“The RUSSIANS HAVE THE GLORY OF BEING UNDEFEATED”

After the battle of Smolensk, the retreat of the Russian army continued. This caused open discontent in the country. Under pressure from public opinion, Alexander I appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian army. Kutuzov’s task was not only to stop Napoleon’s further advance, but also to expel him from Russian borders. He also adhered to retreat tactics, but the army and the whole country expected a decisive battle from him. Therefore, he gave the order to look for a position for a general battle, which was found near the village. Borodino, 124 kilometers from Moscow.

The Russian army approached the village of Borodino on August 22, where, at the suggestion of Colonel K.F. Tolya, a flat position with a length of up to 8 km was chosen. On the left flank, the Borodino field was covered by the impenetrable Utitsky forest, and on the right, which ran along the bank of the river. Kolochi, Maslovsky flashes were erected - arrow-shaped earthen fortifications. Fortifications were also built in the center of the position, receiving different names: Central, Kurgan Heights, or Raevsky Battery. Semenov's (Bagration's) flushes were erected on the left flank. Ahead of the entire position, on the left flank, near the village of Shevardino, a redoubt also began to be built, which was supposed to play the role of a forward fortification. However, the approaching army of Napoleon, after a fierce battle on August 24, managed to take possession of it.

Disposition of Russian troops. The right flank was occupied battle formations 1st Western Army of General M.B. Barclay de Tolly, on the left flank there were units of the 2nd Western Army under the command of P.I. Bagration, and the Old Smolensk Road near the village of Utitsa was covered by the 3rd Infantry Corps of Lieutenant General N.A. Tuchkova. Russian troops occupied a defensive position and were deployed in the shape of the letter "G". This situation was explained by the fact that the Russian command sought to control the Old and New Smolensk roads leading to Moscow, especially since there was a serious fear of the enemy’s outflanking movement from the right. That is why a significant part of the corps of the 1st Army was in this direction. Napoleon decided to inflict his main blow along the left flank of the Russian army, for which on the night of August 26 (September 7), 1812, he transferred the main forces across the river. I pound, leaving only a few cavalry and infantry units to cover my own left flank.

The battle begins. The battle began at five o'clock in the morning with an attack by units of the corps of the Viceroy of Italy E. Beauharnais on the position of the Life Guards Jaeger Regiment near the village. Borodin. The French took possession of this point, but this was their diversionary maneuver. Napoleon launched his main blow against Bagration's army. Marshal Corps L.N. Davout, M. Ney, I. Murat and General A. Junot were attacked several times by Semenov flushes. Units of the 2nd Army fought heroically against an enemy superior in numbers. The French repeatedly rushed into flushes, but each time they abandoned them after a counterattack. Only by nine o'clock did Napoleon's armies finally capture the fortifications of the Russian left flank, and Bagration, who at that time tried to organize another counterattack, was mortally wounded. “The soul seemed to fly away from the entire left flank after the death of this man,” witnesses tell us. Furious rage and a thirst for revenge took possession of those soldiers who were directly in his environment. When the general was already being carried away, cuirassier Adrianov, who served him during the battle (giving him a telescope, etc.), ran up to the stretcher and said: “Your Excellency, they are taking you to treatment, you no longer need me!” Then, eyewitnesses report, “Adrianov, in sight of thousands, took off like an arrow, instantly crashed into the ranks of the enemy and, having hit many, fell dead.”

The fight for Raevsky's battery. After the capture of the flushes, the main struggle unfolded for the center of the Russian position - the Raevsky battery, which at 9 and 11 a.m. was subjected to two strong enemy attacks. During the second attack, E. Beauharnais' troops managed to capture the heights, but soon the French were driven out of there as a result of a successful counterattack by several Russian battalions led by Major General A.P. Ermolov.

At noon, Kutuzov sent the Cossacks cavalry general M.I. Platov and the cavalry corps of Adjutant General F.P. Uvarov to the rear of Napoleon's left flank. The Russian cavalry raid made it possible to divert Napoleon's attention and delayed a new French assault on the weakened Russian center for several hours. Taking advantage of the respite, Barclay de Tolly regrouped his forces and sent fresh troops to the front line. Only at two o'clock in the afternoon did Napoleonic units make a third attempt to capture Raevsky's battery. The actions of Napoleonic infantry and cavalry led to success, and soon the French finally captured this fortification. The wounded Major General P.G., who led the defense, was captured by them. Likhachev. The Russian troops retreated, but the enemy was unable to break through the new front of their defense, despite all the efforts of two cavalry corps.

Results of the battle. The French were able to achieve tactical successes in all main directions - the Russian armies were forced to leave their original positions and retreat about 1 km. But Napoleonic units failed to break through the defenses of the Russian troops. The thinned Russian regiments stood to the death, ready to repel new attacks. Napoleon, despite the urgent requests of his marshals, did not dare to throw in his last reserve - the twenty thousandth Old Guard - for the final blow. Intense artillery fire continued until the evening, and then the French units were withdrawn to their original lines. It was not possible to defeat the Russian army. This is what the domestic historian E.V. wrote. Tarle: “The feeling of victory was absolutely not felt by anyone. The marshals were talking among themselves and were unhappy. Murat said that he did not recognize the emperor all day, Ney said that the emperor had forgotten his craft. On both sides, artillery thundered until the evening and bloodshed continued, but the Russians did not think not only of fleeing, but also of retreating. It was already getting very dark. A light rain began to fall. “What are the Russians?” - asked Napoleon. - “They are standing still, Your Majesty.” “Increase the fire, it means they still want it,” the emperor ordered. - Give them more!

Gloomy, not talking to anyone, accompanied by his retinue and generals who did not dare to interrupt his silence, Napoleon drove around the battlefield in the evening, looking with sore eyes at the endless piles of corpses. The emperor did not yet know in the evening that the Russians had lost not 30 thousand, but about 58 thousand people out of their 112 thousand; He also did not know that he himself had lost more than 50 thousand of the 130 thousand that he led to the Borodino field. But that he had killed and seriously wounded 47 (not 43, as they sometimes write, but 47) of his best generals, he learned this in the evening. French and Russian corpses covered the ground so thickly that the imperial horse had to look for a place to put its hoof between the mountains of bodies of people and horses. The groans and cries of the wounded came from all over the field. The Russian wounded amazed the retinue: “They did not emit a single groan,” writes one of the retinue, Count Segur, “perhaps, away from their own, they counted less on mercy. But it is true that they seemed more steadfast in enduring pain than the French.”

The literature contains the most contradictory facts about the losses of the parties; the question of the winner is still controversial. In this regard, it should be noted that none of the opponents solved the tasks set for themselves: Napoleon failed to defeat the Russian army, Kutuzov failed to defend Moscow. However, the enormous efforts made by the French army were ultimately fruitless. Borodino brought Napoleon bitter disappointment - the outcome of this battle was in no way reminiscent of Austerlitz, Jena, or Friedland. The bloodless French army was unable to pursue the enemy. The Russian army, fighting on its territory, for short term was able to restore the size of its ranks. Therefore, in assessing this battle, Napoleon himself was most accurate, saying: “Of all my battles, the most terrible is the one I fought near Moscow. The French showed themselves worthy of victory. And the Russians have gained the glory of being undefeated.”

RESCRIPT OF ALEXANDER I

“Mikhail Illarionovich! The current state of military circumstances of our active armies, although it was preceded by initial successes, the consequences of these do not reveal to me the rapid activity with which it would be necessary to act to defeat the enemy.

Considering these consequences and extracting the true reasons for this, I find it necessary to appoint one general commander-in-chief over all active armies, whose election, in addition to military talents, would be based on seniority itself.

Your well-known merits, love for the fatherland and repeated experiences of excellent feats acquire you a true right to this power of attorney of mine.

In choosing you for this important task, I ask almighty God to bless your deeds to glory Russian weapons and may the happy hopes that the fatherland places on you be justified.”

KUTUZOV'S REPORT

“The battle of the 26th was the bloodiest of all those in modern times known. We completely won the battlefield, and the enemy then retreated to the position where he came to attack us; but an extraordinary loss on our part, especially due to the fact that the most necessary generals were wounded, forced me to retreat along the Moscow road. Today I am in the village of Nara and must retreat further to meet the troops coming to me from Moscow for reinforcements. The prisoners say that the enemy loss is very great and that the general opinion in the French army is that they lost 40,000 people wounded and killed. In addition to Divisional General Bonami, who was captured, there were others killed. By the way, Davoust is wounded. Rearguard action occurs daily. Now, I learned that the corps of the Viceroy of Italy is located near Ruza, and for this purpose the detachment of the Adjutant General Wintzingerode went to Zvenigorod in order to close Moscow along that road.”

