Battle of Borodino

The Battle of Borodino (Russian: Бородинское сражение, Borodinskoe srazhenie; French: Bataille de la Moskova), fought on September 7, 1812, was a battle fought in the Napoleonic Wars during the French invasion of Russia. The fighting involved around 250,000 troops and left at least 70,000 casualties, making Borodino the deadliest day of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon's Grande Armée launched an attack against the Russian army, driving it back from its initial positions but failing to gain a decisive victory. Both armies were exhausted after the battle and the Russians withdrew from the field the following day. Borodino was the last Russian effort at stopping the French advance on Moscow, which fell a week later; because the Russian army was not decisively defeated, the French had no clear way of bringing Czar Alexander to capitulate, resulting in the retreat from Moscow and the defeat of the French invasion.

After a series of Russian retreats at the beginning of the campaign, the nobility grew alarmed about the advancing French troops and forced the Czar to sack the army's commander, Barclay de Tolly and Mikhail Kutuzov was appointed as his replacement. In a final attempt to save Moscow, the Russians made a stand near the village of Borodino, west of the town of Mozhaysk. They fortified their positions and waited for the French to attack. The Russian right wing occupied ideal defensive terrain, so the French tried to press the Russian left for much of the battle. The highlight of the fighting became the bloody struggle for the large Raevsky redoubt near the village of Borodino. The French managed to capture this redoubt late into the day, gradually forcing the rest of the Russian army to pull back as well. The Russians suffered terrible casualties during the fighting, losing over a third of their army. French losses were also heavy, exacerbating the logistical difficulties that Napoleon encountered in the campaign.

Borodino (poem)

Borodino (Russian: Бородино) is a poem by Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov which describes the Battle of Borodino, the major battle of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. It was first published in 1837 in the literary magazine Sovremennik on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the battle.

The poem was based on his 1831 teenage version, The Battlefield of Borodino (Поле Бородина).

The poem starts with the direct appellation "Tell me, uncle,..". Lermontov had several relatives (Arsenyevs and Stolypins) who were veterans of the Patriotic War of 1812, and there have been speculation that the poem was based on the narrations of one of them. Other critics suggest that his original version was written under the influence of Denis Davydov's Borodino Battlefield (Бородинское поле).

References

Borodino (disambiguation)

Borodino refers to the 1812 Battle of Borodino.

Borodino may also refer to: