UNRESOLVED TALENT Venedikt Erofeev is a writer who passed away in the early 90s and did not really develop. Erofeev Venedikt Vasilievich (1938-1990) - prose writer, playwright. His prose "poem" "Moscow - Petushki" was on the list already in the 70s (written in 1969),

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

In the year of the bicentennial of Napoleon's Russian campaign, which ended with the defeat of the "great army", many books were published in Germany telling about this campaign. These are monographs by German historians, and translations, and 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?
The bone thrown to Napoleon

What, after all, was the reason for the defeat of Napoleon's "great army"? Nobody gives a definite answer. Some believe that the main role was played by poor preparation for the Russian campaign, Napoleon's overconfidence and the severity of the Russian climate ("winter"). Other historians emphasize the bravery of the Russian soldiers and the unprecedented patriotic enthusiasm ("the frenzy of the people"). Still others write with admiration about the brilliant tactics of Barclay de Tolly and later Kutuzov, who did not enter the decisive battle and exhausted the enemy right up to Borodino. So, Adam Zamoyski (Adam Zamoyski) calls the decision "to throw the bone" to Napoleon, giving him Moscow, "brilliant". The fourth object, as they say, on all counts, except for the staunchness of the Russian army (no one disputes it).

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

There was no such population density as in Central and Western Europe, nor such a high standard of living in Russia. Poor peasants and a few, also not too rich, landowners could not feed hundreds of thousands of Napoleon's soldiers. Barely settling down for the night, they immediately went in search of food, robbing the local population to the bone and causing self-hatred, which soon reverberated with the "cudgel of the people's war."

Fools and roads?

Bad roads and huge distances led to the fact that the pre-prepared carts 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 driving the French, only in Vilna 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. All this was prepared by the French for the Russian campaign, but never reached the combat units.

The loss of cavalry and artillery horses, which, like people, had to rely only on pasture, was colossal in scale. Several tens of thousands of horses did not even reach Smolensk, which greatly weakened the Napoleonic army.

In addition, she was mowed down by typhus and various infectious diseases. Morale fell already in the first weeks of the campaign, the number of patients numbered in tens of thousands. Shortly before the Battle of Borodino, it was established that only 225 thousand people remained in the ranks of the 400,000-strong army. 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", in the first month and a half alone, 50 thousand people deserted from Napoleon's army.

One of the reasons for the massive 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-forcibly 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 partly occupied by the French, partly - like Prussia - were forced under pressure from Napoleon and the threat of occupation to become his allies. The Russian campaign was attended by 30 thousand Bavarians, 27 thousand soldiers and officers from the Kingdom of Westphalia, 20 thousand Saxons and the same number of Prussians. Bonaparte did not particularly trust the “allies” from Prussia, which had recently been an ally of Russia, just in case he gave the Prussian division under the command of the French marshal.

As for the Russian army, it included a special Russian-German legion, which was formed, in particular, from the hussars and infantrymen who went over to the side of Russia after the invasion of Napoleon. 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: who is to blame for the Moscow fire? Who set it on fire when Napoleon's army entered Moscow: French soldiers, Governor-General Count Rostopchin, Russian spies? For Anka Muhlstein, author of Moscow Fire. Napoleon in Russia ”, there is no doubt: Moscow was set on fire by order of Fyodor Rostopchin, which he himself boasted for a long time. Tsar Alexander was, by the way, very unhappy. Still would! In Moscow, almost six and a half thousand houses from nine thousand, more than eight thousand shops and warehouses, more than a third of churches were burned down. The fire killed two thousand wounded Russian soldiers, whom the retreating did not have time to take with them ...

A significant part of the book "Moscow Fire", as well as other works telling about the war of 1812, is devoted to the Battle of Borodino. And here is question number one: the loss of the parties. According to the latest data, the French lost 30 thousand people (about every fifth), the Russians - about 44 thousand (every third). Unfortunately, there are pseudo-historians in Russia who in every way underestimate 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 diminish the heroism of the participants in the Battle of Borodino, as well as the fact that it was formally won by Napoleon, who as a result occupied Moscow. But this victory was Pyrrhic ...

End of the fight in the center of the Russian position and on the right flank

1. The unheard-of bloody battles around the lunette (Rayevsky's battery) resume at 2 pm with tripled force. The lunette was taken shortly after 4 o'clock, but the battle of Borodino was not over.

2. Starting from 5-5 1/2 o'clock in the afternoon and ending with the time of deepening darkness (about 9 o'clock in the evening), the Russian army, firstly, manages, according to Kutuzov's orders, to pull up the units scattered across the Borodino field that had fought throughout the day and by 6 to concentrate them for hours on a new line of defense stretching from north to south, from Gorki to the forest east of Utitsa, and the assembled corps constitute an uninterrupted defensive chain of the armed forces; this line, which blocked both the New and the Old Smolensk road to Moscow before the French, had to be broken by Napoleon if he still hoped for success, but he could no longer do this and did not even try to attack a new one during all these evening hours Russian position. This failure was emphasized even more by the many hours of brutal shelling of the French by Russian artillery, which began soon after the Russians had withdrawn from the Raevsky battery and continued until the French were the first to leave the battlefield.

The advantages of the Russian artillery over the French, both in accuracy of fire and in the abundance of shells in these last hours of the battle, made the withdrawal of the French batteries definitely compelled. The intentional attempt by Napoleon to storm Gorki and silence the Gorki batteries was immediately abandoned by the emperor and his staff due to the apparent lack of military means for this enterprise.

The defeat of the French armed forces, which throughout the battle acted offensively in the face of a powerful, heroic, active Russian defense, is characterized by the fact that Napoleon did not achieve his main goal - the defeat of the Russian army - and, having lost almost half of his army, had to be the first to leave the battlefield in Kutuzov, after the battle, he retained freedom of action and the ability to calmly make his brilliantly carried out flank march from Borodino to Moscow-Krasnaya Pakhre-Tarutin.

General conclusion. Borodino was a great strategic, tactical and moral victory for the Russian army and its commander, which subsequently created the possibility and success of regrouping and preparing the Russian army for a crushing Kutuzov counteroffensive, which in the end defeated and destroyed the aggressor's troops brought to Russia.

The night of August 26 (September 7), 1812, fell. Kutuzov, of course, could not help but worry about the formidable slaughter in which there was a struggle for the honor and political independence of the Russian people. But he knew how to control himself like no one else, and remained completely calm outside.

But Napoleon behaved quite differently. He hardly slept that night, constantly jumping out of bed and leaving the tent to see if the lights were still burning in the Russian location? Has Kutuzov gone? This departure he feared most of all. At that moment he was still in the grip of the illusion that if he won a victory “tomorrow”, then the war would end “tomorrow”. "Do you believe in tomorrow's victory, Rapp?" he suddenly asked the general on duty. "No doubt, your majesty, but the victory will be bloody." Napoleon, speaking this night with his retinue, especially exaggerated the figure of his reserves and underestimated the figure of his future losses: he lost at Borodino not 20 thousand, as he then assumed, but more than 58 thousand of his best troops.

Russian participants in the great battle greedily later questioned persons from Napoleon's entourage, and this is what they were told: “... in Vitebsk, in Smolensk, they saw him already tired, indecisive, did not recognize the former Napoleon. They were even more amazed, watching him in the evening, on the eve of the Battle of Borodino. He was either silent, pensive, gloomy, motionless, then active, talkative, hot-tempered, mounted a horse, rushed through the camp and again hid in his tent ... Napoleon's painful excitement continued all night. At about five o'clock in the morning, for the twentieth time, he ordered to find out if the Russians were leaving? But the Russians did not budge. “Napoleon got up cheerfully, exclaiming:“ Well, so they are now in our hands! Let's go to! Let's open the gates of Moscow! " 15 . A horse was brought to him, and he rushed to Shevardin, already occupied by the French from the night of August 25. Looking at the rising sun, he exclaimed: "Here is the sun of Austerlitz!" And he ordered to start the battle.

The battle began with an attack by the troops of the Viceroy of Italy, Eugene de Beauharnais, on the village of Borodino and the capture of this village. But the main blow of Napoleon went not to the center, but to the left flank of the Russian forces, where a series of bloody attacks followed on the Bagrationov flushes, fortifications built on the Semyonov Upland. Napoleon's goal was to attack the left flank of the Russians (the 2nd Army, which was under the command of Bagration), simultaneously attack the weaker and, as he and his headquarters thought, the unfortified right wing and center, and then squeeze and destroy the Russian army, put it between two fires - left and right.

Kutuzov figured out and destroyed this program of action.

Of the 136 thousand people with a small one of the army that on Borodin's day was at the disposal of Napoleon, the guard (20 thousand people) and some more units were left to him in reserve, and from the rest of the mass of troops about 80-85 thousand people with 467 guns were assigned to deliver the main blow to the Russian troops, who first defended the left flank (Bagrationovy flashes, the village of Semenovskoye and the area around it), then in the center of the Russian location Kurgan Hill with the Raevsky battery built on it, turned, as we will see now, into a fortified "closed lunette" ...

In addition to these 80-85 thousand, intended for the main attack, and in addition to the troops left in reserve, Napoleon had at his disposal about 40 thousand more people with 88 guns, which were intended for him first for a large demonstration, and then for action in the center and on the right flank of the Russians.

But this demonstration did not deceive Kutuzov.

The strengthening of the left flank and the construction of redoubts and the sending of new and new formations to help Bagration showed that the Russian high command, which had done so much from the evening of the 23rd and throughout the entire 24 August for the defense of the Shevardinsky redoubt, from the pre-dawn hours of August 26 was ready to meet fully armed preparing a powerful attack on the flushes, where the troops retreated, which, according to the order, left the Shevardinsky redoubt on the night of August 25. And on the other hand, having figured out the demonstrative nature of the actions prepared on the right flank directly against the village of Borodino, Kutuzov, who did not succumb to deception and did not distract a single battalion from the forces of the left flank, ordered that the first successes of the French on the right flank (the capture of the village of Borodino) cost them incomparably more than he expected. The Russian commander-in-chief correctly predicted that his troops, even in this secondary sector of the front, being here numerically weaker than the enemy, would give a brutal rebuff to the army of the Viceroy of Italy standing against them, Napoleon's stepson Eugene Beauharnais. And in the end it turned out that, having given 40 thousand people for this sabotage. Napoleon himself deprived himself in the first hours of the battle of the most serious help in the decisive first morning hours of the "main blow" directed by him to Bagration's flushes. The sacrificial heroism of the Russian troops on that day, however, turned the sabotage initiated by Napoleon on the Russian right flank into an enterprise not only useless, but definitely harmful to the cause of the aggressor himself.

Let us briefly recall how events unfolded here. Viceroy Eugene Beauharnais launched an attack at the village of Borodino, defended by a detachment of Life Jaegers, at five o'clock. Viceroy Eugene ordered the attack to divisional general Delzon, who, dividing the division, simultaneously attacked the village of Borodino from two sides.

Already from 11 pm on August 25, work began (more precisely, continued at an accelerated pace) to strengthen the battery installed at Kurgan Hill by General Raevsky, who wrote in his report: my battery will be the key to the whole position, I reinforced this mound with a redoubt and reinforced it with guns as much as space allowed. " At half past five in the morning (August 26), the battery had already turned into a redoubt with a perfectly fortified gorge, or, as Raevsky himself put it, having examined the work done during the night, into a "close lunette". Knowing that the entire previous day (August 25), Napoleon had been examining the field of the upcoming battle, Raevsky said: "The Emperor Napoleon saw a simple, open battery during the day, and his troops will find the fortress ..." , and one of the Borodino heroes, military engineer Lieutenant General Bogdanov II, rightly reproaches the historian Modest Bogdanovich for the unfounded repetition of false statements by foreigners (mainly French and German historians of the Borodino battle) that the fortifications of Kurgan Heights were bad.

The First Army (Barclay de Tolly) already from 23 August "stood at the chosen position on the right side of the Kolocha River and erected its own fortifications" 16. The right, most powerful wing of the 1st Army consisted of two corps (2nd General Baggovut and 4th Count Osterman-Tolstoy). In the center of the 1st Army stood at the village of Gorki Dokhturov's corps (6th), and behind Dokhturov stood the 7th corps of the 2nd Army (Raevsky's corps) and the 8th corps (Borozdin); both of these corps no longer belonged to the 1st Army (Barclay), but to the 2nd Army (Bagration).

Kutuzov created a position for the 1st Army, which was covered from the front by the Kolochya River and its steep right bank, and was considered impregnable. The left flank, occupied by the 2nd (Bagration's) army, had to withstand the main pressure of the Napoleonic forces.

Not everyone understood in these last hours before the battle the commander-in-chief's thought: “Many of the military men of that time stood against the position we had chosen, but our experienced leader looked at things differently and was better acquainted with his opponent than they did. He knew well his position and the reasons for his constant aspirations: to force us to fight at all costs, and therefore he took advantage of "all those conditions that" the entire first army was provided from any attempt and alarm, where not a single enemy shell could inflict her significant harm, while from her lines he himself could at every moment during the course of the battle reinforce and refresh his forces with her regiments. This was the main idea of ​​our valiant leader - his secret. Kutuzov perfectly grasped the terrain on which the Emperor Napoleon would have to deploy the masses of his troops ”17.

After Shevardin and after many hours of murderous, long-term unsuccessful attacks on the Flushes, the French did not have the slightest opportunity almost immediately to launch an attack on the center and partly on the right flank, where on 23, 24, 25 and until dawn on August 26, hectic work strengthening positions.

Closely observing and following the preparations and orders of Kutuzov, the man who did the most from the command staff to prepare the upcoming immortal battle at the Raevsky battery, the military engineer Bogdanov understood that Napoleon would never achieve his goal and that the "general battle" in the exact sense that is, crushing the Russian army with one blow, he, in spite of all his dreams, which possessed him relentlessly from the very crossing of the Neman, will not give, but will exhaust the preparatory striking force of his army in destructive battles around two positions, in two separate fortified points: first at flushes, and then at Kurgan height. “... Kutuzov gave complete freedom to the emperor, under the condition of what was said, to give battle or, by his roundabout movement along the old Smolensk road, force us to retreat without a fight, and then Napoleon did not achieve his goal: the Russian army would remain unharmed. The calculation was correct ... "18

Kutuzov foresaw, contrary to the opinion of the engineer General Foerster and some other chiefs, but, as the consequences showed, the significance of the possible delay of the French at Shevardin is quite correct. On August 23, in the evening, they began, by order of the commander-in-chief, to build the Shevardinsky redoubt. The work was very difficult. “The soil of the mound was so hard and gravelly that by midnight, with the constant efforts of the workers, the ditch was deepened no more than half a foot, this circumstance forced to fill the parapet and counter-escarp with arable land, from a distance of 8 to 10 sazh; to equalize the inner plane of this fortification, a significant dusting of the earth was also required. The energy of the workers and, apparently, with the onset of morning, the convergence of the enemy. accelerated labor. "

The heavy night work was over by the end of 1 hour on the night from 23rd to 24th. In the twelfth year, the Russian sapper workers did not know at all what fatigue meant. For several hours, Kutuzov personally observed the sapper workers here. They had not to be rushed, but to be contained. Morning came, and by noon the detachment assigned to defend the newly completed fortification began to approach. Immediately the enemy attacked him fiercely. All day on August 24, there was a desperate battle for the capture of the redoubt. The losses of the Russians were not unexpected for them, because the newly created fortification was not supposed to be defended by any sacrifices, and the French were at a loss. Adjutant after adjutant flew up on lathered horses to Napoleon, reporting on the increasing losses with each passing hour. Half a kilometer from Shevardin, the Russian grenadiers met a regiment hurrying to help the French and almost completely exterminated it, taking seven guns.

The small Russian artillery here (three guns in the redoubt and nine on its right side) successfully devastated the enemy's ranks with targeted firing. Having fulfilled their assignment, Shevardin's defenders withdrew at night (from 24 to 25 August) from the redoubt to the main forces of Bagration, already occupying positions on the Bagration flushes.

Already in the first fierce battles for the Shevardinsky redoubt, which prevented Napoleon from getting close to the main forces of the Russian army (23 and 24 August - 4 and 5 September), the Russian troops showed how they understood the Kutuzov active defense. In the Shevardin battle, the Russians had almost four times less infantry than the French (less than 8 thousand against at first 30, and then, by the end of the second day, approximately 35 thousand people, infantry, counting the reinforcements brought in by Napoleon). Napoleon's cavalry was almost three times stronger, the Russians had artillery already on the first day: five times less than Napoleon's, and by the end this balance of forces changed even more in favor of the French.

And yet, the Russians withdrew only by the evening of August 24 (September 5), when Kutuzov found it unnecessary to give a general battle here and decided to withdraw the forces of Bagration, who defended the Shevardinsky redoubt, somewhat east, where it was decided to strengthen the left flank. "How many Russian prisoners were taken?" - Napoleon persistently asked the adjutants who drove up to him from Shevardin on August 24. “The Russians do not surrender captive, your majesty,” he still received the same invariable answer. The Emperor's apparent excitement and irritation was understandable; Kutuzov, who chose this position, Bagration, who defended it for two days with his small detachment, the Russian soldiers who had tired the battlefield with their own and French bodies - all this indicated to Napoleon what the upcoming general battle would be, if even the first approach to the main Kutuzov forces was given with with such efforts, with such bloodshed and without victory, because the retreat was not in the least compelled and all attempts to attack the retreating ones were quite successfully repulsed by Bagration.

A day and a half separate Bagration's withdrawal from Shevardin in the evening of August 24 from the dawn of August 26 (September 7) 1812, when the great Borodino battle began, and it began with an attack by huge forces of the French army on the field fortifications created in a short time on the left flank of the Russian military disposition , to those flashes that were named in history the Bagrationovs after the name of the hero who defended them and ended his glorious career on them that day. Simultaneously (even somewhat earlier), a battle began on the right flank with an attack on the village of Borodino.