FROM CAULAINCUR'S MEMOIRS

“Never before have we lost so many generals and officers in one battle... There were few prisoners. The Russians showed great courage; the fortifications and territory which they were forced to cede to us were evacuated in order. Their ranks were not disorganized... they faced death bravely and only slowly succumbed to our brave attacks. There has never been a case where enemy positions were subjected to such furious and systematic attacks and that they were defended with such tenacity. The Emperor repeated many times that he could not understand how the redoubts and positions that were captured with such courage and which we defended so tenaciously gave us only a small number of prisoners... These successes without prisoners, without trophies did not satisfy him... »

FROM THE REPORT OF GENERAL RAEVSKY

“The enemy, having arranged his entire army in our eyes, so to speak, in one column, walked straight to our front; Having approached it, strong columns separated from its left flank, went straight to the redoubt and, despite the strong grapeshot fire of my guns, climbed over the parapet without firing their heads. At the same time, from my right flank, Major General Paskevich with his regiments attacked with bayonets into the left flank of the enemy, located behind the redoubt. Major General Vasilchikov did the same thing to their right flank, and Major General Ermolov, taking a battalion of rangers from the regiments brought by Colonel Vuich, struck with bayonets directly at the redoubt, where, having destroyed everyone in it, he took the general leading the columns prisoner . Major Generals Vasilchikov and Paskevich overturned the enemy columns in the blink of an eye and drove them into the bushes so hard that hardly any of them escaped. More than the action of my corps, it remains for me to describe in a nutshell that after the destruction of the enemy, returning again to their places, they held out in them until against repeated attacks of the enemy, until the killed and wounded were reduced to complete insignificance and my redoubt was already occupied by the General. -Major Likhachev. Your Excellency himself knows that Major General Vasilchikov gathered the scattered remnants of the 12th and 27th divisions and, with the Lithuanian Guards Regiment, held until the evening an important height, located on the left limb of our entire line ... "

GOVERNMENT NOTICE ABOUT LEAVING MOSCOW

“With extreme and crushing heart of every son of the Fatherland, this sadness announces that the enemy entered Moscow on September 3rd. But let the Russian people not lose heart. On the contrary, let each and every one swear to be inflamed with a new spirit of courage, firmness and undoubted hope that all the evil and harm inflicted on us by our enemies will ultimately turn on their head. The enemy occupied Moscow not because he overcame our forces or weakened them. The commander-in-chief, in consultation with the leading generals, decided that it would be useful and necessary to give in for the time of necessity, in order to use the most reliable and best methods to turn the short-term triumph of the enemy into his inevitable destruction. No matter how painful it is for every Russian to hear that the capital city of Moscow contains within itself the enemies of its fatherland; but it contains them empty, naked of all treasures and inhabitants. The proud conqueror hoped, having entered it, to become the ruler of the entire Russian kingdom and prescribe to it such peace as he saw fit; but he will be deceived in his hope and will not find in this capital not only ways to dominate, but also ways to exist. Our forces gathered and now increasingly accumulating around Moscow will not cease to block all his paths and the detachments sent from him for food were exterminated daily, until he sees that his hope of defeating the minds of the capture of Moscow was in vain and that, willy-nilly, he will have to open a path for himself from her by force of arms..."

The whole day of October 17 was spent cleaning up the wounded and preparing to continue the battle. Napoleon, after much hesitation, decided to retreat to the line of the Saale River. But he did not have time to carry out this intention when a new battle broke out at dawn on October 18. The balance of power changed even more sharply in favor of the Allies. Having lost about 40,000 men on October 16, they received huge reinforcements on the 17th and on the night of the 18th, and at the battle of October 18 they had almost twice as many troops as Napoleon. The battle on October 18 was even more terrible than the one that took place on the 16th, and then, at the height of the battle, suddenly the entire Saxon army (forcedly fighting in the ranks of Napoleon) suddenly moved into the Allied camp and, instantly turning the guns, began to shoot at to the French, in whose ranks she had just fought. But Napoleon continued the battle with redoubled energy, despite the desperate situation.

When it got dark and the battle began to subside, again both sides remained against each other, and again there was no decisive outcome. But on the night of the 18th to the 19th it came. Napoleon, after new terrible losses and betrayal of the Saxons, could no longer hold out. He decided to retreat. The retreat began at night and continued all day on October 19. Napoleon fought back from Leipzig and beyond Leipzig, pressed by the allies. The battles were unusually bloody due to the fact that dense crowds of retreating troops crowded the streets of the city and suburbs and on the bridges. Napoleon ordered the bridges to be blown up while retreating, but the sappers mistakenly blew them up too early, and about 28 thousand people did not have time to cross, including the Poles. Their chief, Marshal Poniatowski, commander of the Polish corps, drowned wounded while trying to cross the Elster River on horseback. The persecution, however, soon stopped. Napoleon left with his army and marched towards the Rhine.

The total French losses for October 16-19 were at least 65 thousand people, the Allies also lost about 60 thousand. For many more days, the terrible screams of the seriously wounded filled the Leipzig fields and the decomposition of corpses filled the surrounding area with an unbearable stench. There were not enough workers to clear the field and medical personnel to provide aid to the maimed and wounded.

Napoleon retreated from Leipzig to the borders of France, to the line that separated it from the German states before the start of Napoleonic conquests, to the Rhine line. In French painting, this very moment and the events of early 1814 repeatedly served as themes for artists, with Napoleon at the center of their attention. Meissonnier's brilliant brush captured the emperor's mood. He rides on a war horse between his grenadiers and gloomily looks at something that the eyes of the grenadier cannot see. In these days of late October and early November 1913, between the end of the campaign in Saxony and the beginning of the campaign in France, a huge and undoubtedly painful struggle was taking place within this man, which he did not talk about with the retinue around him, who rode behind him between the thinned ranks of horsemen. a grenadier of the old guard, but which was reflected in his stern face and gloomy eyes.

For the first time, Napoleon had to understand that the great empire was collapsing, that the motley conglomerate of countries and peoples, which he had tried for so many years to weld into a single empire with fire and sword, had disintegrated. I said goodbye to him

Murat, his marshal, his chief of cavalry, the hero of many battles, whom he himself made king of Naples. Murat left for Naples, and Napoleon knew that he had left for treason and had already secretly defected to the coalition to retain his throne. Now his brother, King Joseph, who was appointed to Spain, is ousted by the British and Spanish rebels from the Iberian Peninsula. His other brother, King Jerome of Westphalia, left Kassel. In Hamburg, Davout is besieged by the Russians and Prussians. The power of the French in Holland is shaking. England, Russia, Austria, Prussia will not rest until they reduce France to its former borders. The great empire he created is coming to an end, it has melted away.

He had about 100 thousand more people, 40 thousand of them were fully armed, the rest still needed to be armed and brought into the ranks. He also had garrisons in Danzig, and in Hamburg, and scattered here and there in parts of Europe that were still submissive to him - in total, from 150 to 180 thousand people. Young conscripts of 1815, taken into the army in 1813, were hastily trained in camps.

Napoleon had not yet laid down his arms. He thought about the new upcoming stage of the struggle, and when he spoke to the marshals, breaking his gloomy silence, he did so in order to give new orders. He now decided to let the pope go to Rome; he allowed the Spanish king Ferdinand VII, whom he had held captive for five years, to return to Spain. It took 125 thousand people lost by both sides on the Leipzig field, and most importantly, it took a retreat from Leipzig for Napoleon to finally come to terms with the idea that he could no longer correct with one blow everything that had happened, could not make amends for Borodin, the Moscow fire, the death of the great army in the Russian snows , the fall of Prussia, Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, the Kingdom of Westphalia, not to liquidate Leipzig, Spanish people's war, do not throw Wellington and the British into the sea. Back in June, July, August of this terrible 1813, he could shout at Metternich, stamp his feet on him, asking how much money he received from the British, insult the Austrian emperor, provoke Austria, disrupt peace negotiations, fly into a rage at the mere thought of a concession Illyria in the south or Hanseatic cities in the north, continue to burn English confiscated goods; shoot the Hamburg senators - in a word, behave as if he returned from Russia in 1812 as a winner and as if we're talking about now, in 1813, it was only about punishing the rebellious Prussia. But after Leipzig, approaching the borders of old France, leading behind him countless regiments of enemies, he had to rebuild all these skills of his political thought. It was about the enemy's invasion of France, about the defense of their territories.

