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Updated: June 6, 2025
Malczewski. Even Lieutenant Gordon who commanded our depot at Thorn was there; he had come after he had had the news of the battle of Borodino. "My faithful servant Maciejowski and the brave Wasilenka carried me up the stairs and placed me in bed. I was half dead, hardly master of my senses.
The Grand Army was no longer in a position to choose its way. It was forced to cross again the battlefield of Borodino, where thirty thousand dead lay yet unburied. But Napoleon was still with them, his genius flashing out at times with something of the fire which had taken men's breath away and burnt his name indelibly into the pages of the world's history.
Entrenched on the left behind the river Kolocza, he had raised a series of earthen redoubts, furnished with a formidable artillery, to defend the small heights at the foot of which were extended the Russian battalions. The course of the river changing its direction at the point where the village of Borodino was placed, the heights were there protected only by hollows.
Here, as we have learned, were found the Westphalians, not more than 3 thousand, the remainder of 10 thousand at Smolensk, of 23 thousand who crossed the Niemen. Napoleon gave orders to take the wounded at Borodino into the baggage wagons and forced every officer, every refugee from Moscow who had a vehicle, to take the wounded as the most precious load.
And the quiet little Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the greatest glory of the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in verse and prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has been said.
To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of how the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the river Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was to prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.
Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to the French was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little more than one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a hundred and twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty thousand against a hundred thousand.
This fact was stated to me by a reliable person, who heard Count Rostopchin himself relate it during his stay in Paris. On the 28th of October the Emperor retraced his way to Smolensk, and passed near the battle-field of Borodino.
"Try one of my Pickwicks," said Franklin Fox, with a sneer, offering his gold etui to the young Frenchman; "they are some of Pontet's best, Prince. What, do you bear malice? Come, let us be friends," said the gay and careless young patrician; but a scowl on the part of the Frenchman was the only reply. "Want to know who she is? Borodino knows who she is, Bagnigge," the wag went on.
How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than the French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purpose when it had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim was to capture them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us that when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not beat them? How could that happen?
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