Anatoly Shepelyuk. M.I. Kutuzov at the command post on the day of the Battle of Borodino. (Left)1951

Anatoly Shepelyuk. M.I. Kutuzov at the command post on the day of the Battle of Borodino. (Left)
1951.

Vasily Vereshchagin. Napoleon Near Borodino. (Right)
1897. Museum of Patriotic War of 1812, Moscow.

TheFrench invasion of Russia, known in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812, and in France as the Russian Campaign, began on 24 June 1812 when Napoleon’s Grande Armée crossed the Neman River in an attempt to engage and defeat the Russian army. Napoleon hoped to compel Tsar Alexander I of Russia to cease trading with British merchants through proxies in an effort to pressure the United Kingdom to sue for peace. The official political aim of the campaign was to liberate Poland from the threat of Russia. 

The campaign was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars. The reputation of Napoleon was severely shaken, and French hegemony in Europe was dramatically weakened. The Grande Armée, made up of French and allied invasion forces, was reduced to a fraction of its initial strength. These events triggered a major shift in European politics. France’s ally Prussia, soon followed by Austria, broke their imposed alliance with France and switched sides. This triggered the War of the Sixth Coalition.

TheBattle of Borodino was a battle fought on 7 September 1812. Although the Battle of Borodino can be seen as a victory for Napoleon, some scholars and contemporaries described Borodino as a Pyrrhic victory for the French, which would ultimately cost Napoleon the war and his crown, although at the time none of this was apparent to either side. 

This victory ultimately cost Napoleon his army, as it allowed the French emperor to believe that the campaign was winnable, exhausting his forces as he went on to Moscow to await a surrender that would never come. The Borodino victory allowed Napoleon to move on to Moscow, where — even allowing for the arrival of reinforcements — the French Army only possessed a maximum of 95,000 men, who would be ill-equipped to win a battle due to a lack of supplies and ammunition. The Grande Armée suffered 66% of its casualties by the time of the Moscow retreat; snow, starvation, and typhus ensured that only 23,000 men crossed the Russian border alive. Furthermore, while the Russian army suffered heavy casualties in the battle, they had fully recovered by the time of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow; they immediately began to interfere with the French withdrawal, costing Napoleon much of his surviving army.