Chapter 19 Chapter Nineteen

On the 24th of August a battle was fought at Shevardino Fortress, on the 25th neither side fired, and on the 26th the Battle of Borodino broke out. What were the two battles of Shevardino and Borodino for?How was it provoked and how was it challenged?Why the Battle of Borodino?The campaign was meaningless for both the French and the Russians.The most immediate result of this campaign, for the Russians, was and must have been to promote the destruction of Moscow (which was our greatest fear), and to the French their total annihilation (which was their terribly frightened).The result was obvious even at the time, but Napoleon launched the campaign anyway, and Kutuzov rose to meet it.

If both commanders had been guided by reason, Napoleon seemed to understand that a major war two thousand versts deep into Russia, at the very risk of losing a quarter of his army, would lead to his ruin; It seemed equally necessary for the husband to know that, at the risk of losing a quarter of his army, he would lose Moscow.This was as obvious to Kutuzov as in a arithmetic problem. For example, in a game of checkers, we have one piece short, and if we try to match the piece with the opponent, we must lose, because the match should not be played. When the opponent has 16 pieces and our side has 14 pieces, our side is only one-eighth weaker than the other side; but if we spell out 13 pieces, the opponent is three times stronger than us. .

Before the Battle of Borodino, our army was roughly five to six compared with the French army; after the battle, it was one to two, that is, before the battle, it was 100,000 to 120,000, and after the battle it was 50,000 to ten. Ten thousand.But the clever and experienced Kutuzov took up the challenge.Napoleon, known as the commander-in-chief of genius, launched that campaign, losing a quarter of his troops and stretching the front.If he thought that taking Moscow, like Vienna, would end the war, he was wrong, and there is plenty of evidence to prove otherwise.Napoleon's historians have said that after taking Smolensk, he wanted to stop advancing. He knew the danger of stretching the front line, and he also knew that taking Moscow would not be the end of the war, because in Smolensk he just watched As for what the Russian cities were left to him, he repeatedly expressed his willingness to negotiate, but never once received an answer.

Both Napoleon and Kutuzov launched and responded to the Battle of Borodino involuntarily and senselessly.But later historians used these fait accomplis to strongly prove the foresight and genius of the two commanders.In fact, these generals are only the instruments of history, and the least free and involuntary activists of all involuntary historical instruments. The ancients have bequeathed to us many examples of heroic epics, whose heroes command the general attention of history, but we have not yet become accustomed to the fact that such histories are meaningless for our human age. Regarding another question: how the Battle of Borodino and the Battle of Shevardino before it were fought, there is also an extremely obvious, well-known, and completely wrong concept.All historians describe it this way: when the Russian army retreated from Smolensk, it looked for the most favorable position for the great battle, and found it at Borodino.

On the left side of the road from Moscow to Smolensk, almost at right angles to it—from Borodino to Uditsa, that is, where the battle took place, where the Russians had previously built fortifications. In front of this position, on the Shevardino Heights, an outpost was set up to observe the enemy.On the 24th Napoleon attacked this outpost and took it; On the 26th, the attack began on all Russian troops that had entered the Borodino battlefield. This is recorded in the history books, and it is completely distorted, which can be easily ascertained by anyone who is willing to delve into the truth of the matter.

The Russians did not look for the best positions; on the contrary, they left many better positions than Borodino in their retreat.They did not hold any of these positions: because Kutuzov did not want to take a position that was not his choice; because the demand for a general battle was not strong enough; because Miloradovich with the reserve army had not yet arrived; There are countless other reasons.In fact, the positions that have been spared before are all relatively strong. The Borodino position (the location of the great battle) is not only not strong, but compared with any place in the Russian Empire, even if you use a needle to insert a place on the map, it will not be too strong. It's not like a position.

