The Battle of Borodino, 1812. Napoleon's Forces Blown by a 90% Casualty Rate. Napoleon's Devastating Retreat from Moscow, after Borodino, Sealed the end of his Empire.

Napoleon’s near-unbroken chain of triumphs, stretching back to his legendary campaigns of 1798, met its fateful end in the aftermath of Borodino. His failure to annihilate the Russian army on that blood-soaked field meant far more than just a missed tactical opportunity—it signaled his inability to break Russia’s will. In that failure, the seeds of his empire’s downfall were sown, and the slow unraveling of his success began.

Borodino. September 7, 1812.
French Forces: 120,000 to 135,000 Soldiers.
Russian Forces: 120,000 Soldiers.

Additional Reading and Research:

• Chandler, David. The Campaigns of Napoleon.
• Palmer, Alan. Napoleon in Russia.
• Tarle, Eugene. Napoleon's Invasion of Russia in 1812.
• Cate, Curtis. The War of Two Emperors.

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Transcript

Thanks for tuning into today's episode of History's Greatest Battles. As always, if you're not yet, please subscribe, and share this episode with a friend.

Today's battle goes down as the single bloodiest day in the entire Napoleonic war saga. The Battle of Borodino.  

From the journal of Captain Coinget, writing about the retreat during the Russian winter, he says:

The cold grew more and more intense; the horses in the bivouacs died of hunger and cold. Every day some were left where we had passed the night.

The roads were like glass. The horses fell down, and could not get up. Our worn-out soldiers no longer had strength to their arms. The barrels of their muskets were so cold that they stuck to their hands. It was 28 degrees below zero. But the guard gave up their sacks and muskets only with their lives.

In order to save our lives, we had to eat the horses that fell down on the ice. The soldiers opened the skin with their knives and took out the entrails, which they roasted on the coals - if they had time to make a fire - and, if not, they ate them raw. They devoured the horses before they died. I also ate this food as long as the horses lasted.

The men of the demoralized army marched along like prisoners, without arms or knapsacks. There was no longer any human feeling for one another. Each man looked out for himself.

Every sentiment of humanity extinguished. No one would have reached out his to his father; and that can be easily understood. For who stooped down to help his fellow would not be to rise again.

We had to march fight on, making faces prevent our noses and ears from freezing. The men became insensible to every human feeling. No one murmured against our misfortunes. The men fell frozen stiff all along the road.

If, by chance, any of them came upon a bivouac of other unfortunate creatures who thawing themselves, the new-comers pitilessly pushed them aside, and took possession of their fire. The poor creatures would then lie down to die upon the snow.

One must have seen these horrors in order to believe them! The cold was so severe that the men could no longer endure it. Even the Ravens froze. 

In some reports, its written, that the Russian winter that year hit minus 38 degrees celsius.

Welcome to History's Greatest Battles, Season 01, Episode 65: The Battle of Borodino, the 7th of September, 1812.

French Forces: 120,000 Soldiers.
Russian Forces: 120,000 Soldiers.

Napoleon’s near-unbroken chain of triumphs, stretching back to his legendary campaigns of 1798, met its fateful end in the aftermath of Borodino. His failure to annihilate the Russian army on that blood-soaked field meant far more than just a missed tactical opportunity—it signaled his inability to break Russia’s will. In that failure, the seeds of his empire’s downfall were sown, and the slow unraveling of his success began.

By 1807, Napoleon stood as the unchallenged master of Europe. Every power that dared to face him had already tasted defeat, and their armies lay crushed under his relentless advance. His dominion extended from the Iberian Peninsula to the plains of Poland, with only Great Britain, defiant and shielded by its waters, remaining beyond his grasp.

Though Russia remained unconquered, Tsar Alexander was coerced into alliance through the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, making him an uneasy partner of Napoleon’s expanding empire. The treaty bound Russia to Napoleon’s Continental System, a grand economic strategy intended to undermine Britain’s power by strangling its trade—the only arena where Napoleon could not directly confront it. By closing off Europe’s markets to British merchants, Napoleon aimed to cripple Britain’s economy, squeezing it until its will to resist shattered, much like the noose of rebellion had done decades earlier in the American colonies. In exchange for blocking British imports, Russia was expected to substitute French goods, despite their higher costs and inferior appeal.

But it was not just economic suffocation that poisoned Russia’s ties with Napoleon. The French grip on the Duchy of Warsaw gnawed at Russia like a festering wound, for the Poles had long been bitter enemies of the Tsar, and now they served as Napoleon’s dagger poised at Russia’s heart. The centuries-old hatred between Russians and Poles added fuel to the fire, as a French army stationed in Poland stood ready to strike at the Russian frontier without warning.