On the way to the Rhine, even at Hanau (October 30), he had to fight his way with arms in hand through the Bavarian-Austrian detachments, and when on November 2, 1813, the emperor entered Mainz, he had only about 40 thousand combat-ready soldiers with him. The rest of the crowd of unarmed, exhausted, sick people who entered Mainz, who were also still in the army, could safely not be counted.

In mid-November Napoleon was in Paris. The campaign of 1813 was over, and the campaign of 1814 was beginning. In sum, France could see that the half million (approximately) dead of the great army of 1812 were followed by the death of hundreds of thousands more, recruited and exterminated in 1813.

And the war became more and more fierce, and the guns were already thundering at the borders of France. Has arisen again in the country economic crisis like the one that existed in the empire in the first half of 1811. But this time there was and could not be an attempt to alleviate unemployment with government subsidies, and there was no hope for a quick end to unemployment. In 1813, while Napoleon was fighting in Germany, the Parisian police began to notice (and note in their reports) a phenomenon that was discussed, albeit with restraint, already in 1811: the workers clearly grumbled, became irritated, and began to say, according to police reports, "rebellious words"

Suppressed by the long iron oppression of military despotism and having hardly acted in an organized manner for more than 18 years (since the Germinal and Prairial of 1795), the workers of the suburbs began to grumble as poverty and unemployment worsened. But still, in 1813, things did not come not only to an uprising in the working-class districts of the capital, not only to uprisings even remotely reminiscent of Germinal and Prairial, but even to large demonstrations. And not only because espionage was brought to perfection under Fouch and maintained under his successor Savary, Duke of Rovigo, and not only because the external police were represented in abundance and mounted patrols rode throughout the city, and especially in Saint-Antoine and The Saint-Marseille suburbs, along Rue Mouffetard, along the Temple quarter, day and night. Not because there were no reasons for the most bitter, the most irritated feelings of the working masses against the government. These were the reasons. Napoleon was the author of “work books” that placed the working person in a position of direct dependence, because these books placed the worker under the complete power of the owner; Napoleon, who annually demanded a blood tax, first from adult sons, and then from 18-year-old boys, and buried them in the hundreds of thousands on the distant fields of world battles; Napoleon, who stifled even the shadow of any possibility for the worker to defend himself against the exploitation of his masters, had no right to be favored by the working masses.

But now, when an enemy invasion was approaching the French borders, as at the beginning of the revolution, when this enemy invasion was intended to restore the rule of the aristocracy and place the Bourbons on the throne, confusion and bewilderment reigned among the workers. The image of a blood-drenched despot, an insatiable power-lover, suddenly moved away somewhere. The hated royalist evil spirits, these traitor emigrants, appeared on the stage again. They are again marching on France and Paris and, hiding in the wagon train of a foreign invasion, they are already dreaming in advance about the restoration of the pre-revolutionary system and spewing blasphemy at everything that was done by the revolution.

What to do? Revolt behind Napoleon's rear and thereby make it easier for the enemies to subjugate France to their will and install the Bourbons?

The working masses did not rebel at the end of 1813 and at the beginning of 1814, although during the entire Napoleonic reign they did not have to suffer as much as at this time.

The mood of the bourgeoisie was different. The majority of industrialists were still ready to support Napoleon. They knew better than others what England wanted and expected and how difficult it would be for them to fight English competition outside and inside the country if Napoleon was defeated. The big commercial bourgeoisie, financiers, and the stock exchange have long complained about the impossibility of living and working under continuous war and under the arbitrariness built into the system. It has long since begun to decline catastrophically foreign market; has now declined no less catastrophically and domestic market. There was money, but it was “hidden”: this phenomenon was observed by a wide variety of witnesses. The money aces had already lost hope that wars would ever end during Napoleonic reign, and after the disaster of the great army in Russia, and especially after the failure of the Prague peace negotiations and Leipzig, the thought of the inevitable defeat of the emperor did not allow even dreaming of any stable credit, trade transactions and large orders and purchases. Impatience, bitterness, despondency, and irritation gripped this (very significant) part of the bourgeoisie. She quickly moved away from Napoleon.

As for the village, Napoleon could still find support there. With continuous recruitment drives and the entire mass of physical and material costs, Napoleon devastated the French countryside, and yet the mass of the property-owning peasantry (except the Vendée) was especially afraid political changes, which the invasion brought with it. For the overwhelming majority of the peasantry, the Bourbons meant the revival of feudalism, with the power of lords, with the unfreedom of the land, with the confiscation of both church and land property confiscated from emigrants, bought up by the bourgeoisie and peasants in the era of the revolution. Under the fear of losing their hard-won right to undivided ownership of their plots of land, the peasantry was ready to continue to endure all the consequences of Napoleon’s aggressive, predatory foreign policy. Napoleon turned out to be more tolerant for the village than the old feudal system that the Bourbons brought with them.

Finally, there was another small but influential group: the old and new aristocracy. The old one (even the part of it that served Napoleon), of course, was always closer to the Bourbons than to him. The new one - marshals, counts, dukes, barons created by Napoleon, generously showered with gold and all sorts of imperial favors - also far from unanimously supported the emperor. They were simply tired of the life they had to lead. They longed to use their enormous material resources as true aristocrats should: to live in honor and comfort, relegating their recent military exploits to the realm of pleasant memories. “You don’t want to fight anymore, you want to take a walk in Paris,” the emperor said irritably in 1813 to one of his generals. “Yes, Your Majesty, I have walked so little in Paris in my life!” - he answered bitterly. Life in bivouacs, among eternal dangers, under grapeshot, and most importantly, in the eternal grandiose game of chance with death, so exhausted and tired them that the bravest and most persistent, like MacDonald, Ney, Augereau, Sebastiani, Victor, the most devoted, like Caulaincourt or Savary, began to listen to the hints and insinuations of Talleyrand and Fouche, who had long been patiently and carefully preparing treason in the darkness and on the quiet.

Such was the situation, such were the moods when, having lost the campaign of 1813, which had so brilliantly begun in the spring, on October 16-19 in Leipzig, Napoleon appeared in Paris in November and began to prepare new forces with which he was supposed to meet the invasion of European peoples moving towards France.

“Let’s go beat Grandfather Franz,” said the little Roman king, repeating with all the seriousness of a three-year-old child the phrase that Napoleon, who adored his son, taught him. The emperor laughed uncontrollably as he listened to these words, which the child repeated like a parrot, not understanding their meaning. Meanwhile, Grandfather Franz, as the allied armies approached the banks of the Rhine, was in very great and increasing indecision. And not only he, but also his leader and inspirer, Minister Metternich.

It wasn't a matter of family relationships, of course, not that Napoleon was married to the daughter of the Austrian emperor and that the heir to the Napoleonic throne was dear grandson Franz I. There were other reasons that forced Austrian diplomacy to look far less straightforwardly at the desired result of the war, as did, for example, the British, or Alexander 1, or the Prussian king Frederick William III. For England, Napoleon was the most implacable and most dangerous of all the enemies of the English state that it had in its one and a half thousand year history. With him between France and England there is some lasting peace it couldn't be. For Alexander, he was an insult, personal, but also the only monarch who could restore Poland at the next opportunity. And that Napoleon, if he remained on the throne, would find both military and diplomatic opportunities to inflict terrible blows on his opponents, Alexander had no doubt about this.

To an even greater (and much greater) extent, the same motive guided the Prussian king. Frederick William III, who, one might say, was forced by force in March 1813 to oppose Napoleon, did not cease from the moment of this decision to literally die of fear right up to Leipzig. He made scenes for Alexander, especially after failures - after Lützen, after Bautzen, after Dresden: “Here I am again on the Vistula!” - he repeated in despair. Leipzig didn’t really reassure him either. This panicky, superstitious fear of Napoleon was very widespread at that time. Even after Leipzig, after the loss of almost all conquests, with an exhausted, partly already grumbling France in the rear. Napoleon seemed so terrible that Frederick William III could not even imagine without horror how, at the end of the war and after the departure of the allies, he, the Prussian king, would again have to live next to such a neighbor as Napoleon.