Kutuzov knew whom to entrust the defense of the point where, according to his absolutely correct foresight, one of the first and most decisive blows of Napoleon was to follow. The commander on the left flank Bagration, the hero of Ishmael, the hero of Shengraben, who at one time detained, in pursuance of the order of Kutuzov, in November 1805, with a detachment of 6-6 1/2 thousand people, the French, who had 4-4 1 / 2 times more strength, defended victorious flushes from the most frantic, repeated attacks of the best Napoleonic marshals. One has only to think about Napoleon's repeated replies to his marshals, who drove up to the emperor personally and sent their adjutants to him with a request, even more precisely, with requests to move the imperial guard to the flash. Napoleon replied that he could not risk his main reserve. In other words: the struggle for flushes, the mastery of flushes, attacks on the Russians departing from the flashes exterminated such a monstrous number of selected French troops that both the marshals and Napoleon, who refused them even more, clearly saw how unprofitable it was to completely put it right there, in this sector alone. of the battle front, all the best forces, without which it will be impossible to use the final victory expediently, even if it can be won. From dawn until almost 11 1/2 o'clock, the fierce attacks of the French on the flushes, which did not lead to a result, despite all the sacrifices, could in themselves confuse the enemy, but the fact that the last thing was on the flushes was also embarrassing. the place where Bagration received his (which later turned out to be fatal) wound was a formidable bayonet offensive blow. "Walking with broadswords", walking with bayonets, hand-to-hand, after everything experienced in the first six hours of the battle, under fire no longer two hundred, as at the beginning of the battle, but four hundred French guns - all this in itself revealed what a heroic spirit they were on this terrible and forever glorious day, the Russian troops.

The first large attack of Bagration's flashes with the most active participation of artillery was opened by General Kompan at 6-6 1/4 in the morning, and the Russians were supported by artillery fire from the guards rangers, who, at least, were driven out of the village of Borodino by overwhelmingly superior forces at five o'clock in the morning. Viceroy Eugene, but going in perfect order across the river. Kolochu, were then reinforced by two more Jaeger regiments and helped with their artillery to smash the troops of Kompan and prevent them from attacking the flushes. Kompan was discarded. But, having recovered and having received reinforcements, Compan (at eight o'clock in the morning) again sent a brigade of his division into the attack, which did not participate in the first attack and therefore was not at all battered. But the Russians met this second attack with such intensified fire that soon this brigade was upset and stopped by the forest. Then the seriously wounded Compan was carried away from the battlefield, and the command over the brigade was taken by the corps commander Marshal Davout himself, who rushed to the place. He managed to resume the fight and break into the southern flush after a bloody battle. Davout's horse was killed, the marshal himself, shell-shocked and stunned, fell and was crushed by the horse killed under him. Both the soldiers and the commanding staff at the first moment were convinced that Marshal Davout, who had lost consciousness, had been killed, and that was how Napoleon was immediately reported. The emperor immediately ordered Murat to become the head of the attackers and again storm the southern flush, from where the French were at that time thrown out by the Russian counterattack. Marshal Ney was ordered to support Murat with all his might, who also summoned the corps of the Duke d'Abrantes (Junot). New forces were also rushing to the scene of the battle. Having received such reinforcements, Murat (with the consent of Marshal Davout, who had recovered from the concussion) ordered to attack again. This third attack was much more violent than all the previous ones. Watching from a hill for the enemy troops continuously flowing to the battlefield, Bagration did not waste a minute and pulled literally all the forces that he rightfully had as the head of the 2nd Army, and even those that he rightfully did not have at all, to the flashes. The 27th division of Neverovsky (that is, what was left of it after Smolensk, and what it was replenished with after Smolensk), as well as the grenadier division of M.S.

To the south of the attacked southern flush, near the village of Utitsa, was General Tuchkov 1st with his 3rd corps. Bagration ordered Tuchkov, whom he had no right to order, because Tuchkov was subordinate to Barclay, so that he immediately sent Konovnitsyn's division to his aid. Tuchkov sent. But, of course, this was not enough against a huge army and, moreover, the best, selective forces thrown on a flash by Napoleon.

At Tuchkov 1st, when Kutuzov ordered to place him on the extreme southern end of the left flank, the following forces were under command: 3rd Infantry Corps, 6 Don Cossack regiments and 7 thousand militias. But Tuchkov, through no fault of his own, could not provide Bagration with all the help he would like at that moment.

Above, where it was said about Kutuzov's orders when he bypassed the location of the Russian troops on August 25 (September 6), it was already noted that Bennigsen arbitrarily (and without even notifying the commander-in-chief) canceled Kutuzov's order of an "ambush".

Shcherbinin's notes, along with some other Materials of the Military Scientist Archive of the General Staff, published by V. Kharkevich in 1900, throw a bright light on this whole story.It turns out that only at the beginning of 1813, two months before his death, Kutuzov found out what he had done with him and with Tuchkov, 1st Count Bennigsen, so zealously, let us note by the way, tried to denigrate the bright name of Kutuzov both during his lifetime and, especially, after the death of the great field marshal. Here is what Shcherbinin told. After inspecting the Borodino position, Kutuzov conceived the intention of placing part of the army "hidden from the enemy" behind the left flank. “When the enemy ... will use his last reserves on the left flank of Bagration, then I will send the hidden army to the flank and rear,” such were the exact words of Kutuzov. When the engineer captain sent by Kutuzov reported that the terrain was extremely favorable to this plan, the 3rd corps (Tuchkov 1st) and the Moscow militia were put by Kutuzov in this "ambush". Bypassing the position on August 25 (September 6), on the eve of the battle, Bennigsen suddenly canceled everything he had done on the orders of Kutuzov, and even canceled it "with annoyance." And Tuchkov emerged from the "ambush" and advanced his 3rd corps to the Jaeger brigade, which separated the left flank from the Utitsky forest. Shcherbinin, who was at the same time, was convinced that Bennigsen was doing his act with the permission of the commander-in-chief. But it turned out (unfortunately, too late) that Kutuzov had no idea about this unheard-of audacity and arbitrariness of Bennigsen.

Only in February 1813 in Kalisz, in Kutuzov's headquarters, Shcherbinin, in a casual conversation with Tolya, asked Tolya why Kutuzov then changed his plan for an ambush on the left flank of the Borodino camp. Shcherbinin told everything, and the "astonished" Tol immediately rushed to Kutuzov, who then learned about everything for the first time. “One can imagine,” writes Shcherbinin, “how during the Battle of Borodino, Kutuzov, who believed Tuchkov in a hidden place, was surprised by the news that Tuchkov had become an object and soon a victim of the first onslaught of the French. Even the suspicion fell on poor Tuchkov in the main apartment that he did not know how to hold on. " His corps fought with the 10-thousandth corps of Poniatowski, and he himself was killed on the spot, and therefore it became easy to blame him.

All the harmfulness of this arbitrariness of Bennigsen became clear only later, when it became clear from the Russian papers of Marshal Berthier that fell into the hands of Marshal Berthier that if Tuchkov with his 3rd corps and the militia had appeared, as Kutuzov had hoped, by the end of the battle for Semenovskoye, “then the appearance of this hidden detachment , according to Kutuzov's plan, but in the flank and rear of the enemy at the end of the battle it would have been disastrous for the enemy. And this was prevented by Bennigsen's unforgivable order ”19. Shcherbinin, in addition, carried away, insists that Tuchkov's corps and, in general, "put by Bennigsen in the impossibility of fighting because of the disadvantageous location, has become completely useless." Shcherbinin here expresses itself completely unreasonably about "complete uselessness": with his detachment of three thousand and a half thousand regular troops, Tuchkov still, firstly, for a long time held back Ponyatovsky's 10-thousandth corps and waged a heroic struggle for the Utitsky mound and, secondly, prevented the enemy from making a detour of the Russian left wing.

Bennigsen not only committed this act without permission, contrary to discipline, but did not even bother to inform either Bagration or Kutuzov himself about it, who, of course, would have resisted, because this arbitrary invasion of Bennigsen into the field marshal's plan, firstly, deprived Bagration of chances a strong and, most importantly, a sudden strike at the right moment on the attacking flushes of the French and, secondly, irreparably nullified the whole Kutuzov idea of ​​an "ambush". Through the fog of false testimony and self-praise of this intriguer Bennigsen, who hated Kutuzov, many memoirists did not at all discern and do not even mention his arbitrary course of action in this case.

There is not the slightest reason to blame Kutuzov or Tolya or Tuchkov for the fact that Bagration did not receive full help from the 3rd corps in time.

In his book "Borodino", published by the Society of Zealots of Military Knowledge in 1912 ("Borodino. According to new data"), A. Gerua says that Bennigsen acted in accordance with the instructions crocs(a scheme that had a leading value), and therefore allegedly "formally" was right (?), "although ... and did not agree with Kutuzov's intention," because Kutuzov set up a "flank ambush", and not a simple "frontal screen". A. Gerua, however, immediately writes: “In his memoirs Bennigsen ... tries to justify the open location of the ambush by the desire to make a“ demonstration ”out of the ambush. But this explanation is, in essence, only an unsuccessful attempt to determine the change in the combat disposition, which happened, supposedly, deliberately. " All this is correct, as a criticism of Bennigsen's false self-justification, but one cannot agree with Gerua's conclusion: “Since the main leaders were so badly oriented, it is not surprising that the executor Tuchkov was no better informed; and if the location of the ambush corps failed to Toll, and Bennigsen failed to correct it, it is not surprising that Tuchkov was not able to carry out the plan, the details of which were so badly understood by Toll, Bennigsen and Kutuzov himself ”20. But what does Kutuzov have to do with it? Kutuzov gives an extremely important, precise order, this order is arbitrary, without the knowledge commander-in-chief canceled and replaced by a completely different one, despite the protests of Tuchkov. The whole plan and command Kutuzov, are reduced to zero to great harm to the cause, and, moreover, secretly, behind the back of the commander-in-chief.

Kutuzov had to take into account the fact of the absence of Tuchkov with his 3rd corps at this very dangerous moment of the struggle among the flushes, which he provided for, although the reason for this absence could not, of course, be known to him then. In any case, the situation had to be reckoned with. The battle became more and more fierce from minute to minute. The deafening roar of artillery drowned out the voices of the people standing next to each other. At the strengthened (repeated) request of Bagration, Kutuzov ordered to send three regiments of the Guard - Izmailovsky, Finnish, Lithuanian, three cuirassier regiments and guards horse artillery to help him. But not all of them could arrive in time for the flushes with their full complement. The Russians, not paying any attention to the artillery smashing them, when the French had already approached all three flushes (and not only the southern one, originally planned), entered into the most brutal hand-to-hand combat. The commanding staff took full part in these hand-to-hand fights, which at first, during this third attack, led to the occupation of all three flushes by the French, and at the height of the battle Neverovsky was wounded very seriously and with difficulty he was taken out of the battle by his soldiers, after his 27 -I division withstood the onslaught in which it fought against the triple French forces that had surrounded it. The grenadier regiments of M. S. Vorontsov suffered even more, which continued to die, not yielding a single step for a long time, after their chief and his entire headquarters were either killed or severely wounded in a bayonet battle. Vorontsov, wounded with a bayonet, was carried away dead. After the extermination of the grenadiers, Russian cuirassiers rushed to beat off the occupied flushes and with an assault blow drove out the French who had settled there, destroying in a new hand-to-hand combat the few French who managed to stay alive from those whom the cuirassiers found in the flushes.

Napoleon confirmed his order - at all costs to repulse the flashes - and sent to the aid of Murat and Her one of the best divisions that Davout's exemplary corps had at his disposal, Friant's division, apparently trusting her more than the one originally sent (and now returned) to them the Polish division of Claparede. The battle resumed with unprecedented ferocity. By sending a fresh selection of Friant's division after the terrible French losses in a five-hour fighter struggle for flushes, the French emperor clearly showed that he considers Bagration's flushes the center of the great battle, on the mastery of which the outcome of the struggle depends. Russian reinforcements, due to terrain conditions, could approach more slowly than Friant's division arrived at the place of battle. Sending Friant, and then greatly strengthening the cavalry, Napoleon was already aware that that part of the reinforcements called by Bagration (namely Konovnitsyn's division), which hastily arrived at the scene of the battle, since it was relatively close, immediately led the assault, beating off the flushes from the French, and knocked them out in a bloody battle. True, Napoleon's order was categorical, and Ney again took possession of the flushes, throwing new reinforcements that were continuously approaching him, this happened after Friant's arrival. At the same time, Napoleon ordered new batteries to be moved closer to the flashes. Sparing no shells, the French artillery smashed the battlefield, but the Russian did not remain silent, in no way yielding to the enemy either in the energy of fire or in accuracy. That the Russian artillerymen fired during the entire battle, not only not yielding, but exceeding the accuracy of the French, was recognized by many of the command staff of the enemy army. But for Kutuzov, the defense of the flashes was only a very important section of the battle front, and for Napoleon, this was the decision of the fate of the entire war. He was eager to turn the struggle against the left Russian flank into a general battle, which for Kutuzov it was not at all. Borodino for the Russians was not at all and could not be in the exact sense of the word a "general battle", that is, the clash that decides the fate of the war and ends the war. The Russian commander-in-chief saw that Bagration's troops were doing something beyond human strength, destroying the best, selected corps of Napoleon, but Kutuzov did not want to lay the entire Russian army here.

Ney and Davout decided to use a large flanking movement to aid the frontal attacks.

A very clear account of two unsuccessful attempts by the enemy to bypass the Russian troops in the midst of the struggle on the left flank (during continuous attacks of flashes) is provided by the testimony of Buturlin, an eyewitness and participant in the defense of flushes. “At this time (after the failure of the fifth attack - E. T.) Marshal Ney, seeing that the attack of the flashes ... was not progressing, decided to bypass them and move Junot's corps between the left side of the position and the troops of General Tuchkov. If the enemy had managed to break through from this side, then things would have taken an even worse turn, because not only would they have bypassed the Semyonovsk fortifications, but General Tuchkov would have been cut off from the rest of the army ... ”Fortunately, Lieutenant General Golitsyn overturned and drove into the forest of Junot's column, and new attempts by the French were also completely suppressed by Russian horse artillery and attacks by Russian cuirassiers. The Westphalian corps, subordinate to Marshal Davout, Duke of Eckmühl, was immediately completely defeated: E. T.) cuirassier - made it possible to bypass the cuirassier from the flank. But the infantry regiments - Brest, Ryazan, Minsk and Kremenchug 2nd corps - rushed to the Westphalians, chopped them to pieces(italics E. T. - ed.) and took possession of the forest. "

We see here an example of what Kutuzov's "defense" so often turned into in the Battle of Borodino!

Thus ended the first attempt to bypass the Russian forces before the flushes. And here is the second attempt, revealing the full depth of the strategic thought of the commander-in-chief, who foresaw the danger of bypassing the left wing. Here the struggle was between Tuchkov's 3rd corps and the corps of Prince Ponyatovsky, which was almost three times larger in number. Poniatovsky planned to take possession of the Utitsky kurgan. This point was all the more important because he commanded over all the surroundings and that if the enemy took possession of it, he could completely bypass Tuchkov's left flank, which would not have been able to hold out on the Old Smolensk road. The enemy columns launched an attack with heat, under the protection of a battery of 40 guns, which Poniatovsky placed to the right of the river. Ducklings. However, the fierce fire of the Russian battery and the rifle fire of the grenadier regiments, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinoslav, could not stop their impulse. There was a mound. captured, and the Poles (Poniatowski's corps) continued their movements and threatened to bypass the Russian grenadier division from the flank and rear. Then General Tuchkov, sensing the critical moment, decided to gather all his forces "to repulse the point captured by the enemy, and at the head of the Pavlovsk regiment stopped the enemy and ordered Generals Stroganov and Olsufyev to attack the mound." The mound was taken back by storm from the enemy. “The non-adversary, discouraged by the experienced losses, moved far from the cannons placed by the Russians on the mound” 21. Tuchkov received a mortal wound in this battle. Having received reinforcements, Poniatovsky again resumed the struggle for the Utitsky Kurgan. General Baggovut, who replaced Tuchkov, eventually withdrew the 3rd corps and the 2nd corps, also under his command, to the headwaters of the stream flowing from the Semyonov Upland. Here, as we will see later, he established contact with the troops of the 2nd Army, which were under the general command of Dokhturov, who brought them here after the battles at the Semenovsky ravine.

The denouement - not a war or even a struggle for the left flank, but only for flashes - was approaching.

A large offensive movement, started by Bagration at twelve o'clock in the morning, faced a counterattack by the French, and in this oncoming battle the fierce battle went on with every minute hesitation. The card fire intensified. This was already the fifth attack of the flushes.

And suddenly Russian soldiers in the midst of the battle noticed from a distance that Bagration was slowly falling from his horse. The nearby ranks already knew more precisely about the misfortune that had happened ... A card bullet hit Bagration and pierced the tibia. This moment turned out to be a turning point in the fight for flushes, a turning point, but not the last one.

Let's listen to eyewitnesses.