Napoleon’s ambitions extended further still, casting a menacing shadow over the Dardanelles—the narrow straits that Russia had coveted for generations, now slipping from their grasp under the Emperor’s gaze. The mounting pressure—economic collapse, territorial threats, and a proud nation's humiliation—wore down Russia’s resolve, and by 1812, Tsar Alexander’s advisors were openly calling for rebellion against the French yoke.

Napoleon, ever vigilant, was fully aware of this rising unrest. He sent a stern ultimatum to Alexander: British merchant ships headed to St. Petersburg must be seized—or there would be consequences. Alexander’s defiance was the spark Napoleon had been waiting for. The Tsar refused to act, and with that, the die was cast—an invasion was inevitable.

Napoleon knew that this war was not just about Russia—it was a lesson for all of Europe. The Tsar’s rebellion had to be crushed with ruthless force, to serve as a warning to any who dared contemplate defiance. The might of Napoleon’s Grand Army was unparalleled—460,000 men marching into Russia, with another 200,000 guarding his rear. Yet, beneath this vast force lay a critical weakness: half the troops were not French and their loyalty wavered, a ticking time bomb within his ranks.

The Russians were not alone. Tsar Alexander had been secretly building alliances—Sweden, under Crown Prince Bernadotte, a former marshal of Napoleon, Poland, ever eager to shift alliances, Prussia, Turkey, and Britain, which sent military advisors to aid the Russian cause. Despite the sheer scale of the force—the largest Napoleon had ever commanded—his trusted advisors begged him to reconsider, their voices drowned out by the Emperor’s iron resolve.

Fourteen years of uninterrupted triumph had made Napoleon deaf to caution. He believed the Russian peasants, downtrodden and oppressed, would rise in welcome of the ideals of the French Revolution, casting off their chains and the Tsar along with them. Confident in his experience, Napoleon was certain his army could live off the land, as it had in every previous campaign, with supply depots to fill any gaps—a gamble he thought riskless.

On June 24, 1812, the Grand Army crossed the Nieman River, leaving Poland behind and stepping into the vast unknown of Russia. His intelligence network, the finest in Europe, guided him masterfully between two scattered Russian armies, cutting through their defenses with strategic precision. Yet from the outset, nature turned against him. A brutal, unforgiving heat drained the life from his men and horses alike, while the cavalry fell prey to a relentless outbreak of colic, rendering it nearly useless.

Napoleon’s brother, Jerome, blundered in his attempt to corner one of the Russian armies. There was no room for failure in Napoleon’s ranks—Jerome was swiftly stripped of command, replaced by the unflinching Marshal Louis Davout, a man whose discipline and ruthlessness were beyond question. Davout wasted no time. His forces descended upon the Russian army under General Bagration like a hammer on an anvil, crushing them and ensuring they remained isolated from the second army commanded by the cautious General Barclay de Tolly. Bagration, bloodied but not broken, withdrew eastward across the Dnieper, leaving a scorched wasteland in his wake, ensuring that nothing of use would fall into French hands.

The scorched-earth strategy, a retreat marked by fire and desolation, was embraced by not just the army but the Russian people themselves. Far from welcoming the ideals of the French Revolution, they torched their own villages and fields rather than yield them to the invaders. Forced to set up more supply depots than anticipated, Napoleon’s army was stretched thin. Each new garrison drained manpower from the invasion force, slowly bleeding the strength of the once-mighty Grand Army.

Barclay de Tolly carried out the scorched-earth policy with meticulous obedience, but the constant retreats earned him scorn. His detractors, both within the army and at court, accused him of cowardice and failing to strike a blow against the French. In truth, Tolly had performed masterfully. Despite losing Smolensk on August 17, he succeeded in pulling his forces out before Napoleon’s noose could tighten, sparing his army from annihilation and slowing the French advance to a crawl.

Nevertheless, politics demanded a scapegoat, and Tolly was replaced by the grizzled Prince Kutuzov. A veteran of Napoleon’s crushing triumph at Austerlitz in 1805, Kutuzov knew all too well the peril he now faced. Kutuzov, wary of underestimating the Emperor’s genius, understood that caution was his greatest ally. Yet political pressure and the clamor of the Russian people demanded a confrontation. Begrudgingly, he prepared for battle near Borodino, 70 miles west of Moscow.

The ground Kutuzov selected for his stand was a fortress in itself. Though smaller than the vast battlefields Napoleon was accustomed to, the eight square miles were a defender’s dream, brimming with natural obstacles. Before Borodino, a rolling plain stretched between two roads leading to Moscow, crossed by treacherous streams with steep, unforgiving banks—perfect for slowing an advancing army. Scattered villages and dense pockets of forest dotted the landscape, each an obstacle for any force foolish enough to charge headlong into this defensive web.