Austria did not have all these motives that England, Alexander, and Frederick William had, who believed that if this time the coalition left Napoleon on the throne, then all the bloodshed of 1812 and 1813 would be destroyed. will be completely useless. Metternich did not at all want Russia to be left without a proper counterweight in the west. He wanted Napoleon to remain in Europe, no longer terrible for Austria, but very unpleasant for Russia as a possible ally of Austria.

Metternich and Franz I again decided to try to negotiate with Napoleon. And so Metternich, who could very much frighten the allies with the threat of Austria leaving the coalition, managed to force England, Russia and Prussia to agree to again offer Napoleon peace negotiations on the following conditions: he renounces his conquests (already lost) and ends the war; France remains to him within the borders (with very minor changes) that it received under the Peace of Luneville in 1801. The Allied monarchs were in Frankfurt. Metternich invited the French diplomat Saint-Aignan, who was staying there in Frankfurt, and in the presence of Lord Aberdeen, the representative of England, and Nesselrode, the representative of Russia, who immediately announced that he was also conveying the opinion of Hardenberg, Chancellor of Prussia, the Napoleonic diplomat was instructed to go to the emperor and convey to him the peace proposal of the Allied powers. The Peace of Luneville of 1801 was at one time the result of a victorious war. Napoleon, therefore, remained the great power that he created in 1801, after the French victories at Marengo and Hohenlinden. Already on the very edge of the abyss, after terrible disasters In 1812 and 1813, under the immediate threat of an Allied invasion of France, a chance for salvation suddenly appeared. Napoleon remained the ruler of a first-class power.

Napoleon did not want to speak out right away. He was immersed in the most vigorous, feverish activity on new recruits, on comprehensive preparations for a new war. Reluctantly, with reservations, he agreed to begin negotiations and at the same time further increased his energy in preparing a new army.

“Wait, wait,” he said, not addressing anyone and tirelessly walking around his office, “you will soon find out that my soldiers and I have not forgotten our craft! We were defeated between the Elbe and the Rhine, defeated by treason... But between the Rhine and Paris there will be no traitors..."

These words were heard throughout France and Europe. No one who knew Napoleon believed in the success of the Allied peace proposals. Every day new and new formations passed before the searching gaze of the emperor and headed east to the Rhine. The end of the great tragedy was approaching.

First, about human losses. There were about 170 thousand people in the Russian 1st and 2nd Western armies. After Borodin, about 60 thousand people remained in them, at the start of the counter-offensive in October 1812 - more than 90 thousand people, when the Russian army reached Vilno in December 1812 - about 20 thousand people.

Total losses in killed, wounded and sick by the Russian regular army alone amounted to about 180 thousand people.

We must also remember about the militia: in 1812, about 400 thousand people were recruited into it. The Smolensk, St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Moscow militias took part in battles immediately after their formation. The Novgorod, St. Petersburg and Moscow militias were the first to be disbanded to their homes - at the beginning of 1813 and arrived in their cities in the summer. Militia from other provinces took part in the Russian army's foreign campaign. In general, militia losses most likely amounted to two-thirds of the total - about 130 thousand people.

In this regard, the war ended in Russia's favor. But there were also huge losses among the civilian population. The book “Smolensk and the Province in 1812”, published in 1912, states (according to calculations made in 1814) that “from war, pestilence and famine” the decline in the male part of the population of the Smolensk province alone amounted to 100 thousand people. Another question is that the decline in peasants was somehow replenished by prisoners, of whom there were about 200 thousand people left in Russia and who were all registered as peasants (except for the Poles, who were registered as Cossacks).

There was also material damage, truly gigantic, because along the line of hostilities all towns, villages and hamlets were devastated and most were burned.

In Moscow alone, damage was estimated at more than 340 million rubles in silver (and this despite the fact that a considerable number of claims made by citizens were rejected), and in the Smolensk province, which suffered the most from the war, about 74 million rubles. The most developed part of Russia lay in ruins.

In Russia, one of the results of the war was to be the long-awaited changes in the lot of serfs. The expectation of freedom has long been seething within the people. A contemporary of the 12th year, Nikolai Turgenev, wrote: “When the enemy left, the serfs believed that by their heroic resistance to the French, their courageous and resigned enduring of so many dangers and deprivations for the general liberation, they deserved freedom. Convinced of this, in many places they did not want to recognize the power of the masters.”

At the same time, the people expected freedom precisely as a reward (in the same way, at the end of the Great Patriotic War, many expected a softening of the regime, believing that the heroism and loyalty of the people could not leave Stalin indifferent).

However, if those at the top were thinking about such a reward, then after the expulsion of Napoleon it probably seemed excessive. Instead of one large gift in the form of the abolition of serfdom, it was decided to make many small ones. By a national announcement of August 31, 1814 (it is in it that it is said: “And the peasants, our good people, may they receive their reward from God”), recruitment for 1814 and 1815 was canceled, all peasants were forgiven arrears and fines from all types of payments. Earlier, in May 1813, Alexander I ordered “that all sorts of searches should be abandoned and no cases should be opened against them.”

But it was not possible to make a white horse out of many white lambs.

The peasants did not understand that all this was their reward; they decided that the will had been declared, but the landowners were hiding it.

Pre-revolutionary historian Vasily Semevsky in his study “Unrest of peasants in 1812 and associated with the Patriotic War” describes how in April 1815 in Nizhny Novgorod Dmitriev, a servant of an officer who had arrived from St. Petersburg, was arrested, telling the peasants that the manifesto on granting freedom to all peasants had already been read in the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. For his words, Dmitriev received 30 lashes and was sent to military service with credit to the landowner for the recruit.

Some nobles and landowners nevertheless felt ashamed: somehow it was not good to leave the people with nothing. In 1817, an idea was born: as a reward for loyalty shown in 1812, peasant children of both sexes born after 1812 should be declared free. However, this method did not provide for the allocation of land to the peasants upon liberation and was not put into practice.

Emmanuel Richelieu, who was the mayor of Odessa in 1812, wrote in a letter: “If Napoleon is a man, then he will enter Moscow and die. But what if he is not a man?!”... 1812 showed that Napoleon was a man, and this was perhaps the most important result, a real discovery, the same as Newton’s law universal gravity when the seemingly obvious suddenly becomes clear to everyone.

The discouragingly terrible death of the Great Army made a colossal impression on the whole of Europe. Not a single invasion has ever ended like this - with the almost complete death of an unprecedented army. The invasion disappeared into the Russian land like sand. It became absolutely obvious that Russia was under the protection of the Higher Powers, and Tsar Alexander was the conductor of God’s will. And if so, then we must go with Alexander, after him.

Most likely, this is why the Prussian king decided to do something that, in general, was difficult to expect from him: in 1813, he not only took the side of the coalition, but also issued the Edict of Landsturm, which ordered every citizen of Prussia to use all means, in any case. reason and any weapon to resist the enemy.

“You are amazed when you see the name of a legitimate king under this kind of call for guerrilla warfare. These ten pages of the Prussian code of laws of 1813 (pp. 79-89) definitely belong to the most unusual pages of all published laws of the world,” a German military historian wrote already in the 20th century in his lecture “The Theory of the Partisan.”

After 1812, the very nature of the fight against Napoleon changed. In 1805 and 1807, Russia treated this struggle without ardor, ending it with peace at the first opportunity.

So, in 1812, Kutuzov proposed stopping at the Russian borders, again leaving Europe alone with Napoleon, but Alexander ordered to go further and thereby predetermined the outcome of the battle - without this determination, which was given to Alexander in the 12th year, there would simply be no foreign campaigns , and Napoleon would have reigned until old age.

The fact that it was Russia and the Patriotic War that were the catalyst for victory was understood and accepted in Europe. Russia's influence on European affairs has increased enormously. Emperor Alexander became the first monarch in Europe. It was he who distributed the “booty” at the Congress of Vienna, and, for example, when Prussia reached out to Alsace, Alexander declared that the original French territories would remain with France. It is unlikely that he cared about France - most likely, he really liked the role of a European judge.

The fight against Napoleon forced his opponents to rise above themselves. Those born to crawl suddenly managed to take off. But this was not the main result of the era, but the fact that, having soared into the stratosphere, Tsar Alexander, the Prince Regent, King Frederick William and Emperor Franz hastened not only to return from heaven, but also to return their soaring peoples to earth. Discussing at the Congress of Vienna what Europe should be like after the war, they cemented not the Europe that defeated Napoleon, but the one that he defeated over and over again. They wanted to remain in the past, and in this desire they refused even the path of social progress that they, willy-nilly, had to go through during the 15 years of struggle with Napoleon.