An officer of the Neverovsky division, N.I. Andreev, briefly and clearly painted a picture of what was happening on the Bagrationov flashes in the first, morning hours of Borodino, when Napoleon ordered King Murat and Marshals Davout and Ney to strike on the left flank of the Russian army with combined forces. “From the 25th to the 26th in the night, close to us, the enemy sang songs, beat drums, the music thundered, and at dawn we saw a forest cut down and opposite us, where there was a forest, a huge battery appeared. As soon as it was dawn, an extraordinary spectacle opened up: a knock (a roar - E. T.) guns to the point that no gunshot was heard before noon, all continuous cannon fire. They say that the sky was on fire; but hardly anyone saw the sky behind the incessant smoke. Our huntsmen were few in business, but the case was artillery everywhere, in the morning against Ney, Murat and Davout corps. Our division was destroyed(italics E. T.- ed.). I was again sent for gunpowder, and I, riding on horseback, could not only drive along the road, but also across the field from the wounded and mutilated people and horses, which were running in a terrible state. I cannot describe these horrors; and even now I cannot remember the most terrible sight. And the knock from the guns was such that it was deafening for five miles and this was incessantly ... Here my pen cannot trace the whole picture ... I sent the boxes back, and I went forward to the village of Semenovskaya, which was blazing in the fire. On the field I met our Major Burmin, who had 40 people. it there was our regiment ...(italics E. T.- ed.). Having climbed into the forest, I came across a most terrible and unprecedented picture. Infantry of various regiments, cavalry dismounted without horses, artillerymen without guns. Everyone fought as best he could, some with a cleaver, saber, club, some with fists. God, what a horror! My huntsmen scattered through the forest and I never saw them again ... ”The cannon firing that began at dawn, even at 10 o'clock in the morning, continued with unrelenting force. At 11 o'clock in the morning, when Neverovsky gathered his division, it turned out that it was left alive ... seven hundred people. And other divisions defending the Bagration flushes were not in the best position. “We saw how the Semenovsky regiment, standing in position for several hours, without firing a single shot, was destroyed with cannonballs ... Two cuirassier regiments, Novorossiysk and Malorossiysk ... went to the enemy battery. The picture was great! The cuirassiers showed their courage: no matter how grape-shot they were felled, but although with half their strength, they reached the goal and the battery was theirs. But what kind of fire they endured, it was hell! .. I saw when they removed our unforgettable prince Bagration from a horse wounded in the leg and how patient and cold-blooded he was; dismounted from the horse for the last time and encouraged the soldiers to avenge themselves ... I did not take care of myself and out of habit was on fire. He could not bear the wound and soon died ... The skeletons of the regiments of our division came to Count Miloradovich in the rearguard ”22.

The death of Bagration coincided with the moment when Napoleon sent almost three times more guns to attack the flushes than until now, not 150, but more than 400 guns. When Bagration was hit by a splinter of a nucleus that shattered the tibia, he, knowing how the wound of their favorite could embarrass the soldiers, tried to hide his wound for some time, but the blood flooded him and poured onto the ground. He began to fall silently off the horse. They carried him away. The left wing moved back a little, but continued to fight with the same courage: the thirst for revenge for the dying wounded hero seized the soldiers. Cuirassier Adrianov, who served Bagration during the battle, ran to the stretcher and shouted: "Your Excellency, they are taking you to heal, you no longer need me!" Having shouted this, Adrianov, as eyewitnesses say, "in the sight of thousands, set off like an arrow, instantly crashed into the ranks of the enemies and, having struck many, fell dead."

It was still a long way from the end of the battle, but some immediate and correct instinct told the Russian participants and observers of the struggle for the Bagration flushes that the French losses on the Russian left flank and near the village of Semyonovskaya could not be compensated for by any "victory" in this place. This is what the participant and the most truthful observer, military engineer Bogdanov saw and heard: “The tremulous feeling of strong impressions and together the majestic beginning of the central battle presented an amazing sight. From two batteries near the village of Gorki, along the entire line of the 6th and 7th corps, to the village of Semenovskaya, whitish clouds of smoke rose from the numerous artillery, and all this at the moment merged into one incessant thunder with the fire of the left flank. Everything around us was covered, in the full sense of the word, with clouds of thick smoke; nothing could be seen. The general continuous rumble of thunder, the howl and whistle of innumerable shells shook the air, the earth trembled. It is difficult to determine the time of our stressful state, I do not know what is happening around us and behind us? The phenomenon is rare, unprecedented! Up to a thousand guns thundered on both sides, and more than 150 thousand soldiers fought along some four-mile stretch, counting from the village of Gorki to Utitsa. The history of nations to this day has not yet written a new page about a battle similar to Borodino, in terms of the number of soldiers killed. But a strange, amazing and incomprehensible thing: at four versts of incessant thunder, a fierce attack from one side and a heroic defense on the other, suddenly, as if by a wave of a conventional sign of some force, the dog fell silent, only one triumphant cries were heard. Two regiments of our cavalry at that moment were rushing violently among the discordant crowd of the fleeing enemy, inflicting death and final defeat. "

While the battle for the flush and for Semenovskoye was going on, it was still impossible to give oneself an approximate account of the monstrous losses of the enemy: “Marshal Davout, advancing on the fortifications of the left flank near the village of Semenovskaya, was twice thrown back with heavy losses to the forest.

Ney is in a hurry to attach his troops to it, and both marshals, taking advantage of the superiority of the number of forces, supported by cavalry and the thunder of numerous cannons, entered the fortifications three times, and their soldiers, falling under concentrated cruel grape-shot and rifle fire, died under Russian bayonets. The firmness, strengthened by the faith of our valiant soldiers, withstood all three onslaught of the enormous forces of the enemy, who were courageously repulsed by those who had arrived in time to reinforce the entire corps of General Baggovut, and each time we were driven to the forest. But we did not remain without the loss of many brave ones. Prince Bagration and General Tuchkov 1st received mortal wounds. The chief of artillery, Count Kutaisov, has been killed. "

The Russian participant in the battle and a very intelligent, perceptive and cautious observer, Lieutenant General Bogdanov recalls in his handwritten notes how Napoleon feared only one thing at night before the Battle of Borodino: lest the Russians evade the battle, and for him Napoleon's fatal miscalculation was already obvious now, after the very first hours of the bloody battle: “Barely thick clouds of powder smoke, quietly rising, opened the horizon; what a terrifying spectacle presented itself to the eyes, the entire area from the fortification to the Semyonovsky stream and the Kolocha river was covered with the corpses of enemies; on the wolf pits lay heaps of mixed people and horses. The enemy in the general offensive suffered, apparently, enormous losses of his forces. The whole area in front of the village of Semenovskaya, in the bushes to the forest, among the lunettes and further to the left of them, according to eyewitnesses, was covered with bodies. Here, apparently, the last hour struck the power of the proud oppressor of nations and indicated the beginning of his fall ”23.

How deeply truthful and penetrating is this judgment of a man who only by chance survived among the horrors of Bagration's flushes, Semyonovsky and Utitsa! He clearly understood even then, on the site of the battle that had not yet ended, that after such losses, the enemy could not have a victory in any way, that is, a real victory, the one he had been chasing for two and a half months from the Neman to Shevardin.

After the death of Bagration, Konovnitsyn took command of the forces of the 2nd army, who led the troops to the village of Semenovskaya. The French took over the flushes and began to gain a foothold in them. Konovnitsyn could resume the fight, asking only for the necessary reinforcements. But, as said, Kutuzov did not consider it necessary to satisfy the obvious desire of the enemy to play a "general battle" here and not only refused Konovnitsyn, but also appointed Alexander of Württemberg as commander of the orphaned 2nd Army in his place. Alexander Württemberg supported Konovnitsyn's request. Then Kutuzov immediately replaced him and ordered Dokhturov to take command over all the forces of Bagration, seriously wounded and carried away from the battlefield. Kutuzov foresaw what many, even very talented and valiant generals, like Kutuzov's favorite, Konovnitsyn, of whom the Russian army was proud (“Konovnitsyn, honor of the war!”), Overlooked many, even very talented and valiant generals. The old commander-in-chief expected what happened: after capturing the flushes, Napoleon had already outlined a new direction for the main attack, or, more precisely, the strengthening of the attacks on the positions of the center of the Russian army already in the morning.

A dense mass of French troops received a new assignment: to seize Kurgan Heights, defeating the Rayevsky battery stationed there and the troops stationed near it.

Around Kurgan Heights, the second main act of the great collision took place, which first Napoleon bulletins, and then French historians, both old and new, call the "Borodino victory" Russian armed forces, who took away from Napoleon what he always valued most - the strategic initiative, and his army had the former power, which it still possessed to a large extent before the Battle of Borodino - material and moral power. The first act of the Napoleonic tragedy that played out on the fields of Borodino was a bloody struggle for the Bagrationovskoye flushes and for Semenovskoye, the second - the struggle for Kurgan Heights. If the French (including the last of them Louis Madlaine) want to call an event a victory that brought the French army and the French empire very close to the abyss, into which they fell, let it be called that, contrary to obviousness and common sense. For the Russian people and for Russian history, which has recreated its past, Borodino will forever remain a great triumph of the mighty selfless heroism of the Russian army, Russian military art and the people's indestructible, proud self-awareness. The first act of the great historical tragedy, which brought Russia such unfading glory, and the aggressor who attacked her - such a terrible death in the near future, was the fight for flashes, the second - the battles at Kurgan Heights. Expensive, incredibly expensive, were patched by Napoleon and France for the possession of these two places in less than one day ...

After the injury of Bagration, the troops were withdrawn by Konovnitsyn from the flashes in full battle order.

One of Napoleon's main miscalculations during the Battle of Borodino was that he clearly considered the case on the left flank to be liquidated after the disappearance of Bagration and the subsequent withdrawal of the Russian forces from the flashes. But in fact, it was just entering a new phase.

It was already about one in the afternoon when the Russians resumed the battle at the Semyonovskiye Heights with "a terrible thunder of artillery." Up to 700 guns thundered on both sides. Here is the testimony of a direct participant in this phase of a new battle on the left flank: “This startling scene presented a new feast of death; corpses fell and covered the previous victims ... The Russians kept order and their places with grace and courage; more than once the columns of those advancing from buckshot and bullets thinned, and the fearless ones fell from the Russian bayonets! .. The Russian regiments also lost a lot of their brave, but behind all that their lines were in a terrible position. General Dokhturov, leading them against the huge masses of the advancing enemy, fulfilled with firmness and dignity the confidence placed on him in such an important matter; he appeared wherever there was danger, and the troops bravely held their places. “Under him, one horse was killed, the other was wounded. Napoleon hesitated for a long time with a predicament from unsuccessful attempts to break our lines ... "24. Murat, the king of Neapolitan, even more zealously and persistently than he did together with Davout and with Marshal Nei in the morning hours in front of the Bagration flushes, begged the emperor to finally move the guard. And Napoleon no longer rejected these requests with the same determination and impatience, he hesitated and hesitated. But suddenly the adjutants came rushing in, bringing completely unexpected news: the Russian cavalry appeared at the location of the guards regiments and attacked the rear of the French army! Napoleon again - not for the first and not for the last time - was convinced that he was "outwitted" by the enemy about whom Suvorov used to say: "Smart, smart! Cunning, cunning! " It was not a matter of "cunning", but the fact that with his military genius, his insightful understanding of the nature of the enemy, Kutuzov sensed what was happening in the enemy's mind at that moment, and decided that the moment had come for a bold and sudden sabotage.

Simultaneously with the continuing fierce onslaught of the French cavalry on Semenovskoye, attacks in the center of the Russian position on the Rayevsky battery intensified, which began in the morning hours on the orders of Viceroy Eugene after the French captured Borodino, overcoming fierce resistance from an insignificant detachment of jaegers.

So many truly untold human sacrifices were cost on Borodino day this fortification at Kurgan height, such a role was played by this battle for the Raevsky battery, famous in the history of the Battle of Borodino, that it is very worthwhile to acquaint the reader with some of the details of its construction, which are given in his manuscript by a military engineer who strengthened it , Bogdanov 2nd, later Lieutenant General. “At 11 o'clock in the morning (from 25 to 26 August 1812 - E. T.) I was ordered to go to General Raevsky. I found him on a battery built as a result of his instructions. The battery was completely exhausted and the guns were in place. " Bogdanov found that it was set up well, since "the whole area that lay in front of it was protected by strong crossfire" from an open battery of 60 guns stationed near the village of Semyonovskaya, and two batteries, one stationed near the village of Gorki, and the other belonging to artillery of the 6th corps. The artillery of the 7th corps could also act on top of this, to help 60 guns from the village of Semenovskaya. Bogdanov liked that the battery was thus protected from a distance by strong crossfire. But this was not enough for Raevsky:

“General Raevsky,” writes Bogdanov, “received me in the following words: we built this battery ourselves; your boss, visiting me, praised the work and the location; but as open and flat terrain can be attacked by cavalry, he advised in front of the battery, at a distance of 50 fathoms, to spread a chain of wolf pits; We have done this, now one and the most important thing remains: the enemy, when protected by us, can bypass us and occupy a fortification from the rear; it is necessary to put a strong obstacle to him in this. Look around and tell me what to do and how to do it. "

After examining the battery, Bogdanov found that it had 19 guns 25, the length of its curved line was up to 60 fathoms, the width of the ditch was 3 1/2 fathoms, and the depth at the counter-escarp was up to 1 1/2 fathoms. “But in order to give it more interior space, it was necessary, despite the shortness of time, to supplement its two flanks with an earthen embankment of a breastwork with moats, and to close the gorge with a double palisade, with two driveways, with arches palisaded in them; wood and iron to use from the dismantled villages. " They set to work immediately, to finish it by dawn, when they expected the first attack on the center of our position. They worked with the utmost energy and indefatigability for human forces. By 4 1/2 o'clock in the morning, the task was completed. Flanks of 12 1/2 fathoms each were created (there were two of them), and the palisade (one 8 feet high, the other 6 1/2 feet) "was sunk into the ground half a fathom".

After examining everything that Bogdanov had done during the night and the people given to him for this earthwork, Raevsky ordered to strengthen the cover (“internal cover”) and said to his generals: “Now, gentlemen, we will be calm; Emperor Napoleon saw a simple, open battery during the day, and his troops would find the fortress ”26. When Bogdanov was finishing his work, which turned the open battery into a fortress (into a closed lunette), it was already dawn. From afar, Bogdanov, Raevsky and Ermolov and General Foerster, who were approaching them, were heard: "Vive 1" Empereur! " ("Long live the emperor!") In the French camp, Napoleon's order was read to the companies, in which the soldiers were promised complete victory and blessed rest in Moscow, the gates to which will be opened by the upcoming triumph of the invincible emperor ...

And very soon after the Raevsky battery was ready and the "internal cover" - about two thousand people - was introduced into the fortification, a series of violent attacks from the enemy's cavalry followed. Thus, at the same time, a menacingly aggravated danger approached both on the left flank - against Semenovsky, and in the center - against the lunette at the Kurgan height (Raevsky's battery).

An event took place here, which in its consequences saved the central battery at Kurgan height (Rayevsky's battery) from immediate and inevitable danger, delayed the end of the struggle for it by several hours, also weakened the French attacks on Semenovskoye, inflicted new heavy blows on the French army, costing it new severe losses and subsequently completed the work of the Russian defense both on the left flank and in the center, upsetting and weakening Napoleon's armed forces and depriving Napoleon of victory. We are talking about the sudden, truly brilliant order of Kutuzov, which followed after the very first attacks on the central battery, when these attacks became (after the French occupied flushes) more and more formidable and fierce.

This is how his aide-de-camp and historian Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, who was with him at that time, describes this creative moment of the Russian strategist. When Kutuzov was at Gorki and, wishing to better survey the area, “rode up to the mound,” on which there was a battery of three guns, then “the consequence of this personal survey were two orders given by Kutuzov. 1) Miloradovich with the 4th Infantry Corps, Count Osterman, and the 2nd Cavalry Corps, standing on the right wing, Korf, approach the center; 2) Platov, with the Cossacks, and Uvarov, with the 1st Cavalry Corps, wade through Kolocha ... and attack the enemy's left wing. With this movement, Prince Kutuzov hoped to divert Napoleon's attention and divert some of his forces from our left wing. " The order was immediately transmitted, and Platov's Cossack cavalry (nine Cossack regiments) and Uvarov's cavalry rushed from their positions, heading for the rear of the left wing of the enemy army. This cavalry raid was a complete surprise for Napoleon, and also for almost the entire Russian command staff. The confusion on the French left wing at first took on the character of panic that arose in places. The swiftness of the movement of the Russian cavalry, the thunderous Cossack "hurray!" and the impossibility of even roughly comprehending what had happened — all this paralyzed all resistance within a few moments. Napoleon noticed from a distance that something inexplicable had happened on the left flank. Not immediately receiving any sensible and plausible explanation of the cause of the confusion and not waiting for the return of Uvarov and Platov, who received Barclay's order and fled from the French location as swiftly as they flew in. Napoleon, under the first impression of an arrow, flew to his left flank, before that he gave several important orders. First, he canceled the order he had just given just before about a new attack by the viceroy's forces on Kurgan Heights; secondly, he, who had just given the order, which the marshals had asked him for so long and in vain during the battle at the Bagrationovs' flashes, about the appearance of the regiments of the young guard to help the viceroy and Murat's cavalry, canceled this order and ordered to immediately return the young guard to its starting position. This, by the way, eased the position of the Russians to the highest degree, because, as the adjutant of Kutuzov testifies, "the strength of our troops, with all their courage, was beginning to deplete." Indeed, simultaneously with the attacks on the Raevsky battery (in the center), the fierce attacks of the French (cuirassier and mounted grenadiers) continued on the troops of the left flank - the remnants of the heroic divisions of Vorontsov, Neverovsky, Prince of Mecklenburg. After taking the flushes, they continued their fight in the positions where they retreated.

