present on both sides.8
| Source | French Empire | Russian Empire |
|---|---|---|
| Britannica | ~130,000; 500+ guns | ~120,000; 600+ guns |
| Fondation Napoléon | 130,000 men, 28,000 cavalry; 587 guns | 135,000 men, 25,000 cavalry; 624 guns |
| Edward Foord (1914) | over 131,000 on 5 September | nearly 125,000, incl. militia and Cossacks; 640 guns |
Figures as each source gives them.9
The sources count differently, but they agree on the shape of the contest: two armies of broadly similar size, with the Russians slightly stronger in artillery.10
The redoubts
The day became a grinding assault on Russian earthworks: the Bagration flèches on the left and the great Raevsky redoubt in the center. Both sides fed men and guns into the same few hundred yards for hours. More than a thousand cannon turned the center into a furnace that veterans would remember for the rest of their lives.
The French guns opened fire at about 6 a.m. Marshal Davout's men took the three flèches, lost them to a Russian counterattack, and fought for them again as Marshal Ney's corps joined the assault. By about 10 a.m. the French held them once more. Prince Pyotr Bagration, commanding the Russian left, was badly wounded in this fighting and died of the wound later in September. His fall shook the defenders, and the flèches passed into French hands.11
The struggle then shifted to the Great Redoubt, the Raevsky battery in the Russian center. Around midday Russian cavalry under General Fyodor Uvarov, with Platov's Cossacks, rode round against Prince Eugène's corps on the French left; Edward Foord counts some 3,500 regular and 4,000 irregular horsemen and judges that the raid achieved little beyond delaying the attack on the redoubt. In the afternoon, under a cannonade from hundreds of guns, Eugène's infantry stormed the redoubt while French cuirassiers swept round into its rear. Their commander, General Montbrun, was killed, and General Auguste de Caulaincourt, who took his place, fell in the charge. The Russian regiments inside were almost wiped out, yet the army behind them gave ground without breaking.12
What did the Poles do at Borodino?
Prince Józef Poniatowski's V Corps, the Polish corps of the Grande Armée, attacked the far end of the Russian left at the village of Utitsa. The Poles took the village easily and then the mound behind it, but a Russian counterattack threw them back; the Russian commander on that flank, General Nikolai Tuchkov, was mortally wounded leading it. Only at about 5 p.m., with Junot's Westphalian corps supporting them on their left, did the Poles carry the Utitsa mound for good.13
Did Napoleon commit the Imperial Guard at Borodino?
No. Napoleon kept the Imperial Guard, about 20,000 men, out of the fight all day, together with some 10,000 other nearly fresh troops, according to Britannica. His marshals called for it again and again, and each time he refused; the Count de Ségur, who was on his staff, records the appeals. It was the only part of his army that never went into action.14
By late afternoon the Russians had been pushed back but not broken. Napoleon, far from home and unwilling to gamble his last reserve, would not risk the Guard for the killing blow. Britannica judges that this decision cost him a decisive victory, because Kutuzov had already committed all his available men, and NPR's report on the bicentenary noted that some historians share that view. Kutuzov's army withdrew in good order, still an army.15
How long did the Battle of Borodino last?
The main battle filled one long day. The French bombardment began at about 6 a.m. on 7 September and the fighting went on until dark: Britannica describes the struggle dying down in the afternoon into a cannonade that lasted until nightfall, and the Fondation Napoléon puts the whole at fifteen hours. Counting the fight for Shevardino on 5 September, the contest spanned three days.16
There was no second day of battle. Kutuzov withdrew under cover of darkness, east toward Moscow, and on 13 September, at Fili outside the city, the Russian commanders decided to give it up in order to save the army.17
How many soldiers died at Borodino?