However, it remains to be seen whether they themselves considered this path to be progress: there were many different points of view on the reasons for the victory then, 200 years ago.

“Many, seeing a miracle in the salvation of Russia, short-sightedly concluded that under the protection of God there is exactly the Russia that it was at the time of Napoleon’s invasion, and that it is downright absurd to break the centuries-old foundations that brought up and put into use such a might of the state...” - this is how it is written in the article “Results of 1812”, published in the anniversary issue of the newspaper “Altai Life” published in Barnaul in 1912. And further: “Emperor Alexander himself fell into mysticism and, trying to reduce the entire administration of the state to the fulfillment of the clearly expressed will of God, he appointed Arakcheev, who was alien to any freethinking (...) at the head of the government. There was no more talk about any reforms. The internal development of Russian statehood stopped immediately and for a long time. It took two fifty years and two unsuccessful wars to bring Russia to that point political development, on the threshold of which she stood on the eve of 1812.”

Viewing Napoleon as a product of revolution, the victorious powers sought a way to avoid revolutions.

There are different approaches here: you can rely on bayonets, or you can rely on freedom and mutual respect between citizens and the state. Congress of Vienna chose the first path, deciding that the victorious powers would jointly suppress any revolutionary uprising. The role of the main European gendarme was assigned to Russia, and in 1848-1849 the Hungarian Revolution was suppressed by Russian bayonets. Only after the Crimean War did the Russian elite begin to recognize the need for change, but, quite possibly, it was already too late. Give the Russian people freedom and property early XIX century, by the beginning of the 20th century it would have been a different people - with its own political traditions, views and values, with what we now call “ civil society" It is likely that the vague Bolshevik “bright future” would have caused nothing but a skeptical grin among these people. And then - what if? — there would have been no revolution, and Soviet madness, and the Great Patriotic War, and many other troubles from which Russia still cannot recover...

When, under the Treaty of Paris of 1815, the Allies imposed an indemnity on France in the amount of 700 million francs, Alexander declared that Russia was renouncing its share. By this he showed that the war with Napoleon was fought not for the sake of booty, but for the sake of principles.

But it was precisely the principles by which life was built in that era that suffered an extremely heavy blow.

Both the results of the War of 1812 and the end of the Napoleonic era as a whole led to what can be called a crisis of the meaning of life. Before Napoleon and under him, the main thing for a person was to accomplish a feat, to win a place in history, to get his own piece of glory - the whole era rested on this, that’s why it became possible. The poet wrote: “I would like glory, but not for myself, but to illuminate the grave of my father and the cradle of my son with it.” Napoleon gave this opportunity. But there was too much glory, and due to overproduction, it did not bring those dividends (orders, money, titles, attention of women) that people could count on: the exploits became worthless. Napoleon devastated not only the material world of states, but also the inner spiritual world of people: after him the world became empty and boring. For many thousands of people both in Europe and in Russia, the world collapsed precisely after the war ended.

But there were still a considerable number of those for whom the war was not enough. The Decembrists in Russia, who were regarded under Soviet rule as the forerunner of the socialist revolution, were in fact most likely simply trying to catch up with a runaway train.

Senate Square was for them Toulon, which Prince Andrei seeks from Tolstoy in every shootout. “In 1414, the existence of young people in St. Petersburg was painful,” wrote the Decembrist Ivan Yakushkin. “For two years we had great events before our eyes and in some way participated in them (Yakushkin served in the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment Patriotic War and Foreign Campaign, was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree and the Kulm Cross. — Approx. author); Now it was unbearable to look at the empty life in St. Petersburg.” Some of the Decembrists in the Napoleonic years were too young and did not have time to shine, some shined, but believed that they deserved more than they received. "We will die! How gloriously we will die! - the Decembrist cried when he learned that there would still be an uprising. In 1812 he was 10 years old.

Herzen’s well-known formula that the Decembrists wanted to make a revolution “for the people, but without the people” is beautiful and very well obscures the fact that the Decembrists, in general, hardly thought about the people.

The abolition of serfdom, which was included in all the programs of the Decembrists, at that time had long been commonplace. But the much more important issue of allocating land to the peasants was not considered at all in Sergei Trubetskoy’s “Manifesto to the Russian People,” while in the Constitution and Pestel’s “Russian Truth,” although it was considered, it was in such a way that the peasants received almost nothing. Indicative in this sense and personal experience Decembrists for the liberation of the peasants: Ivan Yakushkin, having decided to give his peasants freedom, left the land for himself. It was not only the peasants who did not understand Yakushkin, but the answer came to him: “... if we accept the method you propose, then others can use it to get rid of responsibilities regarding their peasants.” There really were responsibilities: for example, in a bad year, the landowner was obliged to feed the peasants at his own expense. So Herzen is most likely wrong on both counts: the Decembrists wanted to make a revolution not only “without the people,” but also not “for the people,” but for themselves.

That’s why they didn’t go on the attack on the morning of December 14, when they could still have succeeded, because by their standards they had already succeeded: a glorious death was all they needed from life. It is likely that Nicholas I guessed them - and executed only five, dooming the rest to a painful and, frankly, rather inglorious life.

Napoleon showed that it is possible to change the world. And he showed that the world is not actually turning upside down - everything has returned to normal.

The disappointment was massive. Compared to the background of the past era, all men seemed dwarfs. Lermontov, describing Pechorin, gave a portrait of one of the “children of 1812”, who searches and does not find the meaning of life. Pechorin is bored with life, he has nothing to live for. Pechorin throws himself under the bullets, but this does not warm his blood and does not advance his philosophy anywhere: “After all, nothing worse than death can happen - but you cannot escape death!” - the idea was long ago and very banal even in those days. Then Pechorin tries to fall in love with Princess Mary - but it turns out that he does not know how to love: he was not taught. (Love in its current understanding was rare then - men, in general, never had enough time for it, marriages were arranged by the parents of the bride and groom, and “children” almost always accepted the parental choice.) Lermontov himself was the same: he was not taught to love (by the way, drawing the line Pechorin - Vera, Lermontov is trying, at least in the story, to bring to the desired end his romance with Varvara Lopukhina, with whom he was engaged, but separated, and she married the rich landowner Nikolai Bakhmetev, 17 years older than her). Every war lost to the 12th year in comparison. Valerik was, of course, a brutal battle (Russians and Chechens fought with sabers for three hours; Lermontov wrote that “even two hours later the ravine smelled of blood”), but it could not even compare with any rearguard battle of the Patriotic War.

Apparently, Tolstoy had a similar feeling when he went to Sevastopol in 1854. He climbed onto the most disastrous 4th bastion (on some days up to two thousand enemy shells fell on the bastion) and wrote from there to his brother Sergei: “The spirit in the troops is beyond any description. During times Ancient Greece there was not so much heroism. Kornilov, touring the troops, instead of “Great, guys!” said: “You have to die, guys! Will you die?”, and the troops answered: “We will die, Your Excellency, hurray!”

And this was not an effect, but on everyone’s face it was clear that they were not joking, but for real, and 2200 had already fulfilled this promise.

A wounded soldier, almost dying, told me how they took the 24th French battery and were not reinforced; he cried bitterly. A company of sailors almost rebelled because they wanted to change them from the battery where they had stood for 30 days under bombs. Soldiers tear out tubes from bombs. Women carry water to the bastions for the soldiers. Many are killed and wounded. Priests with crosses go to the bastions and read prayers under fire. In one brigade there were 160 people who, wounded, did not leave the front. Wonderful time!..”

However, Sevastopol did not overshadow the Patriotic War - especially since Russia did not win. Instead of glory, the war brought disappointment and shame. “What to live for?!” - reflects on this when he returned home after Austerlitz, another shameful defeat for Russia. Perhaps Tolstoy recorded his and his peers' mood after the end of the Crimean War. He, like millions of other people in the post-Napoleonic era, needed an idea to justify his own existence. And Tolstoy came up with this idea.

In the famous episode with the oak tree, Prince Andrei first decides that his time has passed (“let others, young people, again succumb to this deception, but we know life - our life is over!”), and then, seeing that the oak tree has thrown out its young foliage, he suddenly realizes that life goes on. True, there is little certainty in this decision (“everyone needs to know me, so that my life doesn’t go on for me alone, so that they don’t live like this girl, regardless of my life, so that it is reflected on everyone and so that they all live with me!”), but the most noticeable thing is this:

“Toulon,” which Prince Andrei was looking for in 1805, is now gone.