When Kutuzov gave his rescue order for the bold offensive sabotage of Uvarov and Platov, he himself was in mortal danger. Here is the testimony of the one who was with him. “Wanting to personally verify the fairness of the reports, Prince Kutuzov rode up a hillock, showered with fragments of grenades that flew in all directions. The life of the one on whom the hope of Russia lay was in the balance. In vain they tried to persuade him to go down the hillock, and when no convictions acted on Kutuzov, the adjutants took his horse by the bridle and led him out from under the shots. "

Kutuzov, fortunately, survived the mortal danger and could very soon notice and take into account the first consequences of his orders. Just before the attack of Uvarov and Platov on the rear of the left French flank, Napoleon felt himself to be a victor to such an extent that he decided that this time it was possible to send a young guard to hasten the victory, and suddenly everything changed: “He sent a young guard. Assigned to decide the fate of the battle, the guard moved off, but barely covered a short distance, Napoleon unexpectedly noticed on his left flank the appearance of Russian cavalry, the retreat of the viceroy's columns, running and alarm in the carts and in the rear of the army. Leaving the young guard, Napoleon himself went to the viceroy, wanting to learn about the reason for the confusion he was seeing. "

Uvarov made two attacks on the viceroy's troops and withdrew on the orders sent by Kutuzov, who was quite pleased with the successful demonstration. Uvarov himself was so carried away that he did not obey the first order, and Kutuzov was forced to categorically repeat his order. For their part, Platov's Cossacks wade across the Voika River and caused great confusion in the rear of Napoleon, and the French carts fled in the greatest disorder, and it was not immediately possible to stop and arrange them. This is evidenced not only by the Russian participants in the case, but also by the French. Platov, having fulfilled his instructions, returned with Uvarov only on orders.

Napoleon lost two whole hours because of this ingeniously conceived and brilliantly executed Kutuzov sabotage, and these two hours turned out to be an irreparable loss for the French. “Suddenly the type of affairs changed,” according to the persons who were at that moment in Kutuzov's circle. The defenders of the Raevsky battery (central battery) received a respite, the Russian command pulled up reinforcements.

The corps of Count Osterman (from the right flank) approached the center of the location of the Russian army. And from the left flank, Dokhturov brought in what was still alive from the 2nd (former Bagration's) army, as well as the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky guards regiments, which had been demanded by Bagration as reinforcements. The most responsible point, at which the most severe fire was directed at once from several sides, became the same "barrow", or "central", Raevsky's battery, which, thanks to the fortifications, turned, as it is said, into a "closed lunette" - as the builder defined it, Lieutenant General and Chief Engineer Bogdanov in his already cited manuscript.

During the resumption of the battle at Kurgan Hill after the commotion caused by the attack on the rear of Napoleon by Uvarov and Platov, Raevsky's battery was taken by the chief of the 24th division, Likhachev, with his infantry. The desperately intensified French cavalry attacks were increasingly concentrated on Likhachev's division. The French lost Montbrun, lost Caulaincourt, but no longer reckoned with any losses. “The enemy infantry climbed the rampart from all sides; it was thrown with bayonets into a ditch filled with the corpses of the dead; fresh columns took their place and with renewed fury climbed to die; ours greeted them with equal ferocity and themselves fell together with the enemies ”27. This is the story of Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, Kutuzov's adjutant during the entire Borodino battle.

Almost all the soldiers of that part of Likhachev, which occupied the battery, were killed. He himself was covered in blood from several severe wounds and fell to the ground, losing consciousness. He was raised and only because he was not finished off by the French cuirassier, he was recognized by his uniform as a general. He, wounded and drenched in blood, was carried to bandage, and then presented to Napoleon, who immediately returned his sword.

The moment of the most severe danger for the "big battery", as Napoleon called the Rayevsky battery all the time, came when Napoleon ordered Viceroy Eugene to dispatch three infantry divisions (including the exemplary divisions of Moran and Gerard) and Pear's cavalry corps to capture it. But this was not enough for Napoleon, although these forces given to Eugene for a new assault on a large battery, it would seem, were enough in view of their overwhelming superiority over the forces of the defenders. But Napoleon, after the horrors experienced in the morning hours during the attacks of the flashes, and after new terrible losses already experienced by the French, right there at Kurgannaya Heights, decided that the large battery should be attacked simultaneously from two sides: from the front, where the vice -King, and from the rear of the battery (on the left flank of the defenders).

To carry out this plan, Murat, in command of the cavalry, ordered General Caulaincourt (brother of the chief-equestrian of the former ambassador to the Russian court) and Montbrun, the head of the 2nd cuirassier corps, to descend from the Semyonovsk Upland, rush along the valley to the Raevsky battery and attack its rear ... But the stormy onslaught of the cuirassier was almost immediately broken, the attack was repulsed, and in the midst of the battle, first General Montbrun fell, and then General Caulaincourt. The other cavalry unit (two French cavalry regiments and a brigade of the Latour-Mobourg corps-Tillman's Saxon brigade) also had no success in trying to oust the Russians from the Raevsky lunette. Thus, the Russians repulsed all the attacks of the enemy's powerful cavalry. The Russian military critic Liprandi notes with just irony the perverted picture of the end of the battle for the battery, created by the hardworking efforts of French and German historians. Tilman and his Saxons were thrown back by the Russians with deadly fire, and neither Tilman's Germans (from the Latour-Mobourg corps) nor the French had the slightest success here. Even such comparatively less fantasizing German historians, like Schneidewind, “although they don’t pull heroic deeds on their brooders,” nevertheless falsely boast: E. T.) I want to show that we beat the Russians better than the French gentlemen of that time did. "

Against the fire of the Russian infantry, supported by artillery, the French cavalry massed for the attack could not do anything. A whole string of false testimonies by foreigners (this time even more Germans than French), hushing up the heroic counterattacks of the Russian cavalry and infantry, repeats the inventions about Tillman, who played a third-rate role, and the Saxon brigade. Not the last place among these falsifiers of Borodin's history is occupied by the adjutant wing of Alexander I Volzogen, the favorite of the tsar, who was under Barclay de Tolly, the same one about whom Leo Tolstoy, citing accurate The words spoken by this Prussian, speaks through the lips of one of the heroes of his immortal novel, that people like Wolzogen gave all of Europe to Napoleon, and then came to Russia to teach Russians how to wage a war against Napoleon. Wolzogen also obscures the unquestionably accurate fact that after the most destructive massacre, three infantry corps, dispatched, as it was said, by Napoleon at the disposal of Viceroy Eugene Beauharnais, took possession of Raevsky's battery. This Wolzogen, whom, by the way, we note that Bagration's entourage at the beginning of the war was suspected of spying, also tried, "like a German to" drag "Tillman: it was necessary to show that we too plowed and triumphed over the Russians" 28.

A number of testimonies from the direct participants in the battle testify that not only irritation, but also embarrassment and bewilderment more and more seized Napoleon as, at each stage of the Borodino battle, new and new masses of Russian troops appeared before him, fiercely repelling his attacks. In the midst of the battle at Kurgan Heights, Napoleon came up with the very disturbing thought that fresh Russian regiments were already standing in front of him, arriving in time to help Kutuzov from the Danube. And from the very beginning of the invasion of Russia, he flattered himself with the illusion that the Turks, at his own instigation, would violate the Bucharest Peace and renew the war against Russia. Here is a characteristic, according to Likhachev, testimony of Sergei Glinka: “When the Russian guard withstood and repelled the threefold efforts of the French horse grenadiers and cuirassiers named by Napoleon iron army, and when the Russian cavalry, in turn, threatened his left wing: then Napoleon threw over the bulk of his troops into the middle of the Russian regiments standing on the mound ... The guard moved closer both to death and to the destruction of enemies. The gross pressure rushes to the fortification, where General Likhachev commanded ... The first impulse was repelled. Napoleon oppresses his ranks more densely and attacks more violently. Over the corpses of his fallen regiments, new ones are flying, the fortification is captured. Likhachev, stained with blood flowing from his wounds ... throwing life away from himself, burst into the ranks of the enemy for obvious death. He was captured and presented to Napoleon ... Asking Likhachev about the Russian war with Turkey, he is Napoleon - E. T.) learns that the war is already over and that the Russian regiments, from the borders of Turkey, set out in Russia ”29. But none of the Moldavian army had time and could not have time to take part in the Battle of Borodino.

Both Russian and French eyewitnesses and accomplices of the struggle that raged near Raevsky's battery left unforgettable pictures of this battle. It is about this stage of the Borodino battle that the testimony of Russian soldiers and officers speaks, which formed the basis, for example, of the history of the Moscow regiment, which was destined, by the way, to play such an honorable role later in the Decembrist uprising. Here is what is written here about Borodin and, in particular, about the protection of Raevsky's battery: “It is difficult to imagine the bitterness of both sides ... Many of the fighters threw down their weapons, grappled with each other, tore each other's mouths, strangled one another in close embraces and fell together dead. The artillery galloped over the corpses as if on a log pavement, squeezing the corpses into the blood-soaked earth. Many battalions were so mixed among themselves that in the general dump it was impossible to distinguish the enemy from their own. The mutilated people and horses lay in groups, the wounded wandered to the dressing stations as long as they could, and when exhausted, they fell, but not on the ground, but on the corpses of the fallen earlier. Iron and iron refused to serve the vengeance of the people; the red-hot cannons could not withstand the action of gunpowder and burst with a crash, striking the gunners who charged them; the cannonballs, hitting the ground with a squeal, threw up the bushes and blew up the fields like a plow. Powder boxes flew into the air. The cries of the commanders and the screams of despair in ten languages ​​were drowned out by gunfire and drumbeats. From more than a thousand cannons, flames sparkled on both sides and a deafening thunder roared, from which the earth trembled for several miles. Batteries and fortifications passed from hand to hand. The battlefield was then a terrible sight.

Several times the battery of Raevsky and the "gorja" leading to it passed from hand to hand. Russian infantry with bayonets, Russian artillery with intensified fire threw back and exterminated cuirassiers, lancers, infantrymen, who were elected to the height, managed to chop the defenders, but were thrown away by the reinforcements that arrived in time. The terrible carnage ended with the capture of the battery, which was directly covered on all approaches with thick layers of the corpses of the Russians and French.

The battle continued after the enemy occupied the lunette (Rayevsky's battery) for several more hours as on the left flank, where the commander, General Dokhturov, successfully repelled a number of new and new attacks and where Ponyatovsky, with heavy losses, managed to push Baggovut a little, after which Baggovut threw Ponyatovsky away, inflicting losses on him. in the center and on the right flank in the last hours of the battle (from the capture of the Raevsky battery until 7 pm) an artillery exchange of fire took place. A pile of corpses covered Kurgan heights. In the memory of eyewitnesses, there were “herds of horses without riders” who, “having scattered their manes, whinnied, ran among the dead and wounded, knocked out guns and skeletons of boxes were scattered across the field” 30.

It was getting dark. The darkness was intensified by large clouds. The battle was over. From the field came the screams and groans of the wounded, who found it difficult to give even a little help. In the first hours of the coming night, both armies remained approximately in the places where they were found by the end of the battle. The French were the first to retreat from the field of the silenced battle. Before leaving, Napoleon ordered his troops to clear the Bagrationov flashes, Semyonovskoye, the village of Borodino, Kurgan heights with its destroyed lunette, Raevsky's batteries, where thousands of people died, where the highly gifted chief of the Russian artillery Kutaisov died in the midst of the battle, when Yermolov's attempt to return temporarily repulsed by the French was successful. battery and where the best Napoleonic generals Montbrun, Caulaincourt were killed, General Bonami, stabbed with bayonets, was taken prisoner ...

Sullen, irritated, silent, accompanied by a small retinue that did not dare to speak to him, Napoleon rode through those parts of the Borodino field, where a horse's hoof (only) could step between corpses lying everywhere and moaning crippled and wounded people. The retinue noticed that the Russians groan much less than the soldiers of the army of different tribes that invaded Russia, and they endure their grievous torment incomparably more courageously.

The Kutuzov generals were at their best in the face of, first of all, the chief commanders. One after another heroes fall on the flashes and on the Semyonov Upland, and Kutuzov immediately finds someone to replace them. They carry away the seriously wounded Bagration, and now Dokhturov appears at his post, and even before the arrival of Dokhturov Konovnitsyn, and in this very short period of time of his higher command, he manages to inflict a heavy blow on Napoleon's cuirassiers. He remembers his exploits like this. Even before Bagration was wounded, Konovnitsyn stood in front of the Semyonov heights, already taken by the enemy. “I decided to take them. My division followed me, and with it I found myself on the heights and occupied our former fortifications. With this rather happy incident, I receive the news that Bagration and his general staff (chief of staff of the 2nd army- E. T.) Saint-Prix were wounded, whom they had already suffered, and I, as at this point in charge, Bagration left the main command; why should I immediately enter the new leadership, be guided in everything that is, before sending General Dokhturov ”31.

But then a moment comes, well known to us from other testimonies. A massive cavalry attacked Konovnitsyn. “Seeing the aspiration of all the enemy cavalry, from which a cloud of dust up to the heavens showed me its approach to me in a column, I with the Izmailovsky regiment, arranging his chess square, decided to wait out all the enemy cavalry, which in the form of a whirlwind flew into me. There were three enemy attacks of this kind, all unsuccessful. The Izmailovo grenadiers, without upsetting the formation, rushed at the giants, bound in armor, and overthrew these strange horsemen with bayonets. " Kutuzov had every reason to rely on Bagration, the mortally wounded Bagration - on Konovnitsyna, Konovnitsyn - on his 3rd Infantry Division, which was throwing back the selected cuirassier units of Napoleon with bayonets ... Izmailovsky and Lithuanian regiments suffered terrible losses in this bayonet battle, but also inflicted heavy losses on the divisions Friana, who occupied Semenovskoye and its large ravine during the fierce battles. And nevertheless, the Russian guardsmen, Izmailovtsy and Lithuanians, until the end of the battle, were not completely driven out of Semyonovsky, just like the Finnish Guards Regiment, but remained, retreating higher from the ravine. The manuscript of Lieutenant General Bogdanov says the following about the events that took place on the Semyonov Upland after the capture of three Bagration flushes (Semyonov lunettes, as he calls them): all the efforts of the French to shoot down our lines remained unsuccessful until the end of the battle ”32. This precise and categorical testimony of the most active participant and eyewitness is of decisive importance in this case. This means that on the left flank, the French did not manage to finally achieve their goal until the very end of the battle, contrary to the assertions of French sources.

After Bagration was wounded, after some (minor) retreat under the command of Konovnitsyn and then the arrival of the newly appointed commander of the left wing of the army, Dokhturov, the fierce struggle for flashes resumed, and a series of fierce attacks followed one after the other. And simultaneously with the continuation, with varying success, of the struggle for the flushes and for the Semenovskaya Upland, the offensive actions of the French in the center intensified. The first big attack on the "close lunette" (Raevsky's battery) was brilliantly repulsed and cost the enemy enormous losses even before the attackers approached the lunette: dense masses; getting under targeted fire from a closed steady rest and then entering the sphere of grape-shot fire from more than 200 cannons is not an easy task. It is difficult to maintain ... composure when people lie down and die in the hundreds ”33. This was the first repulsed attempt by the French to take the lunette "on the move"; the first - but not the last.

One after another, Napoleon sent the Viceroy, at his insistent requests, significant reinforcements. But when, completely unexpectedly for Napoleon, who already considered the matter with the flushes finished, suddenly, after Bagration was wounded, the Russians again knocked the French out of the flushes, were then knocked out by the French and again almost immediately were knocked out by the Russians with terrible losses, the emperor had to refuse to send against the center of the Russian position of large cavalry masses, until it is possible to finally push the Russian troops back from the flushes and from key points on the eastern part of the Semyonov Upland. But when the flushes were finally taken again, Murat launched a violent attack with massive cavalry. Light and part of the heavy cavalry were thrown to Semyonovskaya Heights and although they did not completely capture it, despite heavy losses, they moved further, to the center of the Russian position, to Kurgan Hill. Here a fierce battle took place in the struggle for the battery (more precisely, the "closed lunette"), into which this central battery of the Kurgan Heights was turned.

Here is what we read in the later report of the chief of the right flank Barclay de Tolly to the commander-in-chief Kutuzov about one of the amazing feats of the Russian troops. This feat made it possible to save the lunette (Rayevsky's battery or, as Barclay calls it, "the central battery") from immediate capture by the enemy. The shelling of this point by French artillery was becoming more brutal from minute to minute. Barclay considered the named battery "the key to our entire position." Here is what he informs Kutuzov: “Soon after the enemy had captured all the fortifications of the left flank, under the cover of the strongest cannonade and crossfire of his numerous artillery, he attacked the central battery, covered by the 26th division. He succeeded in taking and overturning the aforementioned division, but the chief of the main headquarters of the 1st Army, Major General Yermolov, with his usual decisiveness, taking only the 3rd battalion of the Ufa regiment, stopped the fleeing and a crowd in the form of a column hit with bayonets. The enemy defended himself fiercely, his batteries did a terrible devastation, but nothing resisted. Following the aforementioned battalion, I sent another battalion. to the right of this battery to enter the enemy's flank, and to reinforce them I sent the Orenburg dragoon regiment even further to the right to cover their right flank and cut into the enemy columns, which followed to reinforce the attacking troops. The 3rd battalion of the Ufa regiment and the 18th Jäger regiment rushed against them directly at the battery, the 19th and 40th Jäger regiments on the left side of the same and in a quarter of an hour the insolence of the enemy was punished: the battery is in our power, the whole height and the field is about these are covered with the bodies of the enemy. Brigadier General Bonami was one of the enemies who took mercy, and the enemy was pursued far beyond the battery. Major General Yermolov kept it with small forces until the arrival of the 24th division, which I ordered to replace the 26th division, which had previously defended the battery, which had been upset by the enemy attack, and entrusted this post to General Maoir Likhachev. " But the danger for the central battery (Raevsky's lunette) was not yet eliminated, because at the same time there was a huge cavalry attack on the 4th corps, with which Barclay partially covered the Raevsky battery from the crossfire, which beat on it and on the right side, where it operated enemy artillery directed against this battery, and on the left side, from where the defenders of the battery were smashed by the guns that had established themselves in the positions occupied by the French after the withdrawal of the Russians. The devastation caused by this crossfire in the 4th corps was very significant, but the spirit of the soldiers and officers remained at the same, usual height. This is how Barclay continues his report to Kutuzov, having just told about the feat of Ermolov and his soldiers: “During this incident, the enemy cavalry, cuirassiers and lancers, led an attack on the infantry of the 4th corps, but this brave infantry met it with amazing firmness, let her 60 steps, and then opened such an active fire that the enemy was completely overturned and in great frustration sought his salvation in flight ”34. This flight was accompanied by huge losses for the fleeing, because four Russian regiments (two hussars and two dragoons) were ordered to pursue them. The persecuted French fled across almost the entire battlefield until they escaped under the cover of their reserves. But four cavalry regiments (two hussars - Sumy and Mariupol and two dragoons - Irkutsk and Siberian) stopped pursuing only when the enemy cavalry with reinforcements from reserves again went on the attack and attacked the rear of the 4th and 11th Infantry Divisions. Here she was met by the murderous fire of the infantry ("incomparable infantry", as Barclay de Tolly writes in his report to Kutuzov). And the Russians drove off the enemy cavalry again. Ermolov was seriously wounded and had to transfer the command over the battery he had repulsed to the very sick chief of the 24th division, Likhachev. A new assault on the battery by the French cavalry followed, and was again repulsed. Napoleon decided to repeat the attack on the lunette on the most extensive scale in order to master it at any cost. He succeeded, despite the innumerable casualties, but Barclay claims that the French were helped only by chance: Barclay sent for the 1st Cuirassier Division, “which, however, unfortunately, I don’t know by whom,” he writes, “was sent to the left flank and my adjutant did not find it in the place where I expected her to be. He reached the L.-GV. The Cavalry and Cavalry Regiment, which hurried towards me at a trot; but the enemy managed, among other things, to accomplish his intention; the enemy cavalry cut into the infantry of the 24th division, which was deployed to cover the battery on the mound, and on the other hand, strong enemy columns stormed this mound and took possession of it. " After that (Barclay writes further), "a fierce cavalry battle began, which ended with the enemy's cavalry completely overturned by 5 o'clock and retreating completely out of our sight, and our troops retained their places, excluding the mound, which remained in the hands of the enemy." ...