No exact count exists. Most estimates put the total of killed and wounded at 70,000 to 80,000. Britannica gives about 30,000 French and 45,000 Russian casualties, and Mikaberidze puts the combined toll at 75,000 to 80,000. The Fondation Napoléon estimates the dead alone at about 10,000 French and 15,000 Russian. The official return of the army's inspector of reviews, Baron Denniée, recorded about 6,550 French dead and 21,450 wounded on 7 September, some 28,000 in all; Foord, counting the officers on the casualty lists, thought the true French loss could scarcely be under 43,000.18
| Source | French Empire | Russian Empire |
|---|---|---|
| Britannica | ~30,000 | ~45,000 |
| Edward Foord (1914) | 28,000 by the French returns; at least 43,000 by his own estimate | about 41,000 to 42,000 |
| Fondation Napoléon | 10,000 dead, 20,000 wounded | 15,000 dead, 35,000 wounded |
| Russian historians, as reported by PAP (2012) | 35,000 to 40,000 | 40,000 to 45,000 |
Figures as each source gives them.19
The toll among commanders was heavy. Foord notes that the French lists alone show 49 generals killed and wounded; the dead included Bagration and Tuchkov on the Russian side and Montbrun and Caulaincourt on the French. Losses on this scale place Borodino among the deadliest battles in history, and it is generally called the bloodiest single day of the Napoleonic Wars.20
What the day decided
On 14 September the French entered Moscow, only to find it abandoned and, within hours, burning. No peace came. Napoleon waited more than a month for an offer from Alexander I, then began the retreat on 19 October. After a hard fight at Maloyaroslavets on 24 October he was forced back along the devastated road by which he had come, past the Borodino field where thousands of dead still lay unburied. Winter, hunger and Russian pursuit did what Kutuzov had not managed at Borodino.21 › Battle of Maloyaroslavets, 1812
The Grande Armée that had crossed into Russia over 450,000 strong came back a fraction of its size: Britannica estimates that of the roughly 612,000 men who entered Russia only about 112,000 returned to the frontier. Borodino won the ground but broke the army that stood on it, and the collapse that followed led toward Napoleon's downfall (the story continues at Leipzig, 1813).22
Was Borodino a victory or a defeat for Napoleon?
Tactically, Napoleon: he took the Russian earthworks, held the field and opened the road to Moscow. Strategically, the verdict favors Russia: Kutuzov saved his army, and the campaign Borodino was meant to decide ended with the destruction of the Grande Armée. NPR summed up the consensus as a tactical victory for Napoleon while noting that the dispute continues.23
In Russia the battle is remembered as a national triumph: the bicentenary in 2012 was marked as the 200th anniversary of victory over the Grande Armée, although President Putin himself said there that neither side had won a decisive victory. Napoleon, as quoted by the Fondation Napoléon, called it the most terrible of his battles: “Of the fifty battles I have fought, the most terrible was that before Moscow.” By the historian Andrew Roberts's count he fought about 60 battles and lost seven; Borodino is the hardest of them to place on either side of that ledger.24
Why is the Battle of Borodino important?
Borodino was the great battle Napoleon had chased across Russia, and he could not turn it into a decisive result. The army that won it was destroyed within months. It is also a founding event of Russian national memory: Mikhail Lermontov's poem “Borodino” is read by Russian schoolchildren, and Leo Tolstoy made the battle the center of War and Peace.25
The French name the battle after the Moskva river, which runs north of the field; according to the Fondation Napoléon, Napoleon insisted on the name so that it would recall that the battle was fought before the walls of Moscow itself. It is one of six days in our guide to the greatest Napoleonic battles.26
Where is Borodino today?
Borodino is a village near Mozhaisk in the Moscow region, about 125 to 130 km (roughly 80 miles) west of Moscow, depending on how the distance is measured. The battlefield is preserved as a museum-reserve, with a museum, dozens of monuments and a large reenactment held every year on the first Sunday of September.27
The Fondation Napoléon's guide to the field starts at Gorki, Kutuzov's headquarters, where a monument was raised in 1912. A large Russian monument now stands on the Great Redoubt, with Bagration's tomb behind it, and the only French monument, an obelisk crowned with an eagle, marks the spot near Shevardino where Napoleon stood during the battle. Bagration's monument on the field was raised by Emperor Nicholas I.28
The reenactment has been staged every year since 1962, and The Moscow Times called it the biggest in Europe; in 2018 more than 1,000 reenactors and 300 horses were expected. For the bicentenary in 2012 about 3,000 reenactors from more than a dozen countries, Poland among them, fought the battle again before more than 100,000 spectators.29
Test what you remember of 1812 with the Napoleonic battles quiz, or place Borodino among the other great days in Put the Battles in Order.