He stopped looking for exploits - he decided to just live, just live for himself! True, Prince Andrei himself did not have time to live for himself. But Bezukhov and Natasha, who married him, are just an example of this idea: they simply live for themselves. Not for the world and not for history, not for God, but for ourselves. They love each other, make children, wash diapers...

Writer Mark Aldanov in his work “The Mystery of Tolstoy” notes that the writer in “War and Peace”, using the example of the Bolkonskys and Rostovs, tried to understand which life is better - spiritual or material. Aldanov notes that the Bolkonskys, in whose family there is “intense spiritual work,” are all unhappy. The Rostovs, where “no one ever thinks, they even think only from time to time,” on the contrary, “are blissful from entering life until its last minute.”

The meaning of life is life itself, and not exploits, not valor and not glory.

Tolstoy proposed this discovery to people, supplementing it with the idea of ​​historical fatalism, according to which everything will be as it will be. Tolstoy reduced the meaning of human life to the meaning of the life of an ant. But everyone believed him: both because it seemed so great to live for oneself, and because they had already walked the path of exploits, and this path did not give anything. In today's Russia, this view of life, due to the lack of religion and the moral principles supported by it, has taken on especially difficult forms.

Someone, shielded from us by the initials “P.K,” wrote in 1912 in the provincial newspaper “Life of Altai”: “We see, therefore, that even the saving and glorious war of 1812 for Russia (...) brought evil in its wake, and no small evil.

May we be allowed to conclude that all war is evil, and to wish that the further progress of mankind will save us from the very possibility of the emergence of this evil.”

Two hundred years ago, Napoleon began a war with Russia, which ended in his - for many unexpected - defeat. What happened main reason defeats: people, winter or Russian god?

In the year of the bicentenary of Napoleon’s Russian campaign, which ended in the defeat of the “grand army,” many books telling about this campaign are being published in Germany. These include monographs by German historians, translations, reprints, multi-page scientific works and popular publications. Their authors ask the same question as Pushkin in Eugene Onegin:

Thunderstorm of the twelfth year
It has arrived - who helped us here?
The frenzy of the people
Barclay, winter or Russian god?
A bone thrown to Napoleon

What was the reason for the defeat of Napoleon’s “great army”? No one gives a definite answer. Some believe that main role Poor preparation for the Russian campaign, Napoleon’s excessive self-confidence and the severity of the Russian climate (“winter”) played a role. Other historians particularly highlight the bravery of Russian soldiers and the unprecedented patriotic upsurge (“the frenzy of the people”). Still others write with admiration about the brilliant tactics of Barclay de Tolly and later Kutuzov, who did not engage in the decisive battle and exhausted the enemy right up to Borodin. Thus, Adam Zamoyski calls the decision to “throw a bone” to Napoleon, giving him Moscow, “brilliant.” The fourth object, as they say, on all points, except for the steadfastness of the Russian army (no one disputes this).


The cold in 1812 actually began earlier than usual - in October. But the fate of Napoleonic army was decided by that time. Its remnants were already retreating in complete disorder from Moscow. The catastrophe broke out much earlier - in fact, even before the Battle of Borodino. When preparing his campaign to Russia, Napoleon, of course, took into account some Russian characteristics, but not all.

Neither the same population density as in Central and Western Europe, nor was there a standard of living as high as there in Russia. Poor peasants and a few, also not very rich, landowners could not feed hundreds of thousands of Napoleonic soldiers. As soon as they settled down for the night, they immediately went in search of provisions, fleecing the local population to the bone and causing self-hatred, which soon came back to haunt them with the “club of the people’s war.”

Fools and roads?

Bad roads and vast distances led to the fact that the convoys prepared in advance were left far behind the “great army”. Many of them are stuck in Poland and Lithuania. Suffice it to say that at the beginning of 1813, the Russian army, already advancing and chasing the French, captured four million portions of bread and crackers, almost the same amount of meat, alcohol, wine, thousands of tons of uniforms and various military equipment in Vilna alone. All this was prepared by the French for the Russian campaign, but never reached the combat units.

The death toll of cavalry and artillery horses, which, like people, had to rely only on pasture, was on a colossal scale. Several tens of thousands of horses did not even reach Smolensk, which significantly weakened Napoleonic army.

In addition, typhus and various infectious diseases. Morale fell already in the first weeks of the campaign, the number of sick people was in the tens of thousands. Shortly before the Battle of Borodino, it was established that of the 400,000-strong army, only 225,000 people remained in the ranks. The light cavalry, for example, lost half of its strength. And according to the calculations of French lodgers, which Dominic Lieven cites in his book “Russia against Napoleon,” 50 thousand people deserted from Napoleon’s army in the first month and a half alone.

One of the reasons for the mass desertion was that the French army was only half French. Many battle-hardened veterans retired at the end of 1811, they were replaced by voluntarily-compulsorily mobilized Italians, Dutch, Germans, Swiss, Belgians... However, as historian Daniel Furrer writes, many of these “allies” fought very brave. Of the 27 thousand Italians, only about a thousand returned home after the Russian campaign. And out of 1,300 Swiss soldiers, about a thousand died covering the crossing of the Berezina during the retreat of the “great army.”

Germans against Germans

The Germans fought on both sides. The German kingdoms and principalities were partially occupied by the French, and partially - like Prussia - were forced under pressure from Napoleon and the threat of occupation to become his allies. 30 thousand Bavarians, 27 thousand soldiers and officers from the Kingdom of Westphalia, 20 thousand Saxons and the same number of Prussians took part in the Russian campaign. Bonaparte especially did not trust the “allies” from Prussia, which had recently been an ally of Russia, and, just in case, gave the Prussian division under the command of a French marshal.

As for the Russian army, it included a special Russian-German Legion, which was formed, in particular, from hussars and infantrymen who defected to Russia after Napoleon’s invasion. By the end of the campaign, the legion numbered almost 10 thousand people: two hussar regiments, two infantry brigades, a company of rangers and a horse artillery company. The units were commanded by Prussian officers, and the entire legion was commanded by Count Ludwig Georg Wallmoden-Gimborn.

Another topic that especially interests German historians is: who is to blame for the fire of Moscow? Who set it on fire when Napoleon's army entered Moscow: French soldiers, Governor General Count Rostopchin, Russian spies? For Anka Muhlstein, author of the book “Moscow Fire. Napoleon in Russia,” there is no doubt: Moscow was set on fire on the orders of Fyodor Rostopchin, than he himself for a long time boasted. Tsar Alexander, by the way, was very dissatisfied. Still would! In Moscow, almost six and a half thousand houses out of nine thousand, more than eight thousand shops and warehouses, and more than a third of churches burned down. Two thousand wounded Russian soldiers died in the fire, whom the retreating soldiers did not have time to take with them...

A significant part of the book “Moscow Fire”, like other works telling about the war of 1812, is devoted to the Battle of Borodino. And here the number one question is: the losses of the parties. According to the latest data, the French lost 30 thousand people (about one in five), the Russians - about 44 thousand (one in three). Unfortunately, there are pseudo-historians in Russia who do their best to downplay Russian losses and exaggerate French ones. Besides the fact that this is not true, it should be said that it is completely unnecessary. The statistics of losses in no way detracts from the heroism of the participants in the Battle of Borodino, nor does the fact that it was formally won by Napoleon, who eventually occupied Moscow. But this victory was pyrrhic...

On June 24, 1812, Napoleon's army invaded the territory without declaring war. Russian Empire. The rapid advance of the powerful French army forced the Russian command to retreat deeper into the country and made it impossible for the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, General Barclay de Tolly, to prepare troops for battle. The prolonged retreat caused public discontent, so on August 20, Emperor Alexander I signed a decree appointing M.I. as commander-in-chief of the Russian troops. Kutuzova. However, he also had to retreat in order to gain time to gather all his forces.

By that time, Napoleon's army had already suffered significant losses, and the difference in numbers between the two armies had narrowed. In this situation, Kutuzov decided to give a general battle not far from Moscow, near the village of Borodino.

By 5 a.m. on September 7, 1812, the French army, numbering about 134,000 people, was already preparing to attack positions occupied by the Russian army, which consisted of approximately 155,000 people (including 115,000 regular troops). The appearance of Emperor Napoleon on his command post in front of the Shevardinsky redoubt captured the day before, she was met with thunderous cries: “Long live the emperor!” This is how she had greeted him before every battle for many years, anticipating victory.