Almost 2 thousand people, who, according to Bogdanov's testimony (in his cited manuscript), are the "inner cover" of the lunette (Raevsky's battery), refused to surrender to the bursting French and were chopped up and hacked to death in the last desperate battle, from where, however, they left alive also only a very small handful of attacking enemies. But around the taken lunette, the battle was still in full swing, and the Russian artillery, especially numerous and excellently firing from the mound on Gorki, did not weaken, but, on the contrary, intensified its fire immediately after the capture of the lunette. Dokhturov's batteries also thundered from the direction of Semyonovsky.

The hills were by this time so fortified as never before in the entire battle. A new line of troops had already formed there, starting from the 6th corps and the remnants of the 2nd army, which retreated after the capture of the flashes, first under the command of Konovnitsyn, and then Dokhturov, from the 4th corps and the 2nd and 3rd corps, brought by Baggovut after leaving the Utitsky mound. This line of troops adjoined To Goretsky big redoubt, equipped with powerful and well-functioning batteries. This line was already the beginning of the creation of the "third position" of the Russian army.

Napoleon was restless and annoyed. At the foot of the mound, where the artillery of Gorki was located, there was a forest, which, in front of several Russian officers watching from a distance, “suddenly dazzled with a crowd of horsemen ... differed one without any sign. He rode on a small Arab horse, in a gray greatcoat, in a simple triangular hat ”35. It was Napoleon with his staff and retinue drove up to the battlefield. He intended to give the order to storm and take the Gorki mound ("mountain batteries"). “Leaving his retinue behind the forest,” Napoleon drove up to the Goretsky mound, taking with him only Berthier, Duroc, Bessière and the chief equestrian Caulaincourt (the brother of General Caulaincourt, who had just been killed at the Rayevsky battery). Murat also drove up to the emperor. “He stubbornly wanted to capture the Goretsky mound. "Where are our benefits?" - Napoleon said gloomily. - "I see victory, but I do not see the benefit!" It was clear to everyone that it was necessary to silence the destructive fire of the Gorki artillery as soon as possible, but it became equally clear to Napoleon and his staff that this could not be done without new, most serious losses. Chief of Staff Berthier spoke: “Our troops are tired to the point of exhaustion ... One hope is for the Guards! -We are 600 miles from France! .. We have lost up to 30 generals. To attack the mound (Gorok- E. T.), we must sacrifice new troops, expect new losses. And what will happen if we take the battery? We'll get another handful of Russians, and that's all. No, sir ... our goal is Moscow! Our award is in Moscow! "

This dispute had to be abruptly interrupted: “Not here, sir! Your place! Look: the Russians have noticed us, guns are pointing at us!

Napoleon drove off, refusing to storm Gorki. It was about five in the afternoon. And two hours later (after 6 hours and later) the emperor also abandoned the attempt to break through the new position of the Russian troops, arranged by Kutuzov in the evening hours and which closed in front of him both roads to Moscow - one northern one, which ran near the same Gorki, and the other southern one, which passed near Utitsa. In any case, Napoleon was forced to admit that he would not be able to enter Moscow through a military victory over the Russian army.

French historians quite often, even those who agree to admit Napoleon's mistakes and miscalculations, very much emphasize such "excuseful" circumstances as the "ill health" of the emperor, which gave rise to his indecision on the day of Borodin, etc. About why the frail, wounded and a 67-year-old man who had lost an eye in past battles, who had seven months to live, should be considered healthier and stronger than the 43-year-old emperor (who in almost all bulletins and letters from Russia to Paris repeated about his longed-for health) - this is due solely to the fact that at Borodino Napoleon was defeated, and Kutuzov was successful. But why are Napoleon's orders explained by his non-existent "indecision"? This is naive to say the least and is calculated on the ignorance of the readers. After taking Raevsky's lunette, he stands in front of Gorki. Near him is the chief of his staff, Marshal Berthier, King of Naples Murat, his former ambassador to St. Petersburg, chief-equestrian Caulaincourt, brave Marshal Bessières. Well, they, too, all together and separately each suddenly fell ill and became as "indecisive" as Napoleon himself? And they unanimously, with ardor, convinced him that it was unthinkable to storm Gorki. No, Napoleon and his staff never suffered from indecision before the war of 1812. But between the early morning hours of September 7, when they spoke loudly about the new Austerlitz, and 5:00 p.m., when the emperor and his retinue drove away from Gorki, or 6 and 7 p.m., when a new line of Russian troops became a wall in front of them, "the third position ”, the already formidable, bloody Borodino lay down, the most terrible of the“ fifty battles ”that Napoleon gave and remembered later in his life. And it seemed simply impossible to repeat the struggle for a flash or for Raevsky's battery, and no decisiveness and no 20 thousand of the Guards reserve could radically correct anything here.

Thus ended the struggle for the central battery (Raevsky's lunette) at the Kurgan Heights.

How to answer with complete impartiality the question of what this new, terrible massacre in the center of the Russian army, which even surpassed the massacre for the Bagration's flashes, gave Napoleon? Absolutely nothing: the pleasure of owning Rayevsky's battery from four in the afternoon on August 26 (September 7) until the pre-dawn hours of August 27 (September 8): “I instructed the infantry general Miloradovich (wrote Kutuzov) to re-occupy the mound before dawn, opposite the center, lying, several battalions and artillery ”. Miloradovich no longer found anyone on the battery: the French left it even earlier than the Napoleonic army began to leave at night. Let us ponder at least this fact: after all, Napoleon would not have been in such a hurry, in view of his army, to leave as soon as possible and farther if he had even a shadow of hope that Kutuzov would resume the battle. Next day(and this assumption possessed the minds of his headquarters and himself on the evening of August 26) - he would never have refused to hastily put in order the fortification, which had cost so much French blood. But he is clearly did not want resumption of the battle, knowing that an immediate new Borodin his army could not withstand. And his most ardent fighters, and "the brave of the brave" Marshal Ney, as the emperor rightly called him, and the dashing cavalryman Murat, King of Naples, and Marshal Davout, the hero of the huge battles he won at Auerstadt, at Ekmühl, did not think to dissuade him from early withdrawal from the battlefield. They knew very well that the battle was not won by them, as they were told to say, but lost, and that their soldiers, who are as experienced in battles as brave men like themselves, are so gloomy not because they go to bed hungry (provisions and rations of vodka, as everywhere they had in this campaign, were late), but because the Russians defeated their best corps. A loud chorus of groans and wheezing of crippled and dying comrades interfered with their sleep, despite the terrible fatigue.

Major General Count Kutaisov, the head of the Russian army's artillery, was killed in the fight for Raevsky's battery, but his dying order was carried out exactly by his artillerymen, who loved and remembered his heroic role ever since the Battle of Preussisch-Eylau on February 8, 1807: “ Confirm from me in all companies that they should not be removed from position until the enemy has mounted the cannons. Tell the commanders and all Messrs. officers that, bravely holding on to the closest grape-shot, it is possible to achieve that the enemy does not give up a single step of the position. The artillery must sacrifice itself: let them take you with guns, but fire the last canister shot at point-blank range, and the battery, which will be taken in this way, will harm the enemy, completely redeeming the loss of guns ”31.

Kutaisov's behest was fulfilled exactly up to the final moment of the Borodino battle, victorious for the Russian artillery.

The friendly mutual assistance of all three types of weapons in the Battle of Borodino affected every step at all stages of the struggle for Raevsky's battery. Here is a typical in this sense a picture from nature of the last battles before the battery of Raevsky. The French marched in a column. “This column looked like a continuous ebb and flow of the sea,” wrote N. Lyubenkov, “it was either leaning back or approaching, at some moments of its movement from the action of our battery were in one place, it hesitated, suddenly approached. The squadrons of the Uhlan regiment rushed into the attack, but due to the small number of people they could not withstand it; the column opened a deadly battle fire, our cavalry was repulsed and returned. Count Sievers, whose fearlessness that day was beyond any description, seeing that we had no more charges left, ordered us to be taken on the limbs, and covered our retreat with huntsmen.

We made the last farewell volley from the whole battery. The French were completely confused, but again they were building almost in front of the battery; here the Ryazan and Brest regiments burst out hurray! and threw themselves on the bayonets. There is no means here to convey all the bitterness with which our soldiers rushed; this is a battle of ferocious tigers, not people, and since both sides decided to lie down, the broken guns did not stop, they fought with butts and cleavers; hand-to-hand combat is terrible, the killing lasted for half an hour. Both columns were not moving, they towered, piled on dead bodies. A small last reserve is ours, with a thunderous ypa! rushed to the tormented columns, there was no one else left - and the gloomy murderous column of French grenadiers was overturned, scattered and exterminated; few of ours returned. The combat of the columns looked like a massacre, our gun carriages were shot through, people and horses were killed ... we were all bloody, our robes were torn ... our faces were covered in dust, smoky with gunpowder smoke, our lips were withered ... We spent the night on corpses and wounded ... "37.

Here we have to touch upon the notorious legend, which in various expressions and verbal combinations is attributed by French historians (and after them historians of other nationalities) to Napoleon. We are talking about the words Napoleon said in response to the marshals who asked him to allow him to give the guard: the emperor supposedly replied that for so many leagues (the figure varies) from France, he could not risk the last reserve. Here it is not the question that is questioned, but the answer, more precisely: how should these words of Napoleon be explained. Of course, the marshals asked the emperor for a guard or part of the guard, seeing that they, too, with the flushes and, later, with the Raevsky battery, could not, suffering huge losses, cope with the desperate Russian defense. Napoleon could hardly say (even if he thought so) of the Guard as his "last reserve", especially since at one time he had already decided to use the young guard in the same Borodino battle, and this order had no effect on military events did not. And he did not give all the guards for the very understandable reason that Kutuzov so skillfully and comprehensively took advantage of the advantages of the chosen terrain and so successful was his defense tactics that the guards could no longer help to win the victory that Napoleon needed. If he had given all the guards, it is true, he could have counted on more quickly to take the Bagrationov flushes and press the Russian troops a little earlier than it actually happened. So what is next? Indeed, even having laid down on this matter the whole guard or at least part of it, could Napoleon achieve what he only needed? That is, could he immediately after taking the flushes "on the move" throw the massive infantry and cavalry from Semenovskiy to the center of the Russian position, seize the assault on Kurgan Hill and Raevskiy's battery (after the night and early morning hours of work, turned into a very fortified "close lunette ", As one of its builders called it, military engineer Bogdanov). Neither Napoleon, nor Eugene Beauharnais, nor Latour-Mobourg, nor Montbrun could do anything of the kind, neither with the guard, nor without the guard. Napoleon and Marshal Berthier, who were always with him, understood this well. But, of course, the authors of the "patriotic legend" and especially the marshals really wanted to portray the case in such a way that, they say, the Russians were already completely dying, and if it were not for the confusion and "indecision" that suddenly attacked Napoleon, then a brilliant victory would have been won. If Napoleon, pronouncing the words attributed to him, seriously meant that all his hope for the salvation of his army and, consequently, the salvation of his world empire rests only on incomplete 20 thousand guards soldiers, as on the last reserve, then by doing so he would admit quite categorically that he was already completely hopelessly defeated. If he (this is clear from many signs) and felt that events were developing not at all the way he dreamed of, starting an attack on the position of Bagration, then after the bloody and repeated pushing back of the best French corps away from the flushes, he never repeated the vigorous words about the "sun of Austerlitz", allegedly rising in the Borodino field. No, it wasn't at all about the guard, and he knew that. since his main goal was the storming of Russian positions, the defeat of the Russian army and turning it into a panicky flight, and Kutuzov's goal was to victoriously repel Napoleon's forces and preserve the Russian army in such a way that it would have left the possibility of greater initiative, which was behind it and was with of the moment when the Russian commander stopped at the Borodino fields - insofar as Kutuzov already won, but he, the invincible conqueror, has already been defeated. That Borodino demanded such unheard-of sacrifices and that the Russians therefore received the necessary time to make up for these losses and then go over to a victorious counter-offensive, Napoleon did not yet know at that time. But what was before his eyes, when his horse stepped over the corpses in front of the heaped up battery of Raevsky, to which he drove up, that was enough.

Here it is quite natural to touch upon another issue that is closely related to the invented legend that the Russians were completely defeated when they moved away from Kurgan Heights and Raevsky's lunette. If this were so, then it would simply be incomprehensible why it was not the Russians who interrupted the battle, but it was Napoleon himself who interrupted it. They withdrew very close and, in spite of the losses and horror of what they had experienced, they maintained complete order, discipline, and combat effectiveness, and were still filled with anger, revenge and were ready to continue. But Napoleon and all the marshals, without exception, considered it good to abandon the idea, immediately after taking the lunette, to launch a new large destructive attack against the Russians who had withdrawn, but very soon stopped their retreat. Has it ever happened in Napoleon's long military career that he suddenly, at his own will and decision, interrupted a battle that he seriously considered won? After all, who, if not he, has repeatedly pretended to his generals that a victory not completed by the pursuit of a defeated enemy is not a victory, and that he himself won the battle of Marengo on June 14, 1800, which had indelible consequences, only because hours, when Vienna was already illuminated on the occasion of the arrival of a courier with the news of the Austrian "victory", Bonaparte remained on. the battlefield and, after waiting for reinforcements, completely defeated the Austrians.

Almost immediately after the departure from the Kurgan battery and the arrangement of the Russian forces, Russian artillery thundered in the new place. It should be noted that the death of Kutaisov, a young, enterprising, brave military leader, to whom Kutuzov entrusted the disposal of all the artillery, according to the testimony of the participants in the battle, did not allow the artillery to develop at full might. But in any case, these last hours of the Battle of Borodino do not in the least confirm the evidence that immensely exaggerates the significance of Kutaisov's death. It is difficult to imagine a more magnificent example of artillery combat than the actions of the Russian artillery, from the French occupying the lunette at the Kurgan height (Raevsky's battery) up to nine o'clock. The French artillery was forced to ask for help, and the chief of the imperial staff, Prince of Neuchâtel (Marshal Berthier), was forced to provide a significant part of the guns from the guards reserves. Berthier did this very reluctantly. True, this time Napoleon did not say anything about the "last reserve", but simply explained why he needed to keep the reserves: in order to use them for the "decisive battle", which, as Napoleon said, Kutuzov would give the French near Moscow. Count Mathieu Dumas, general-general of the army, had this conversation with the emperor exactly in the evening. But since the Russian artillery, not at all sparing the shells, continued to mercilessly smash the French positions, willy-nilly they had to shoot back. Moreover, the shooting from Russian batteries became more and more lively. In this unfavorable situation for the French, an unpleasant conversation took place between Viceroy Eugene and Berthier (Napoleon was already far away). Eugene resolutely demanded more and more reinforcements from the guards artillery reserves, and Berthier did not give for a long time, but still had to give up.

Napoleonic generals, staff officers, non-commissioned officers - people among whom were those who had been in the battle under the pyramids, and near Acra, and near Marengo, and near Austerlitz, and near Jena, and in the three-day battle near Wagram, and in unheard-of bloodshed the massacre at Preussisch-Eylau, and at Friedland, they argued that their eyes had never seen anything more terrible than the Battle of Borodino. Most of all they were struck by the sheer contempt for death and the fierce bitterness of the Russian soldiers. This bitterness did not diminish in the least after the end of the bloodshed. “According to the enemy's testimony (Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky wrote) our prisoners were terribly irritated and bitter; instead of the answers required of them, they uttered curses. The wounded trembled with anger, cast contemptuous glances at the French, refused to bandage their wounds. " The Cossacks prowled around Borodino all night, until Napoleon (and they dared to soar quite close near his tent) took off and walked away from the valley of the carnage. He retreated first, and no distortions and inventions of the French chauvinist historians can obscure this fact. Still less can one reject another, incomparably more important fact: the complete failure of the basic plan of Napoleon, with whom he entered the battle on August 26 (September 7) and in whose name he put half of his army on that day.

