Borodino · Moscow Oblast
The Field of Borodino
On 7 September 1812, Napoleon's Grande Armee and the Russian army fought the single bloodiest day of the Napoleonic Wars near the village of Borodino, a battle that left both sides claiming victory while paving the way to Moscow's fall.
Aus der Quelle
Borodino (west of Moscow, Russia), site of the bloody encounter of 7 September 1812 between Napoleon’s Grande Armée and the Imperial Russian Army under Mikhail Kutuzov.
Redaktionelle Einordnung
Tens of thousands of soldiers were killed or wounded in roughly twelve hours of fighting centered on fortified positions such as the Raevsky Redoubt and the Bagration flèches. Although the battle itself was inconclusive, it so weakened the Grande Armee that its subsequent occupation of Moscow, and the catastrophic retreat that followed, are often traced back to this single day. The battlefield has been preserved since 1839 as one of Russia's oldest military memorial landscapes and is today managed as the Borodino Field State Military History Museum-Reserve, which received a prize in 2007 for its conservation work.
Empfehlung
The reserve's monuments, redoubts and museum displays — spread across the open fields where the fighting actually took place — make it possible to trace the day's fighting position by position, from the French assaults at dawn to the final Russian withdrawal at nightfall.