At the beginning of the sixth, the French attacked not the left, as M.I. Kutuzov’s headquarters had assumed, but the right wing of the Russian position. The 106th regiment from General Delzon's division (Eugene de Beauharnais's corps) broke into the village of Borodino, but the Russian regiment of guards rangers stationed there was not taken by surprise. A bloody battle broke out. General Beauharnais sent Delzon reinforcement after reinforcement. By 6 a.m. the French had captured the village, although the 106th Regiment had lost three-quarters of its strength. The regiment commander, General Plozonn, also died, revealing long list Napoleonic generals who fell in this battle.

Beauharnais gained a foothold on the Borodino Heights and placed a battery of 38 guns south of the village with orders to fire at the center of the Russian position. After that, he began to wait to see how events would unfold on the left flank of the Russian army. The fact is that Napoleon ordered the capture of Borodino in order to divert the enemy’s attention from the direction of the main attack.


And the main blow was aimed at Bagration’s flushes, located to the south. Here, from 5:30 a.m., a fierce battle raged. Napoleon's three best marshals - Davout, Ney and Murat - separately and together attacked the troops of Prince Bagration, while General Poniatowski tried to bypass the flushes on the right.

The honor of the first flush attack was entrusted to the division commander from Davout's corps, General Compan - the same one who had taken the Shevardinsky redoubt the day before. His blow was taken by the division of General M.S. Vorontsov with the support of the division of General D.P. Neverovsky. Kompan attacked the flushes from the Utitsky forest under the cover of fire from 50 guns, but was repulsed. Then Marshal Davout reinforced him with the division of General Dessay and ordered the attack to be repeated. In this new attack, Compan was seriously wounded, and Desseux, who replaced him, immediately shared his fate. Following them, Napoleon's adjutant general Rapp, who was personally sent to help by the emperor, received his 22nd wound during his combat service. The French hesitated. Seeing this, Marshal Davout himself led the 57th Regiment to attack, but was shell-shocked, knocked off his horse and lost consciousness. They even “managed” to report to Napoleon the death of the appointed marshal. Meanwhile, the Russians knocked the French out of flushes.


Napoleon, having learned that Davout was alive, ordered the assault on the flushes to be resumed. At this time, he already knew that Poniatowski was late with his outflanking maneuver due to bad roads, and therefore decided to make do with a frontal attack, but a stronger one. To do this, he added three divisions from Marshal Ney's corps and Murat's cavalry to Davout's two divisions. Thus, in the third attack on the flushes, he threw 30,000 men, supported by 160 guns.

Prince Bagration, preparing to repel the third attack, also increased his forces. He pulled two divisions and artillery from the reserve to the flushes, demanded several battalions from the corps of N.N. Raevsky, which was subordinate to him, and an entire division of P.P. Konovnitsyn from the corps of N.A. Tuchkov 1st, which was not his subordinated, but sent a division. Anticipating the growing power of the French attacks, Bagration turned to Barclay de Tolly and Kutuzov for reinforcements. In the meantime, before the third attack, he had approximately 15,000 men and 164 guns on the flushes.

The French launched a third flush attack around 8 o'clock. As a result, two divisions of Davout and three of Ney broke into the flushes under the fire of Russian batteries. Reflecting this attack, the combined grenadier division of General M.S. Vorontsov was almost completely destroyed (he himself, having received a bayonet wound, was out of action - the first of the Russian generals). Following him, General Neverovsky was shell-shocked. His division was also almost completely destroyed. Then Prince Bagration personally led the reserve troops in a bayonet attack and pushed back the enemy infantry.

After this, Napoleon gave a sign to Marshal Murat. He took a cuirassier division from General Nansouty’s corps and, at its head, rushed to the flushes. The Russians greeted iron men" Murat with grapeshot and a counterattack from the cavalry reserve, and they were forced to retreat to their original position. Thus ended the third attack on flushes.

At about 9 o'clock in the morning, Napoleon learned that General Poniatowski and his Poles had occupied Utitsa and, thus, threatened to strike Bagration in the rear. The Emperor considered this circumstance convenient for the decisive attack of the flushes. He reinforced Davout and Ney with the division of General Friant, which was as exemplary in the Great Army as the Russian division of Konovnitsyn. For the fourth time, the French attacked so powerfully that they took all three flushes on the move, and Friant’s regiments even broke into Semenovskoye, a village located immediately behind the flushes. It seemed that the fate of the left flank of the Russian army was decided. But Bagration, to whom Konovnitsyn had already led his division, and other reinforcements from Barclay de Tolly were approaching, was not at a loss. Gathering everything he had, he launched a decisive counterattack. As a result, the flashes and the village of Semenovskoye were again repulsed.


After this, Napoleon decided to make adjustments to the battle plan. General Beauharnais, preparing to attack Kurgan Heights after the flushes were taken, was ordered to attack immediately to stop the flow of reinforcements from Barclay de Tolly to Bagration.

Meanwhile, at about 10 o'clock, Davout and Ney led their divisions into flushes for the fifth time. Once again their attack was successful: they captured the fortifications and captured 12 guns. The French were already preparing to turn them against Russian troops, but did not have time. The grenadier regiments of Konovnitsyn and the Prince of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, with the support of two cuirassier divisions, knocked out the enemy from the flushes and returned the captured guns. At the same time, General A.A. Tuchkov 4th was killed, and the Prince of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was wounded. The French chief of staff of the 1st Corps, General Romeuf, died here.

Napoleon continued to increase the power of his attacks on Bagration's flushes, combining them with attacks on other points of the Russian position. As soon as General Beauharnais took Kurgan Heights on the second attempt (Poniatowski at that time was pushing N.A. Tuchkov 1st behind Utitsa), that is, about half past ten, Napoleon ordered Marshals Davout and Ney to attack the flushes for the sixth time, adding to their five divisions two more divisions from General Junot's corps. However, this time the French were unable to even approach the flushes, unable to withstand the destructive fire of the Russian batteries.

The time came to 11 o'clock. General Poniatovsky developed his success by attacking Tuchkov 1st near the Utitsky Kurgan, and, most importantly, General Beauharnais gained a foothold on Kurgan Heights and had already opened side fire on the flushes from there. Napoleon, having intensified the frontal bombardment of Prince Bagration's position, launched a new assault on the flushes with the forces of Marshals Davout and Ney, and Junot sent a detour between the flushes and Utitsa to strike Bagration from the flank.

However, this maneuver, which, according to Napoleon's plan, was supposed to decide the outcome of the battle, failed. Junot's two divisions unexpectedly encountered near Utitsa the corps of General K.F. Baggovut, who at the beginning of the battle occupied the right wing of the Russian position and whose movement from right to left Napoleon overlooked.

Who and when sent Baggovut from the right to the left flank? Some researchers believe - Kutuzov, others - Barclay de Tolly. Baggovut himself reported after the battle to M.I. Kutuzov: “When the enemy launched an attack on our left flank, on the orders of the commander-in-chief of the 1st Western Army, I went with the infantry regiments of the 2nd Corps to reinforce it.” This document resolves the issue: Baggovut's corps was sent to the left wing by Barclay de Tolly.

So, Junot was thrown back by Baggovut’s troops to the Utitsky forest. The seventh frontal attack on the flushes of the troops of Davout and Ney also failed. Moreover, the French were again driven out from Kurgan Heights. At this time, in the south, Poniatowski was bogged down in battles with the troops of General Tuchkov 1st.

Now Napoleon could only count on the special power of a frontal attack on flushes. By 11.30 he had 45,000 men and 400 guns against them. Prince Bagration at this time had approximately 20,000 people and 300 guns, but from Barclay de Tolly the regiments of the 4th Infantry and 2nd Cavalry Corps approached him.

The eighth attack of the flushes was even more powerful than the previous ones, but the defenders of the flushes did not flinch, and the Russian artillery tried not to yield to the French.

However, the attacking impulse of the French was so strong that the Russians again lost flushes to them. But Prince Bagration considered this enemy success to be temporary. His soldiers were in exactly the same mood. Without allowing the French to gain a foothold on the flushes, Bagration united the 8th Corps of General M.M. Borozdin, the 4th Cavalry Corps of General K.K. Sivers and the 2nd Cuirassier Division of General I.M. Duka and himself led the troops in a counterattack. At that moment, he was struck by a fragment of a cannonball, which crushed his left leg.