Napoleon ordered to stop shooting back from the Russian artillery and to speed up the withdrawal of his units from the battlefield at the same time, not only because he recognized it as aimless, but simply unprofitable and unsafe to continue to spend shells against the Russian long-range artillery that was clearly beginning to take over, but in the morning he began to be bothered and Cossack raids on the location of the French. And he finally left the fatal field for him. Before dawn, the Cossacks were already flying so close to the imperial tent that it was necessary, by special order, to put, in the end, a special guard near it from the soldiers of the old guard. Note that only twice during the entire war, the Russian Cossacks managed to endanger the personal safety of the emperor: at night after the Battle of Borodino, before Napoleon was removed from the battlefield, and the second time after Maloyaroslavets, when a sudden Cossack raid brought panic to the encirclement and the emperor a little was not taken prisoner.

Marshal Berthier (Prince of Neuchâtel) was the chief of the imperial staff and from the very beginning of the invasion of Russia he never ceased to consider this act as Napoleon's greatest mistake. In Vitebsk, in Smolensk, he insisted on stopping further movement to the east. He was, as we know, not at all alone: ​​the brave Murat, the king of Naples, in Smolensk threw himself on his knees before the emperor, begging him not to go to Moscow. But Berthier was the best of all Napoleon's companions "expert on the map" and better than others he could appreciate (and appreciated) the successful for the Russians, but extremely disadvantageous from the point of view of French interests, the choice of the area for the battle by Kutuzov, since the battle here ended with a final general dashing raid and the rapid defeat of the Russian army turned out to be absolutely impossible under these conditions. Moreover, knowing for sure that even a performance by the guards and reserves would not yield victory, Berthier better than anyone else took into account by the end of the day that the reserves were not quite well, and that the guards did not even have a full 20 thousand men. , as it was believed at the beginning of the battle. And Berthier, like Napoleon himself, feared (by the evening of Borodino day) that the Russian army was quite ready again at some point between Mozhaisk and Moscow to give a new battle, where 17-18 thousand guards would have to be deployed without any further ado and other cash reserves, except for the guard. Therefore, he refused to the Viceroy in everything, except for a few dozen guns from the reserves of the Guards artillery. Old military campaigners, like Berthier or Marshal Davout, both before Borodin and after Borodin, observing the actions of the Russian troops, did not hide their admiration for the order, serviceability, and discipline of the Kutuzov army. Davout did not hide his admiration, watching the Russian troops precisely on the campaign after Borodino. Berthier looked with a sad eye both at the end of the Battle of Borodino and at the continuation of the fateful Napoleonic enterprise ...

A completely different mood reigned in the Russian camp. There is not the slightest discrepancy between everyone who watched Prince Kutuzov in the evening and first night hours after the end of the battle: he was full of joyful excitement, he behaved as a man should have behaved, who had just won a victory over the most dangerous enemy, as he should have. feel like a commander who saved the army and thus saved Russia. Such sentiments are not faked, and completely similar reigned in his entourage. Only at the second moment there was a thought, worries about the next day. But even then there was no doubt whether what happened on the previous day could be called a Russian victory.

Well, was the old commander wrong? Or were his generals wrong? Or the surviving soldiers of his army? No, their truthful instinct did not deceive them in the least. It did not deceive them to such an extent that Kutuzov quite definitely spoke about the resumption of the battle in the morning of the next day. He went to the village of Tatarinovo, where Barclay was, and gave him an oral order and immediately wrote at Barclay and a written order for him to immediately begin to carry out everything necessary to resume the battle in the morning. Moreover, Kutuzov wanted to resume the battle exactly at the place where he was interrupted by the darkness of the night and at the same time fatigue manifested itself in both armies: from the approaches to Kurgan Heights, that is, in other words, with the Rayevsky battery occupied by the French, on which, with the advance the night was gone (after reconnaissance) not a single Frenchman. But then, at 11 o'clock in the morning, Dokhturov appeared to Kutuzov, who, having taken command of the remnants of the Bagration army from Konovnitsyn, did not move until the end of the battle from the Semyonov heights, as he was ordered by Kutuzov at the time of his appointment. As soon as Kutuzov was informed of Dokhturov's arrival, he went to meet him and loudly exclaimed: “Come to me, my hero, and hug me. How can the sovereign reward you? " Kutuzov and Dokhturov went into another room and were left alone. Dokhturov reported in detail about heavy losses not only on the left wing, but also in the center. And Kutuzov immediately after Dokhturov's report canceled his order for the "tomorrow" battle and ordered to notify Barclay, who had already begun work at Gorki on the construction of a "closed redoubt" (or lunette) like the one into which the so-called Rayevsky battery was turned. After receiving a new order from Kutuzov, Barclay ordered Miloradovich on his own behalf to stop the work begun on the restoration of the lunette, destroyed and occupied by the French, at the Kurgan height. We see that Kutuzov has already taken very serious measures to resume the battle. The enemy, if he returned, would have to again fight a heavy battle at two fortified positions, but this time not at the flushes and at Kurgan height, but at two lunettes - at the new one, built at night by Barclay, according to the first night command of Kutuzov, and at the old one, destroyed by day and now, at night, hastily restored by the 4th corps of Miloradovich. But the second order of Kutuzov immediately interrupted all these works for both Barclay and Miloradovich, performed at night among the incessant groans and screams of the wounded and the wheezing of the dying.

Already in the first hours of the night, not a single armed (and not wounded) enemy remained on the vast field. Napoleon retreated, leading his army away from the valley of the bloody battle. He did not achieve any of the goals set for himself: 1) did not destroy the Russian army and 2) because of the terrifying, unheard-of losses, he deprived himself of the opportunity to remain on the battlefield, in new positions, for the "conquest" of which he put more than 58 thousands of people, and therefore clearly, in front of his battle-tested army, his "old guard" who never parted with him, he admitted that the streams of French blood were shed on that day in vain and that, obviously, for a victorious attack on Kutuzov, if he will begin to retreat, he will no longer be strong. The guardsmen were silent, but the marshals and generals murmured, though behind the back of the sovereign. "He forgot his craft!" - they said, however, exclusively in their closed generals' circle. In this circle, 49 comrades were missing. The best generals, warriors who served almost without leave under Napoleon for 18 years, conquerors of Europe, fell dead or died of wounds when they were taken away from the bloody valleys and hills of Borodino. The “herds” of horses without riders, which struck the imagination of Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, who was the first to use this expression, testified to the terrible losses of the cavalry corps, which so long, repeatedly and persistently swooped down on the lunette (“terrible redoubt,” as the French called it). The Russian cavalry defending this lunette (Rayevsky's battery), according to the testimony of the French themselves, lost much less here. This was the case with the cavalry. Further: the Russian guns, which thundered after the abandonment of Raevsky's battery and after a three-hour cannonade made them silent and leave Kurgan Heights, testified not only to the abundance of shells and the excellent training of the artillerymen, but also to the serviceability and mighty power of the massed (fire) of Russian guns. This was the case with artillery. And how things stood with the infantry, was evidenced by the many hours of extermination struggle in the bearer of the lunette and in the lunette itself. In all the memories of the French survivors of the September 7 case, there is a shudder of horror when they tell of the participation of the infantry units, which were ordered, regardless of losses, to take the lunette.

These were the last, final moments of the Borodino battle: the Russian soldier observed with his own eyes precisely in the last hours battles that 1) cavalry, 2) artillery and 3) infantry were at their best.

And when the Russian army then learned (and saw) that the French had left at night and at dawn first since bloody field, then no later boasting of French bulletins and French historians could not in the least shake her conviction that the victory on that day was won by the Russians and no one else.

And no lies of the enemy, no efforts of enemies and slanderers and haters of Kutuzov, Russians and foreigners, no system of perversion and silence on the part of both foreign historians and some representatives of the old, bourgeois (and noble) school could and cannot diminish the great merits of the Russian soldier, Russian command staff and the great Russian commander on the day of Borodin.

But the main thing that Napoleon lost as a result of the Battle of Borodino was the strategic initiative and the opportunity to return it to this war. If for his two "successes" Napoleon paid not such a terrifying price as he actually paid, if he took the Bagration flushes and established himself on them after the first, and not after the seventh (or, more precisely, the eighth) attack on them, moreover, flushes all the time passed from hand to hand, and only at 11 1/2 o'clock in the morning were they finally abandoned by Konovnitsyn, or if Viceroy Eugene took possession of the Kurgan height and the lunette (Rayevsky's battery) directly or at least shortly after he managed to capture village Borodino, in the morning, and not at 4 1/3 o'clock in the evening, then he would not have put most of his best troops here, that is, 58 1/2 thousand people killed and wounded, whom he left on the Borodino field (out of 136 thousands who entered the battle in the morning) - then and only then could he at least try to fight for the initiative. The fact of the matter is that Borodino, even from the point of view of some Frenchmen, who are not lying in the interests of creating a legend, but who want to give themselves a sober account of the situation that has developed after the battle, turned out to be defeat of the French army in the exact sense of the word, but not at all the "indecisive battle" as it has been called for so long; The famous words spoken by Napoleon that in the Battle of Borodino the French showed themselves worthy of victory, and the Russians showed themselves worthy to be called invincible, very clearly show that he also considered Borodino his failure. Indeed: after all, the first part of this phrase says that the French under Borodino fought with brilliant courage, fulfilled their military duty no worse than in Italy, Syria, Egypt, Austria, Prussia, where they won under his leadership huge to its historical significance, the victories that created his all-European dominion - and the French army, in his opinion, was worthy and win this time. Was worthy but did not win! The second part of this phrase is not only truthful in essence, but also sums up the result, significant in the mouth of Napoleon, of the great Borodino contest. Russians near Borodino were invincible. Napoleon was not only very strict, but also extremely stingy in assessing the enemies he met during his long military life in three parts of the world: in Europe, in Africa, in Asia and again in Europe; he fought against many nations. But invincible he named only the Russians and no one else. In this case, the enmity, the politician, the statesman fell silent before the involuntary admiration of the strategist commander.

We pass from Napoleon to Kutuzov.

First of all, the initiative for the battle belonged to Kutuzov, just as he took responsibility for the final choice of the position. And this chosen position turned out in fact, as came out of Kutuzov's report to the tsar, the best possible at that moment for Kutuzov to give battle. All orders of Kutuzov were marked both before the battle and during the battle with deep thoughtfulness. He starts a battle at Shevardin and thus gives an opportunity to continue and finish or almost complete the strengthening of the position at the Bagrationov flashes on the left flank and turn the Raevsky battery into a formidable "close lunette" by dawn on August 26 (September 7). Kutuzov perfectly unravels the idea of ​​Napoleon, directly calculated to knock the Russian commander-in-chief astray: Kutuzov, without leaving the strengthening of the center and the right flank, and after a heated battle near the village of Borodino and the capture of the village by Viceroy Eugene, even strengthening the defense, - at the same time constantly orders to send reinforcements to help Bagration on the left flank, which was abundantly supplied with troops even before the battle. Not only that: Tuchkov 1st was placed by him near Utitsa ("in ambush") in order to rush to the aid of the southern of the three flushes at the right time. All this forced Napoleon to fight during the battle and especially until noon on two fronts at once: on the central flank at the central battery (Raevsky) and on the left flank, where resistance to attacks continued, first at the flushes, then at the Semyonovskaya Upland. In these bloody battles, the excellent French cavalry was broken. The reader will find in the literature about the Battle of Borodino frequent mention of the fact that by the end of the war of 1812 the poorly shod horses of Napoleon's “big army” were dying in thousands, since they could not cope with the snow-covered, icy winter roads, where they slid and fell at every step. It must be said here that already at the beginning and middle of September, in wonderful summer weather, where there was not a trace of "frost", "snow" or "ice", in colossal cavalry battles at the flushes, at Semenovsky (mainly at the Semyonovsky ravine. - Ed.), at Kurgan Heights, the color of the French cavalry was exterminated. From the dawn of the day of September 7 to the night of the same day, to the battle, Napoleon's cavalry is one thing, and after battles are something completely different. Of course, lack of fodder, poor forging and, in general, all the subsequent calamities of the French army finished off the cavalry during the retreat, where whole regiments had to hurry and throw (as in the four-day battle at Krasnoye) multi-gun batteries to the mercy of fate due to the impossibility of organizing horse traction; the irreparable losses in the Battle of Borodino of the French cavalry, which in general by the end of the battle turned out to be incomparably weaker than the Russian, did away with the cavalry, as one of the main forces of the army, on which Napoleon could henceforth count. Note that in the midst of the battle, Kutuzov, at a decisive moment, when he needed to support both the left flank and the center, instructed the Russian cavalrymen of Uvarov and Platov's cavalry to carry out the sabotage he had invented on the left flank of the enemy army; This largest cavalry raid was eliminated not by the French cavalry, but by the order of Kutuzov, who interrupted the ensuing battle for his general tactical reasons. Let us recall the very significant and very characteristic circumstance, forgotten by all French and insufficiently appreciated by some Russian authors, that Uvarov, who was carried away and felt himself firmly, did not allow himself to immediately fulfill the order to return, and the commander-in-chief was forced to repeat his order and insist on its implementation.

Above, I have already said about the Tuchkov 1st corps, placed on the personal order of Kutuzov, in the south of the left wing of the Russian troops, in the bushes and forests, which was not provided for by the disposition previously drawn up and already distributed to the army, and if this did not bring all the expected benefits , then only through the fault of Bennigsen. The breadth of horizons characteristic of great commanders encompassed huge stretched lines, and Kutuzov's concern that as much as possible the Russian army was able to successfully withstand fierce attacks on the left flank and in the center, and it was precisely this that gave rise to Uvarov and Platov's sending not to flushes and not to the center of the Russian location (i.e., not to the Kurgan Heights), but to the rear of Napoleon's left flank, where the reserves were stationed. His order led to the confusion caused by the suddenness and absolute surprise of the cavalry attack on this distant "quiet section" of the French lines, alarmed Napoleon, and he halted the attack in the center for two (more precisely, 2 1/2) hours and reduced an offensive on the left flank of the Russian army. And nothing more at the moment Kutuzov and did not require from this started and interrupted in time for the demonstration.

If a big battle leads to such a result that the commander (in this case Napoleon) sets himself a known common goal, makes innumerable sacrifices to achieve it, even puts about half of all his armed forces that he brought into the battle and not only fails to achieve this goal, but forced to leave the battlefield without too much delay in the face of the enemy standing in formation and ready for battle, can such a result of the battle be called the defeat of this commander? It would seem strange to even argue a lot about this. But it was precisely in this position that Napoleon found himself on the evening of September 7, 1812.

But let us check the reality and validity of this statement by analyzing the results of the great battle for the Russian commander-in-chief.

The main goal of Kutuzov was to defeat, as much as possible weakening, Napoleon's army, while at the same time preserving as fully as possible the combat capability and maneuverability of the Russian troops, their numbers and their high morale. True, Kutuzov did not achieve the defeat of Napoleon's army in the Battle of Borodino, but the French suffered terrible losses, retreated, evaded the continuation of the battle, were forced, no longer risking to resume the battle, to give up without trying to fight all the key positions they had already occupied on the battlefield and look for a more or less safe position outside the sphere of action of the Russian artillery. Kutuzov kept his army, which also suffered heavy losses (about 42 thousand people against the losses of Napoleon 58 1/2 thousand), in a state of much greater readiness for a new ("for tomorrow") battle than Napoleon retained his army. (After the death of E. V. Tarle, volume IV of the collection of documents "M. I. Kutuzov" (Moscow, 1954-1955) was published, According to these data, the Russian army lost 38.5 thousand killed and wounded (see Decree. cit., vol. IV, part I. pp. 210-218; part II, p. 713. - Ed.) The Russian commander retained the maneuverability of his army and retained the initiative. In other words: Kutuzov very successfully carried out, with the results he needed, that defensive operation, which was from the very beginning the Battle of Borodino for him and for his army, and Napoleon lost absolutely hopelessly and indisputably that offensive battle that he undertook in the morning with the specific purpose of defeating the Russians and from which the Russian army forced him to abandon already by 5 o'clock in the evening, when, after taking the lunette, he did not dare either attack the Russian army located a few hundred steps behind the abandoned lunette, or even try to silence the Russians who continued to smash the French position until complete darkness tools. The French artillery fired back more and more sluggishly, and finally fell silent and took away their guns.

Thus ended the great battle for Napoleon, which he began, firmly hoping to turn it into a new Austerlitz, into the complete defeat of the Russian army. It was not for nothing that he remembered the "sun of Austerlitz" early in the morning, when he raced at dawn from Valuev to Shevardin.

The Kutuzov artillery drove the artillery of Napoleon away from the Kurgan Heights, the Kutuzov army, with all its losses, drove the army of the French emperor (and himself) at night after the battle from the Borodino field, without even entering the battle, but only with its formidable close presence, only with obvious readiness start a new battle in the morning — a readiness that the French took into account when they watched the hasty night construction of the lunette at Gorki. The complete indestructibility of the "third position" of the Russian army, which Kutuzov began to create and strengthen within an hour and a half after leaving the lunette (Raevsky's battery), was due not only to the fact that quickly, orderly, successfully fighting fatigue after such a day, they gathered from all sides the surviving units of cavalry and infantry to the designated places, and not even by the presence of significant reserves, but by the consciousness of the success achieved. This consciousness in the evening hours was especially vivid and powerful in the Russian army, in front of which it was at the end of the day that first the artillery, and then the entire army of Napoleon, retreated. The Prussian Wolzogen, who deftly made a career in the Russian army, was sent by Barclay to Kutuzov for orders. It must be said that Barclay displayed the most unshakable personal courage throughout the Borodino day and, as mentioned above, already in the evening and at night on August 26, began to build a new lunette on Gorki in anticipation of a battle. But Wolzogen made his own conclusion and gave a completely false assessment of the situation from his own mind. He declared in the most pessimistic spirit about the state of affairs. Kutuzov well studied this type of foreign immigrants, for whom Russia was only a place where ranks and orders are easily obtained. The commander-in-chief with anger, raising his voice greatly, replied: “As for the battle, I myself know its course as well as possible. The enemy is reflected at all points; tomorrow we will drive him out of the sacred Russian land. "

The mood of the great Russian commander, and during these hours of the emerging strategic defeat of Napoleon, was in full harmony, as always, with the mood of the Russian army, which by the seventh hour of the evening had become a wall from Gorki in the north, where it covered the road to Moscow, to the forest east of Utitsa , where she covered the Old Smolensk road to Moscow. This was the third and last Russian position of the Borodino battle. This was not a straight line, but broken in the middle, beginning in the north with the 6th corps, continuing with the 4th, then with the 2nd, and ending in the south with the 3rd corps. Between the 4th and 2nd buildings there were scattered units that came from Semenovsky. The enemy no longer even tried to attack this long line, and not even to break through.

In the Battle of Borodino, Russian losses were significantly less than French ones. Napoleon lost such a mass of cavalry that from that time until the end of the war it did not play any offensive role and could no longer play (long before that moment in the retreat from Moscow, when it ceased to exist altogether). His infantry also suffered severely, and of the 58 1/2 thousand killed and wounded Napoleon's army, who fell at Borodino, the infantry died the most. And the Russian "incomparable infantry" (as Kutuzov called it), wherever it came to bayonet fighting, gained the upper hand. Finally, as said, the Russian artillery used less than half of the guns at its disposal in battle (slightly more than 300 out of 654) (According to recent research, all artillery participated in the battle. Ed.). And Napoleon's defeat of the Battle of Borodino was most clearly indicated by the fact that the artillery, the first of all units of the Napoleonic army, began its retreat from the battlefield under the long destructive fire of the Russian artillery, which began soon after the French occupied the lunette (Rayevsky's battery) and ended with the French withdrawal from the battlefield.

All this was so striking to his contemporaries that, in addition to reports of the battle that were deliberately hostile to Kutuzov, Alexander, the court, St. He considered it possible for himself not to be hypocritical about the loss of Moscow: “Since August 29, I have not received any reports from you. Meanwhile, on September 1, I received through Yaroslavl from the Moscow commander-in-chief (Rostopchin - E. T.) sad announcement that you have decided to leave Moscow with the army. You yourself can imagine the action that this news produced, and your silence aggravates my surprise. I am sending with sim the adjutant general prince Volkonsky in order to learn from you about the state of the army and about the reasons that prompted you (reasons. - E. T.) to such a miserable determination. " And the tsar wrote to Count PA Tolstoy about this “incomprehensible determination” that he did not know “whether he will bring shame to Russia, or whether he has the subject of catching the enemy in the net” 38. So the tsar reproached Kutuzov, who did everything in his power to reduce the Russian army going into battle ...

After the loss of Moscow, the bewildered question began to be repeated even more often by many, why Kutuzov, having the strength to start a new battle the next day after August 26 (September 7), did not start it, but preferred to order to retreat to cancel his first order.

The answer to this question was given by events that are not only closely related to the Battle of Borodino, but also logically arising from it: Tarutino, Maloyaroslavets, the four-day defeat of the enemy near Krasnoye, Berezina, Napoleon's flight from Smorgon and the death of the army.

Borodino, who inflicted irreparable blows in the numerical strength and material resources of the Napoleonic army, turned out in the course of events to be a necessary prerequisite precisely for the glorious forever, saving counteroffensive of Kutuzov. And here, in addition to everything that has already been said about the advantages that turned out to be on the side of the Russian army after the battle and which provided such assistance to it further, during the victorious counterattack, one more circumstance should be noted, to forget which does not mean to understand very much remarkable Russian achievements on Borodino day, nor in the final, triumphant success of the Kutuzov offensive.

Let's compare the moral results of the Borodino battle for the soldiers and officers of Napoleon's army.

We have already said that Napoleon's army in its mood did not and could not resemble the former armies of the French revolution, when they fought for the very existence of the revolutionary homeland. But now let's pay attention to something else. After all, the Napoleonic army consisted not only of the French, but in a very significant part of the "twelve languages", that is, of the people of the most diverse tribes and peoples whom he forcibly drove to the Niemen.

It is enough to remember who Napoleon drove to Russia, so that, even if you do not know the actual facts, one could foresee how the foreigners driven to Russia in his army would behave at the first major failure. But Borodino was not at all the first failure of Napoleon's offensive campaign. Raevsky, Neverovsky, Bagration forced the French emperor, after the failure of his vanguard near Valutina Gora, to invite General Tuchkov the 3rd to inform Alexander I that he was ready to conclude peace. And this was still among the "successes". The army had already approached Borodino half-starved, and the French officers who had retreated from the Borodino field remembered this first night as the "night of hunger", although it would seem that the hours of battle they had just experienced should have weakened or even banished all other memories.

Discipline in a multi-tribal army was shaken even before Borodin, of course, not in the guards and not in the cavalry corps of Murat, not in the exemplary infantry regiments of Davout, Ney, the vice-king. So it happened further - already in Moscow and during the retreat, but among the Germans (except the Saxons), among the Prussians, among the Dutch, among the Italians, licentiousness, lack of obedience, weakness and delays in the execution of military orders that violated all discipline - all this manifested itself daily and hourly. And the more the bosses were forced by tacit connivance to essentially encourage robbery, as the only means of self-supply, since the carts were at first late, and after Smolensk they were almost never sent to catch up with the rapidly advancing regiments, insofar as there was no question of real, previous discipline, since it was it is about the alien representatives of the conquered or vassal peoples. Discipline almost disappeared in the French army, not in Moscow, but long before Moscow. And already in November, after the battles of Krasny, the French army (except for the Guards) looked like a disorderly crowd huddled together in a heap.

The morale of the Kutuzov troops fighting to save their homeland both during the Battle of Borodino and after it was something completely different. Anger at the insolent robbers, who turned all inhabited houses on the road from Vitebsk, and especially from Smolensk, into a continuous conflagration by looting and arson, the hourly contemplation of all the frenzies - all this, with every kilometer of the path traveled by the retreating Russian army, more and more offended and irritated by the spectacle devastated in such a predatory way of the country, and at the same time more and more clearly showed that the only salvation of the homeland is a fight for life and death. At Preussisch Eylau on February 8, 1807, the Russians fought very bravely, but they did not have the same feeling as on Borodino day. A great moral victory over the enemy both on Borodin's Day and in the months since the beginning of preparations for the counter-offensive, and then at the very counter-offensive, was won by the Russian army defending the Motherland, over the Germans, Italians, over the soldiers of a dozen other nationalities who had to shed their blood for Napoleon. which took their homeland away from them. Let us not forget that Napoleon drove even the Spaniards to conquer Russia, whose country He had not yet conquered and whose brothers in those very days Borodin, Tarutin, Maloyaroslavets were waging a fierce popular war against him in Spain.

The moral superiority of Kutuzov and his soldiers over the enemy, be it natural French soldiers who went to this war, as on an adventure that promised success and enrichment, or foreign tributaries of the conqueror who conquered them, this moral superiority of Kutuzov and his soldiers over the invader and his motley, driven from all parts of Europe the horde was perhaps one of the most powerful of all the advantages that the Borodino strategic and tactical victory of the Russian army and the Russian people gave. The strategic plan of Kutuzov after Borodin was clear: with the losses experienced by the Russian army and the more than likely approaches of reinforcements to Napoleon, you need to calmly retreat a very short distance and for a very short time, there to replenish and "arrange" a new army from the remaining parts of the one that survived after battles, attach reinforcements and move on the offensive against the enemy. And Kutuzov knew that his army was looking at the state of affairs in such a way that it had to replenish and rest and, after a break, resume and finish its victory. And for Napoleon, taking into account his military style and his interests, of course, it was necessary (as many expected) to attack Kutuzov again either a second time near Borodino, or near Mozhaisk, or near Perkhushkov, or near Moscow, but by all means attack in order to correct Borodino failure. But he didn't dare to do this also because his army, after Borodin was reduced by almost half, no longer believed in itself and its leader as it did before Borodin. But faith in Napoleon, in his star, in his invincibility, in his predetermined everlasting ultimate luck was gradually disappearing. And this was the moral defeat of the invasion. It was not Borodin, but a two-month counteroffensive that was destined to end Napoleon's army, but it was after Borodin that Napoleon's army began to seize doubts, fear of defeat, the consciousness of a lost war, which was not until that time ... As soon as he entered Moscow, Napoleon is talking about peace (for transmission Tsar) with Tutolmin, writes a letter to Alexander and no longer hides from his army these new humiliating attempts, how he diligently concealed from her in Smolensk his conversations with Tuchkov the 3rd. Why be ashamed of the soldiers in Moscow now, who yearn for peace no less, and perhaps even more passionately, than their emperor?

This is where, first of all, the great moral victory of the Russian army and its leader at Borodin, which so naturally complemented their strategic and tactical victory over the enemy, who gradually and steadily since then went to his death, was reflected. The first landmarks of this road to death were Tarutino and Maloyaroslavets.

But this already goes beyond the scope of my essay.

After repeated attacks on Bagrationov's flushes, and then on Semenovskoye, after the battles around Raevsky's lunette, the French cavalry that had been at Borodino could be considered "Completely destroyed" according to the exact words of General Grusha, head of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, in a letter written on October 16, 1812 to his wife from Moscow, intercepted on the way by the French police in Vilna and falling into the hands of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Duke of Bassano (Marais).

The artillery suffered less cavalry, although by the end of the battle it was clearly not able to withstand the competition with the Russian artillery with any success and left the battlefield in the evening. But the fate of the French artillery was closely linked with the fate of the cavalry: the lack of horse traction began to be felt very cruelly now after the Battle of Borodino.

Finally, as for the infantry, it has already been said about its colossal losses. And therefore, here it is enough to recall what the Napoleonic army turned into after Borodin, so that there was no need to explain too much why Kutuzov was not only felt yourself a winner, but also was the winner in fact, why, in front of Napoleon, who already could not even think of an attack, the Russian commander-in-chief quite calmly, without fear of any detours or direct attacks, made his famous flank march. The Russian army, which suffered significant losses, albeit much smaller than the French, withdrew its combat-ready cavalry and took away its artillery quite well, as Marshal Davout, who was watching this withdrawal of the Russian army, noted with great concern. The success of Kutuzov's flank march was the first in time strategic Russian military success after the Borodino victory. He was not the last!

The Russian commander, who was destined to destroy the enemy with his counterattack, went to prepare his army for the forthcoming new, final victories. His opponent, after his Borodino failure, moved towards new, terrible, terrifying defeats.

And it is curious to read how the newest French historian Louis Madlain is amazed, asking himself why Napoleon "after this difficult and dearly won victory was more gloomy than later, after great defeats." I would like to explain this “riddle” to him: because Borodino was not a “victory” at all, but the defeat of Napoleon, who, as a shrewd strategist, as an experienced commander, and finally, as an eyewitness, saw and understood the result of the Battle of Borodino much better than his current historian. Napoleon could say anything publicly, he could proclaim victory in the bulletins and in the official articles of the Europe enslaved by him without hindrance, but he himself was clearly aware of how terribly the situation of his army had worsened after Borodin and why he had to, as soon as he entered Moscow, immediately begin to beg for peace, invite Tutolmin, invite Yakovlev, write letters to Alexander that he does not answer, send the Marquis Loriston to Kutuzov with a gentle personal accompanying address, in which he asks the Lord to protect the Russian field marshal ("in his holy and worthy mercy" ). He himself, who had won so many real victories on countless battlefields, had no reason to pretend to himself immediately after the battle that Borodino was a victory for him. That is why he was “gloomy”. This was, however, only at first, later he recovered and already found it more political to call his Borodino defeat a victory.

In the battle of Borodino, Napoleon was defeated primarily because he did not achieve his main goal: he did not defeat, did not destroy, did not put to flight, did not inflict that crushing blow on the Kutuzov army that would not have allowed it to recover before the end of the campaign. And in this case, if Napoleon managed to inflict a similar blow to the Kutuzov army, then it is more than likely that he would have taken the step that he had taken before Borodin after Smolensk in a conversation with the captured General Tuchkov the 3rd or in Moscow, sending with Yakovlev a letter to Alexander: he would have tried to enter with the tsar immediately into peace negotiations. We know that in this sense, both among the command staff and among the mass of the Napoleonic army, even before the battle, they dreamed that after the "general battle" the war after Napoleon's "undoubted" victory would quickly lead to peace.

But even in the most condensed form, resurrecting before us the main features of the Battle of Borodino, we saw that not only did Napoleon not deliver any crushing general blow to the Russian army, but had to leave the battlefield rather hastily, clearing at night all the positions he had taken at the cost of colossal sacrifices.

Moreover, even the seizure of these positions in the midst of the battle cannot be called a strategic success of Napoleon. The occupation of flushes, partial mastery of Semyonovskaya height, Konovnitsyn's withdrawal from flashes, the struggle for Semenovskoye under the leadership of Dokhturov - all this did not lead to the complete elimination of the left flank, because, as Kutuzov ordered Dokhturov, appointing him to the post of chief of the left flank, - not to clear the part of the Semyonov Upland, still in the hands of the Russians, - so it remained in the hands of Dokhturov until the end of the battle. And the desperate battle against the center, centered around Kurgan Heights and especially around the lunette (Rayevsky's battery), had to be fought by the French from 2 o'clock in the afternoon, having not yet completely mastered Semenovsky and having not dealt with Dokhturov's wax on the left flank because, having left the village of Semenovskoye , the Russians remained in the ranks and alert for the village.

Such was the "success" of the French attacks in the battles against the 2nd (Bagration) army, which cost enormous losses to Napoleon's best cavalry and infantry corps.

The second "success" of the French of those two that French historians boast (but much less of the French generals who were in action) is the seizure of Rayevsky's battery. Here, in the battle, where the cavalry masses, selected infantry units deployed in enormous sizes and the numerous, well-supplied artillery acted, three huge attacks for the lunette, which passed from hand to hand, cost the French army no less terrible victims than the Bagrationovs had before. flushes, but the final capture of the lunette (central battery, Raevsky's battery) did not give the French any strategic benefits. The Russians withdrew from the Kurgan Heights for an insignificant (about a quarter of a kilometer) distance and immediately launched a powerful artillery bombardment of the enemy, which was almost silent by 8 o'clock.

Unfortunately, in Barclay's report to de Tolly Kutuzov on September 26, 1812, the end was drawn up extremely unsatisfactorily and carelessly. Speaking about the last hours of the cannonade, Barclay writes: “The cannonade lasted until nightfall, but for the most part from our side and to considerable damage to the enemy; and the enemy artillery, being completely defeated, even completely fell silent by the evening. " And then, without the slightest transitions, Barclay, for no reason, no reason at all, suddenly goes to the jaeger regiments, which remained on the far right flank, and then to the brilliantly conceived maneuver by Kutuzov and skillfully performed by Uvarov and Platov - an attack on the rear of Napoleon's left flank: "The 1st Cavalry Corps by Your Grace was detached to the left bank of the Moskva River and acted on it in common with the irregular troops under the command of Cavalry General Platov." V this view and mentioned at the very end of the report without any connection in this place with the previous and subsequent this wonderful event, which saved Raevsky's battery in the center at that moment and eased the situation also on the left flank somehow almost completely disappears for the reader, especially since Barclay is here instead of Kolocha, he mistakenly writes about the Moscow River.

But on the other hand, turning again after this out of place and carelessly crafted insert to the events of the ending day and the beginning of the evening of August 26 (September 7), Barclay gives the most precious proof of the fact that Napoleon lost the Battle of Borodino and was clearly aware of this: “After the end of the battle , noticing that the enemy began to pull back his troops from the heights he occupied, I ordered the following position: the right flank of the 6th corps joined the hill near the village of Gorki, on which a battery of 10 battery guns was arranged and on which, in addition, it was supposed to arrange a closed redoubt at night. The left flank of this corps took the direction to the point where the right flank of the 4th corps stood. "

In other words: the Russian troops not only did not retreat from the battlefield in the evening, but they had already started a lot of work to transform the battery that already existed at a height near the village of Gorki into a "close lunette" like the one into which the chief engineer Bogdanov and his sappers turned Rayevsky's battery. It was in the center and on the right flank. And in the same hours of darkness that began, Dokhturov on the left flank was gathering the remnants of the 2nd Army's infantry, which was now returning to the places from which they had been driven out in the morning, and was returning under the command of their superior Dokhturov, appointed by Kutuzov as Bagration's successor. A direct connection was formed between the 6th corps, which worked near the village of Gorki, the left flank of the 4th corps, where Dokhturov stood, and, finally, the 2nd and 3rd corps, commanded by Baggovut, on the southern part of the left flank, from where he was after the fatal wound of Tuchkov 1st and Bagration was pushed aside by Ponyatovsky. A coherent line of troops was formed from Gorki, where Barclay commanded in the north, to the forest near Utitsa in the south. When you read the phrase of Barclay's report to Kutuzov, where he says about Baggovut what has already been said here about Dokhturov, and about the construction of a lunette on Gorki, it seems that an unheard-of fire that raged in the morning and burned so many tens of thousands of lives could in fact to seem to the accidentally surviving heroes as a sudden interrupted sleep: "... by the evening Baggovut again took all the places that he had occupied in the morning."