On the left side of the road at right angles to the Borodino field (the site of the great battle), the Russians were not only undefended, but before August 25, 1812, they never thought that a battle would be fought on this site. A big battle.This is illustrated by the following facts: firstly, not only were there no trenches there before the twenty-fifth, but also the trenches which were dug on the twenty-fifth were not completed by the twenty-sixth; The current situation proves that the Shevardino fortress in front of the fighting position is meaningless. Why should it be strengthened more than other strongholds?Why spend all your strength, lose 6,000 people, and hold it until late at night on the 24th?To observe the enemy, a Cossack reconnaissance squad will suffice; thirdly, the position in which the battle will be fought is not foreseen, and the Shevardino Fortress is not an outpost of that position, because until the 25th Barclay de Tolly and Bagration also believed that the Shevardino fort was the left wing of the position.And Kutuzov himself, in a report written in a fit of rage after that battle, also stated that the Shevardino Fort was the left wing of the position.Only much later, when he was free to write reports on the Battle of Borodino, did he concoct the paradox (probably in defense of an infallible commander-in-chief) that the Shevardino fort was a An outpost (actually, it was only a fortified point on the left flank) that the battle of Borodino was fought on our pre-selected and fortified position.In fact, the battle broke out in a completely unexpected and barely fortified location.

It is evident that a position was chosen along the Kolocha River, which crosses the main road obliquely, not at a right angle, but at an acute angle, so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right near the village of Novoye, The center is at Borodino, that is, at the confluence of the Kolocha and Vojna rivers.If you don't care about how the battle is fought.One has only to look at the Borodino battlefield to see that the Kolocha River was used as a cover to stop the enemy from advancing on Moscow along the Smolensk road. On the 24th Napoleon rode to Valujeva, he did not see (as the history books say) the Russian position from Ouditsa to Borodino (he could not have seen that position, because it did not exist) , he also did not see the Russian outposts, but in pursuit of the Russian rearguard, he came across the left flank of the Russian position - the Shevardino Fortress. To the Russians' surprise, Napoleon moved his army across the Kolocha River.In this way, it was too late for the Russians to meet the general battle, so they had to withdraw the left wing position they were supposed to hold, and occupied an unexpected and unfortified new position.Napoleon moved to the other side of the Kolocha River, that is, to the left of the main road, so that Napoleon moved the imminent battle from the right to the left (as viewed from the Russian side), to Uditsa, Semyonovsky On the plain between Koye and Borodino (which, as a position, is no more favorable than any other plain in Russia), it was on this plain that the great battle of the twenty-sixth was fought.Sketches of the scheduled fight and the actual fight are on the next page:

If Napoleon had not reached the Kolocha on the evening of the 24th; if he had not ordered the attack on the fort immediately that night, but had begun the attack the next morning, no one would have doubted that the fort of Shevardino was ours. left flank; and the battle would have gone on as we had expected.In that case, we probably proceeded as we expected.In this case we would probably hold the Shevardino fort tenaciously, while at the same time attacking Napoleon from the center or from the right, and the Great Battle of the 24th would be fought on the intended fortified positions. up.But because the attack on our left flank took place on the night immediately following the retreat of our rearguard, that is, the night immediately after the Battle of Gridneva, and because the Russian military generals were unwilling or unable to take action on the night of the 24th Great battles began, so that the first and main battle of the Battle of Borodino was lost on the 24th, and apparently led to the defeat of the 26th.

On the morning of the 25th after the fall of Shevarkino Fortress, we had no left wing positions, so we had to withdraw our left wing and rush to build a fortification in a random place. However, it is not enough to say that the Russian army is only defending with weak and unbuilt fortifications. What is even more unfavorable is that the Russian generals do not recognize the obvious fait accompli (the left wing has fallen, the current battlefield has turned from right to left transfer), remained in the stretched position from the village of Novoye to Uditsa, and therefore had to move the troops from the right to the left after the fighting began.Thus, during the entire battle, only half of the Russian forces on the other side were used to resist the French attack on our left flank (Poniatowski's attack on Uditsa and Uvarov's attack on the right flank). The French army is just a separate military operation in the process of the General Assembly).

From this it can be seen that the Battle of Borodino was not at all what it was portrayed (trying to hide the mistakes of our military generals, thereby belittling the glory of the Russian army and people).The Battle of Borodino was not fought on a selected and fortified position, nor was the Russian army only slightly weaker than the enemy's; An open, almost unfortified area, with half the strength of the French army to meet the Battle of Borodino, that is to say, under such conditions, not only fighting for ten hours and fighting a close battle It is incredible, even if it lasted for three hours without causing the army to completely collapse and flee.