For several moments Bagration tried to overcome the terrible pain and hide his serious wound from the troops, but then, weakened from loss of blood, he fell from his horse. As a result, the counterattack launched by him was repulsed, and General E.F. Saint-Prix, the chief of staff of the 2nd Army, was out of action with a serious wound.

General Konovnitsyn, who temporarily replaced Bagration, withdrew his troops to the village of Semenovskoye. Then General D.S. Dokhturov arrived, who took command of the left flank of the Russian army.

Having examined the position, Dokhturov found “everything in great confusion.” Meanwhile, the French stubbornly pressed forward, trying to complete the defeat of the Russian left flank. Two cavalry corps - Nansouty from the south and Latour-Maubourg from the north - struck the Semenov position. Three fresh guards regiment(Lithuanian, Izmailovsky and Finlyandsky), which M.I. Kutuzov himself sent from the reserve, heroically repelled the attacks of the French cavalry, giving Dokhturov the opportunity to put the upset troops in order. True, Friant’s division again, and now firmly, captured the village of Semenovskoye (Frian himself was wounded here), but Dokhturov, retreating beyond Semenovskoye, firmly entrenched himself on a new line.

Marshals Murat, Ney and Davout, whose forces were also exhausted, turned to Napoleon for reinforcements, but he refused. He decided that the Russian left wing was already upset, and therefore directed his main efforts against the center of the Russian position, for which he began to prepare a decisive attack on Kurgan Heights.

The ferocity of the battle grew every hour. We must pay tribute to Napoleon’s soldiers and officers: they fought wonderfully that day. But Russian soldiers and officers stood up to them, and the generals were not inferior to them in valor. For example, Barclay de Tolly, in full dress uniform, personally led regiments in attacks and counterattacks. Five horses were killed under him, and 9 of his 12 adjutants were killed or wounded. The commander of the 3rd corps N.A. Tuchkov 1st fell, mortally wounded. His brother, General A.A. Tuchkov 4th, was struck by grapeshot when he, with a banner in his hands, raised his soldiers to counterattack. General A.I. Kutaisov also died, and his body was never found.

Napoleon grew gloomier with each passing hour of the battle. He was unwell and had a cold. And at about 12 o'clock he was suddenly informed about the appearance of Russian cavalry on his left flank. This raid on Napoleon’s flank was organized by Kutuzov, and it was done at the most critical moment of the battle.


The cavalry reserve of General F.P. Uvarov and the Cossacks M.I. Platov were sent to bypass. Unfortunately, the raid by Uvarov and Platov was undertaken with small forces (only 4,500 sabers), and most importantly, without the proper energy. Near the village of Bezzubovo, the Russian cavalry was stopped by the troops of General Ornano and returned. As a result, the outflanking maneuver and attack on Napoleon’s left flank, which Kutuzov was counting on in the hope of seizing the initiative in the battle, failed.

Nevertheless, this raid was very useful for the Russian army and does honor to M.I. Kutuzov as commander-in-chief. He distracted Napoleon's attention and forced him to suspend the assault on Kurgan Heights for two hours. Moreover, Napoleon returned the Young Guard division, already prepared for the attack, back to reserve. In the meantime, Kutuzov managed to regroup his forces: Barclay de Tolly replaced the remnants of N.N. Raevsky’s corps in the center with the last fresh corps of General A.I. Osterman-Tolstoy, and Dokhturov put the disorganized left wing in order.

Only at 2 p.m. did the French begin a general assault on Kurgan Heights. Here stood the 18-gun battery of General Raevsky, which was supported by several more batteries. The first French attack on the heights was repelled by 46 Russian guns, the second by 197. General Beauharnais's troops carried out these two attacks in the morning - from 10 to 11 o'clock, simultaneously with the fifth and sixth attacks on Bagration's flushes. First, the Italian division of General Brussier went on the attack, but it was repulsed. Then Beauharnais sent forward the division of General Moran assigned to him from the corps of Marshal Davout. Ahead of this division was General Bonamy's brigade, which broke into Raevsky's battery. But before the French had time to gain a foothold there, General A.P. Ermolov, unexpectedly for both Napoleon and Kutuzov, organized a brilliant counterattack. He happened to pass by on an errand and saw the disorderly retreat of Russian troops from Kurgan Heights, which had just been occupied by the French. Then Ermolov drew his sword and personally led the soldiers in a counterattack, in which General A.I. Kutaisov died. Ermolov himself was wounded.

So the French were driven out of Raevsky’s battery for the second time. General Montbrun's cavalry corps tried to support his infantry, but under Russian artillery fire he retreated, and Montbrun himself was killed. General Bonamy was captured.

So, at 14:00 the French began the third, decisive assault on Kurgan Heights. By this time, Napoleon was convinced that the entire Russian army was finally involved in the battle. Now he expected not only to take the heights, but also to break through the Russian battle formation here, in the center.

Under the cover of a powerful cannonade, General Beauharnais led an assault on height three infantry divisions- Broussier, Morand and Gerard. At this moment, Napoleon ordered General Caulaincourt, who had just replaced Montbrun, to attack the heights from the right flank.

Simultaneously with Caulaincourt's flank attack, Gerard's infantry attacked Raevsky's battery head-on. As a result, the French captured the battery, and General Caulaincourt was killed. Russian general P.G. Likhachev was captured.

By about 3 p.m., the French finally occupied Kurgan Heights, but were unable to advance further.

At about 5 p.m., Napoleon arrived at Kurgan Heights and from there inspected the center of the Russian position. Having retreated to the heights near the village of Gorki, the Russian troops stood, considerably thinned out, but not broken and ready to continue to repel attacks. Napoleon knew that the left wing of the Russians, pushed back beyond Semenovskoe, had already been brought into battle order. Poniatowski's corps was unable to bypass it; he occupied Utitsa and the Utitsa Kurgan, but remained there, lacking the strength to continue the attacks. As for the Russian right flank, it was reliably covered by the high bank of the Kolocha River.


Napoleon was gloomier than a cloud: there could be no talk of escaping the defeated Russian army. True, Napoleon's guard (19,000 of the best soldiers) remained intact. Marshals Ney and Murat begged the emperor to move the guard into battle and thus “complete the defeat of the Russians.” But Napoleon did not do this. He said: “800 leagues from France you cannot risk your last reserve.” As a result, the decisive attack never came.

Gradually the battle died down, and M.I. Kutuzov looked quite pleased. He saw that the Russians managed to survive. Of course, he received information from everywhere about enormous losses, but he perfectly understood that the French had lost no less. On the other hand, Kutuzov, unlike Napoleon, no longer had reserves.

Meanwhile, Napoleon withdrew his troops from the battery of Raevsky and Bagration's flashes in order to give his soldiers and officers a rest not on the corpses of their comrades, but away from them.

As for Kutuzov, he, having learned that the Russian losses were much greater than he could imagine, gave the order to retreat around midnight. As a result, even before dawn, the Russian army left the battlefield and marched towards Moscow.

French historians mostly claim that at Borodino the French lost 6,567 people killed and 21,519 wounded - a total of 28,086 people. Other figures are given in foreign literature, but, as a rule, in the range from 20,000 to 30,000 people.

Russian sources often mention the figure 50876 people.

Napoleon lost 49 generals in this battle (10 killed and 39 wounded).

The French estimate Russian losses at Borodino in the range from 50,000 to 60,000 people. Russian sources, naturally, give a different figure - 38,500 people. But this figure clearly does not include losses among the Cossacks and militia warriors. The figure of 45,000 people seems more realistic. At the same time, the Russians lost 29 generals (6 killed and 23 wounded).

But the trophies on both sides were the same: the Russians took 13 cannons and 1,000 prisoners, the French captured 15 cannons and also 1,000 prisoners. Neither side left a single banner for the enemy.

So who won this battle? Formally, Napoleon had the right to declare himself the winner: he occupied all the main positions defended by the Russian army, after which the Russians retreated and then left Moscow.

On the other hand, Napoleon never solved his main task - to defeat the Russian army.

But M.I. Kutuzov, who considered his main task saving Moscow, failed to do this. He was forced to sacrifice Moscow for the sake of preserving the army and saving Russia. But he did this not by the will of Napoleon, but by his own, and not at all because he was defeated in a general battle.

Emperor Napoleon later recalled the Battle of Borodino as follows: “Of all my battles, the most terrible was the one I fought near Moscow. The French showed themselves worthy of winning, and the Russians showed themselves worthy of being called invincible.”