Again there was already a long line of infantry troops with artillery, with a renewed already new (highlander) lunette. An order had already been given to Miloradovich to re-occupy both Kurgan Hill and the destroyed battery. But at 12 o'clock in the morning, an order from Kutuzov arrived, canceling preparations for tomorrow's battle. And by this time, Barclay's order had already been given to position the cavalry corps behind the line, and the guards infantry division and cuirassier divisions behind the cavalry as a reserve.

Let's summarize.

1. The attack of the French on the Russian army in its basic positions, despite unheard-of losses, losses incurred by them at the flushes and on the Semyonovsk Upland (especially during the last three attacks, 6th, 7th and 8th), did not ultimately lead to a breakthrough of the Russian front, and retreating from the Semyonovsky ravine, the Russian armed forces remained on Semenovsky under the command of Dokhturov until the end of the battle.

2. Attacks in the center and on the right flank, as well as on the left flank on the Semyonovskaya Upland, although they allowed the French, at the cost of irreparable victims, to take possession of the lunette at the Kurgan Hill (Rayevsky's battery), were not at all crowned with a breakthrough of the Russian front: the Russians, having retreated approximately pa half a kilometer from the lunette taken by the French, they stopped behind in order and on alert.

3. Finally, Napoleon did not dare to attack the Russian army in its last position, created by Kutuzov at about 6 pm, and it remained on alert until the French left the battlefield under cover of night darkness, after the Russian artillery silenced the guns enemy.

To deny, under these conditions, the victory of Kutuzov's tactics over Napoleonic tactics in the Battle of Borodino means not wanting to reckon with the obvious.

Kutuzov took large reserves away from Borodin, with which he could resume the battle. But he finally decided that he would choose the date and place of a new battle there and then, when he found it most profitable.

This is what the commander-in-chief wrote to Rostopchin on August 27, 1812: “The battle of yesterday, which began at 4 o'clock in the morning and lasted until nightfall, was bloody. The damage on both sides is great, the enemy's loss, judging by his stubborn attacks on our fortified position, should greatly exceed ours. - The troops fought with incredible courage; the batteries passed from hand to hand, and the end result was that the enemy had nowhere won a single step of the land with all the excellent forces. Your Excellency agreed that after a bloody and 15 hours of continuing battle, ours and the enemy's (so - E. T.) could not help but be upset, and for the loss of this day, the position previously occupied naturally became broader and out of place for the troops by the fact when it is not about the glory of the battles won only, but the whole goal, being aimed at the extermination of the French army, - (then - E. T.) After spending the night at the site of the battle, I decided to retreat 6 miles beyond Mozhaisk and gathered troops, refreshed my artillery and strengthened myself with the Moscow militia in the warm hope for the help of the almighty and for the incredible courage of our army, I will see what I can undertake against the enemy ... "39

The meaning of the letter is perfectly clear. The retreat is necessary for the further, only important goal, and "the whole goal" is "the extermination of the French army." Kutuzov knows that yesterday's battle is the right step towards this goal. Foreseeing that people like Rostopchin would reproach him for what he did, not wanting to immediately resume the battle, Kutuzov clearly emphasizes that it is not victorious reports that are important, that “it’s not about the glory of the battles won only”, namely about this future goal of the complete extermination of the enemy, which he set for himself when he accepted the post of leader of the Russian armed forces at the will of the people and the army. When he sent his letter to Rostopchin, he had already begun to withdraw the army to where it was supposed to prepare for a great counteroffensive, which was destined to end the war by exterminating the enemy.

The battle of Borodino did not receive a directly adequate assessment and did not meet with full understanding either in Russia or abroad. In Russia, the people instinctively felt that Kutuzov had dealt a cruel blow to the enemy. The news of Borodin caused great jubilation in St. Petersburg, congratulations and awards fell on the army and its leader. But the retreat from Moscow changed everything. The tsar, who had always disliked Kutuzov, and behind him the entire court and high society, recognized Borodino as a defeat from the words of the enemies of the commander-in-chief (like Bennigsen, Wolzogen, Winzegerode, etc.). Only as the victorious counteroffensive unfolded, the true significance of the great battle and its consequences began to be recognized with any justice.

There is nothing to say about Western Europe. The false bulletins of the Napoleonic headquarters made in France, Poland, Germany, Austria, Italy the impression they were designed for. In England, where they understood that British interests were at play and depended on Russian victories, they also believed for a long time, after all, at first, the boasting and lies of the Polish and French press. Subsequently, Western historiography, studying Borodino not only from the bulletins, but also from the documents of the military archives, shed some light on the history of the battle, but nevertheless in the overwhelming majority of cases did not abandon the old lie and continued to repeat that Borodino was a victory for Napoleon. For an example of how Borodino is still assessed, it is enough to cite two recent examples of Madlan, the author of the 15-volume History of the Consulate and the Empire, who, even using some Russian sources and trying to pretend that he retains some "impartiality", (when he speaks, for example, of the selfless bravery and patriotism of the Russian troops), he still “absurdly indignant” at Kutuzov, reproaching him for what the Russian field marshal calls the Battle of Borodino a Russian victory. And the English historian Thompson, in his book Napoleon Bonaparte, published in 1952, repeats the same old tales about Borodin 40.

But for those who really studied Borodino, it has long been clear to what extent this victory of the Russian army and the Russian people should forever remain one of the majestic monuments of Russian patriotism, Russian heroism and military leadership.

Nowadays, when, after the shameful failure of the vile fascist horde, we observe the stubborn efforts of Anglo-American predatory imperialism by any means to recreate the same horde and inspire it to new atrocities, it is especially gratifying to recall the great Russian feat that inflicted 140 years ago on the then challenger such a crushing blow to world domination.

Let's talk today about such a topic as the size of Napoleon's army. I will not give any special calculations. I’ll just look at the well-known facts from the point of view of common sense. All quotes will be from Wiki. The figures are approximate, because historians themselves are still arguing about them. The main thing is their order.

So: Napoleon concentrated the main forces in 3 groups, which, according to the plan, were supposed to surround and destroy in parts of the army of Barclay and Bagration. The left (218 thousand people) was headed by Napoleon himself, the central (82 thousand people) - his stepson, Viceroy of Italy Eugene Beauharnais, the right (78 thousand people) - the younger brother in the Bonaparte family, King of Westphalia Jerome Bonaparte ... In addition to the main forces, Jacques MacDonald's corps of 32.5 thousand people was located on the left flank against Wittgenstein. , and in the south - the right flank - the allied corps of Karl Schwarzenberg, numbering 34 thousand people.

In total, the main military operations against our army were conducted by the forces of 3 groups with a total number of 378 thousand people.

Our strengths: The attack of Napoleon's army was taken over by the troops stationed on the western border: the 1st army of Barclay de Tolly and the 2nd army of Bagration, a total of 153 thousand soldiers and 758 guns. Further south, in Volhynia (north-west of present-day Ukraine), the 3rd Army of Tormasov (up to 45 thousand, 168 guns) was located, serving as a barrier from Austria. In Moldova, the Danube army of Admiral Chichagov (55 thousand, 202 guns) stood against Turkey. In Finland, the corps of the Russian General Steingel (19 thousand, 102 guns) stood against Sweden. In the Riga region there was a separate Essen corps (up to 18 thousand), up to 4 reserve corps were located further from the border. Irregular Cossack troops numbered 117 thousand light cavalry according to the lists, but in reality 20-25 thousand Cossacks took part in the war.

On our side, about 153 thousand people were at the forefront of the main attack.

Let's not be distracted by minor skirmishes and go straight to Borodino: On August 26 (September 7), the largest battle of the Patriotic War of 1812 between the Russian and French armies took place near the village of Borodino (125 km west of Moscow). The number of armies was comparable - 130-135 thousand for Napoleon against 110-130 thousand for Kutuzov.

And here there are no connections right away. Everything is all right from our side. There were 153 110-130 left, plus or minus here and there, a hike from the border, small battles with the French, sick, stragglers, accidents and all that. Everything is within logic.

But with the French, it's not like that. In the beginning there were 378, and only 135 came to Moscow. No, of course, the French also had losses, and not small ones. And they could not get replenishment from where. And the garrisons in the cities had to be left. But this somehow does not fit into 243 thousand people, the difference.

Moreover, it was a decisive battle in this war. Napoleon himself longed for it, that there is strength. The French were supposed to attack by default. And now any schoolchild knows that this requires, first of all, numerical superiority. But he was just practically not there. Despite the fact that the extra 50 thousand would have solved all the problems of the French without question.

Move on. We all know that during the battle Napoleon never brought his last reserve into battle - the old guard. But this could decide the course of the battle and the whole war. What was he afraid of? After all, even according to the most pessimistic estimates, he had at least 100 thousand people in reserves. Or maybe in fact the old guard was his last reserve? Napoleon failed to win at Borodino.

After a bloody 12-hour battle, the French, at the cost of 30-34 thousand killed and wounded, pushed the left flank and center of the Russian positions, but could not develop the offensive. The Russian army also suffered heavy losses (40 - 45 thousand killed and wounded). There were almost no prisoners on either side. On September 8, Kutuzov ordered a retreat to Mozhaisk with a firm intention to save the army.

And here the numbers don't add up. Logically, the losses of the attacking side should be at least equal to the losses of the defenders. And given the fact that Napoleon did not succeed in defeating the Russian army, then his losses should be greater than ours.

Move on. Ours left Moscow and retreated south. Napoleon was in Moscow for over a month. Why during this time no reinforcements came to him. Again, where are those 243 thousand people who could decide the course of the war?

The French army was literally melting before our eyes. It got to the point that they simply could not even overturn Miloradovich under Tarutino. So they no longer had the strength. This is evidenced by the very fact of the retreat from Moscow. In the end, it was possible to make a dash to the North. Moreover, back in September, when the weather was relatively good and the French still had strength. And there, in the north, there are many rich cities that were practically not covered by troops. After all, there is Petersburg, the capital of the Empire. A rich city with large supplies of food. But apparently there was no strength at all.

According to the Prussian official Auerswald, by December 21, 1812, 255 generals, 5111 officers, 26,950 lower ranks passed through East Prussia from the Great Army, "all in a very miserable state." To these 30 thousand must be added about 6 thousand soldiers (who returned to the French army) from the corps of General Rainier and Marshal MacDonald, operating in the northern and southern directions. Many of those who returned to Königsberg, according to the testimony of Count Segur, died of illness, reaching safe territory.

If you throw out those 243 thousand difference people that I mentioned above, then everything converges. 135 thousand near Borodino, minus losses of 40-45 thousand, minus deserters, minus those who died in battles during the retreat from Moscow, minus simply froze and starved to death, prisoners, minus secret weapons in the form of Russian partisans, and this is how these 36 thousand people turn out ... In general, the general forces of Napoleon at first were most likely no more than 200 thousand people. Moreover, in all directions, upon joining Russia. This is evidenced by the persistent desire of Napoleon to win the war in the course of one general battle and, preferably, even on the border. He did not have the strength for a protracted company, he did not. And his entire trip is essentially a gamble.

There is nothing complicated in these calculations. Everything is within common sense.

In fact, the same thing is written in the Wiki: There is evidence (in particular, General Bertezen (fr.) Russian) that the actual strength of the 1st line of the Great Army was only about half of its payroll, that is, no more than 235 thousand people, and that the commanders, when submitting reports hid the true composition of their units. It is noteworthy that the then Russian intelligence data also gave this number.

So, in fact, I did not write anything new.

The size of the Napoleonic army when moving inside Russia (beige) and back (black stripes). The width of the stripes reflects the size of the army. At the bottom of the graph is the behavior of the air temperature on the Reaumur scale after the exit of the Great Army from Moscow (right to left), Charles Minard, 1869

If you look at this scheme of decreasing the number of Napoleon's "Great Army" as it moves from the border towards Moscow and back, then with great surprise it is easy to see that such a great event as the Battle of Borodino did not greatly affect its number! It turns out that most of the Napoleonic soldiers and officers of the "twelve pagans" really disappeared somewhere on the way to Moscow, which fell on the warm and nourishing summer months, and this happened even before the Battle of Smolensk, on the territory of present-day Lithuania and Belarus, in the very first weeks of war. Let us also note one more interesting moment for investigators of historical mysteries: on the way back Napoleon's army, already from Moscow towards the border, the battle for Maloyaroslavets had almost no effect on the size of Napoleon's army (in contrast to the clearly visible real defeat on the Berezina), but a large part of the remnants of the “Great Army” somewhere “disappeared” on the way from Maloyaroslavets to Smolensk, when the winter cold was not so strong and the air temperature was only slightly below (or even above) zero.

On June 24, 1812, the army of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Russian Empire without declaring war. 640 thousand foreign soldiers suddenly crossed the Niemen.

Bonaparte planned to complete the "Russian campaign" in three years: in 1812, having seized the western provinces from Riga to Lutsk, in 1813 - Moscow, in 1814 - St. Petersburg. Before the start of the invasion, when Russian diplomats were still trying to save the situation and divert the war from their country, Napoleon handed 1 letter to the young emperor Alexander. It contained the following lines: "The day will come when Your Majesty will admit that you lacked neither firmness, nor trust, nor sincerity ... Your Majesty themselves ruined their reign." 202 years have passed since that time. But how does this message remind, almost word for word, of those remarks and comments in relation to modern Russia, its leader Vladimir Putin, which are now reaching us from across the ocean, and from the European Union in connection with the situation in Ukraine! ..

Napoleon planned to complete his campaign in three years, but everything ended much faster.

Why did Napoleon go to Russia?

According to Academician Tarle, who wrote a monograph about Napoleon, there was a grain harvest failure in France and it was for bread that Bonaparte moved to Russia. But this, of course, is only one of the reasons. And not the most important ones. Among the main ones are the lust for power of the former little corporal, his "Alexander the Great complex", later renamed the "Napoleon complex", the dream to nullify the power of the neighbor England, for which the forces of one continental Europe were clearly not enough for him.

Napoleon's army was considered the best, the best in the Old World. But here is what Countess Choiseul-Guffier wrote about her in her memoirs: “The Lithuanians are amazed by the confusion in the multi-tribal troops of the Great Army. Six hundred thousand people walked in two lines without provisions, without supplies of life across the country, impoverished because of the continental system ... Churches were plundered, church utensils were stolen, cemeteries were desecrated. The French army, stationed in Vilna, suffered a shortage of bread for three days, the soldiers were given food for the horses, the horses died like flies, their corpses were thrown into the river "...

The European Napoleonic army was opposed by about 240 thousand Russian soldiers. At the same time, the Russian army was divided into three groups far apart from each other. They were commanded by Generals Barclay de Tolly, Bagration and Tormasov. With the advance of the French, the Russians retreated with exhausting battles for the enemy. Napoleon is behind them, stretching his communications and losing his superiority in power.

Why not Petersburg?

"Which road leads to Moscow?" - Napoleon asked shortly before the invasion of Balashov, the adjutant of Alexander 1. “You can choose any road to Moscow. Karl X11, for example, chose Poltava, ”answered Balashov. How he looked into the water!

Why did Bonaparte go to Moscow and not to the Russian capital - Petersburg? This remains a mystery to historians to this day. In St. Petersburg, there was a royal court, state institutions, palaces and estates of the highest dignitaries. In the event of an approaching enemy troops, fearing for the safety of property, they could influence the tsar so that he concluded peace with the French emperor on conditions unfavorable for our country. And it was just more convenient to go to Peter from Poland, from where the French military campaign began. The road from the West to the Russian capital was wide and solid, unlike those in Moscow. In addition, on the way to the capital, it was required to overcome the then dense Bryansk forests.

It seems that the general Bonaparte's ambition prevailed over reason. His words are known: “If I take Kiev, I will take Russia by the legs. If I take possession of Petersburg, I will take her by the head. But if I enter Moscow, I will strike Russia in the very heart. " By the way, many Western politicians think this way even now. Everything in history repeats itself!

General battle

By August 24, 1812, Napoleon's troops reached the Shevardinsky redoubt, where, before the general battle, they were detained by the soldiers of General Gorchakov. And two days later the great Battle of Borodino began. In it, as it is believed, no one won. But it was there that Napoleon suffered his main defeat - like the Nazis in Stalingrad 131 years later.

The French army numbered 136 thousand soldiers and officers at Borodino. Russian (according to various sources) - 112-120 thousand. Yes, for the time being, 8-9 thousand regular troops remained in reserve, including the Guards Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky regiments. Then they, too, were thrown into battle.

The main blow of the Napoleonic troops fell on the corps of General Nikolai Raevsky. Of the 10 thousand soldiers of the corps, by the end of the 12-hour slaughter, only about seven hundred people remained alive. The brave general's battery changed hands several times during the battle. The French later called it nothing more than "the grave of the French cavalry."

Much has been written about the Battle of Borodino in both countries. It remains to quote the words of himself: "The battle of Borodino was the most beautiful and most formidable, the French showed themselves worthy of victory, and the Russians deserved to be invincible."

"Finita la comedy!"

Napoleon managed to enter Moscow. But nothing good awaited him there. Only managed to remove the sheets of pure gold from the churches of the "golden-domed" ones. Some of them went to cover the dome of the House of Invalids in Paris. The ashes of Bonaparte himself are now buried in the temple of this House.

Already in burnt and plundered Moscow, Napoleon three times offered to sign a peace treaty with Russia. He made his first attempts from a position of strength, demanding that the Russian emperor sever some territories, confirm the blockade of England and conclude a military alliance with France. The third, the last, he made with the help of his ambassador, General Lorinston, sending him not to Alexander 1, but to Kutuzov, and accompanying his message with the words: "I need peace, I need it absolutely at all costs, save only honor." I never got an answer.

The end of World War II is known: Kutuzov and his comrades drove the French out of Russia at an accelerated pace. Already in December of the same 1812, solemn prayers were held in all churches in honor of the liberation of their native land from the devastating invasion of "two ten nations." Russia alone opposed the Army of Europe. And - won!