Kutuzov anchored his right flank at the Kalatsha River, just beyond the town of Borodino. There, the imposing Great Redoubt rose to guard the field, while his line extended south toward the town of Utitsa, where thick forests loomed on the horizon, daring the French to attack. The town of Semenovskoi stood as the keystone of Kutuzov’s center, its defenses reinforced by a series of smaller redoubts bristling before it like jagged teeth. This was no mere battlefield—it was a fortress, perfectly placed for a resolute defense, yet offering Kutuzov a clear path to retreat along the road to Moscow should the tide of battle turn against him.

Kutuzov’s army numbered 120,000 men, including 17,000 hardened cavalry and 7,000 wild Cossacks, whose fierce loyalty to Russia was matched only by their savage skill in battle. The Russian line stretched a full five miles, a solid wall of men and steel bracing themselves for the storm they knew was coming.

On the morning of September 5, 1812, Napoleon himself arrived at the field. A fierce skirmish erupted at the Russian forward position near Schivardino, as both sides tested each other’s strength and resolve. As the sun dipped below the horizon, the Russians pulled back, retreating to their main line. Their sacrifice had served its purpose, alerting Kutuzov to the full might of Napoleon’s army bearing down upon them.

Napoleon commanded 135,000 men at Borodino, but they were exhausted. The endless march, the scorching heat, and disease had sapped their strength, leaving both men and horses weakened as they prepared for battle. Even the indomitable Emperor was not immune to the toll of this relentless campaign. Stricken with a painful bladder ailment, Napoleon stayed behind the lines, a rare sight for the man who usually led from the front, fire in his eyes. On September 6, Napoleon scoured the battlefield, his keen eye taking in every detail. By day’s end, his plan was clear: he would smash straight into the Russian center, capturing Borodino first and then breaking through the Great Redoubt.

Marshal Davout, ever the bold strategist, urged a massive cavalry sweep of 40,000 men around the Russian left flank. But Napoleon, calculating the risk, refused. His cavalry was weakened, and he could not afford to thin his lines for such a gamble. With his decision made, Napoleon passed a restless night. The prospect of another Russian retreat gnawed at him, while news of a crushing defeat at Salamanca in Spain weighed heavily on his mind, all compounded by the agony of his illness.

At the crack of dawn on September 7, 1812, the air exploded with the thunder of French artillery. Napoleon’s cannons, the largest ever assembled in battle, hurled fire and iron upon the Russian defenses, aiming to tear them open, to break their spirit. The Emperor expected the barrage to soften the enemy enough for his cavalry to crash through like a tidal wave. His plan was meticulous: the Russian infantry, under this relentless bombardment, would be forced into tight defensive squares, easy prey for the light artillery and skirmishers that followed the charging cavalry. It was a tactic perfected by Napoleon in countless battles. Once the squares were shattered by artillery, Napoleon’s infantry would move in to claim the ground. The reserves of cavalry, held back like a coiled spring, would then be unleashed to drive the Russians from the field in a decisive rout.

But war rarely follows plans. The Russians, hardened by the land and forged by a history of invasion, would not break so easily. Within the first hour, the French had seized the towns of Borodino and Utitsa, securing the flanks, yet the Russians stood firm. They did not retreat. They did not flinch. The battle was far from over. The Great Redoubt, the heart of Kutuzov’s defense, defied every French assault. Its walls bristled with cannon, pouring death upon any who dared approach. Frustrated, Napoleon ordered reinforcements across the Kalatsha River from Borodino to renew the attack.

Sensing that his right flank was no longer under threat, Kutuzov shifted his forces with the precision of a master strategist. He stripped troops from the right and hurled them into the savage fighting around Utitsa on his left, where the battle raged with fury. The French inched forward across the entire line, but every step came at a staggering cost. Bodies piled up, and each yard of blood-soaked ground was paid for with the lives of Napoleon’s finest.

The Russian defenses in the center, fortified by smaller redoubts, held firm. When reinforcements arrived from Kutuzov’s right, they struck the French left at Utitsa with such force that Napoleon’s troops were momentarily driven back. Throughout the day, critical moments presented themselves. A decisive thrust of reserves could have shattered the Russian lines and secured victory. But, in an uncharacteristic hesitation, Napoleon withheld his elite Old Guard—the battle-hardened veterans who had delivered him so many victories. Their absence was felt keenly on the field. This reluctance, rare for the Emperor, likely cost him the crushing victory he sought on that fateful day.

By midday, the Russian lines began to bend under the relentless French pressure. Sensing the danger, Kutuzov unleashed his Cossacks—wild, merciless riders, alongside 5,000 other cavalry. They surged toward Borodino, which was now thinly defended by the French. The sudden strike halted the French offensive in its tracks, temporarily reclaiming Borodino. But this respite was short-lived. Napoleon’s forces redoubled their efforts, renewing the brutal assault on the Great Redoubt with even greater ferocity.

As Russian infantry fought desperately to hold the front of the Redoubt, they missed a deadly flank. French cavalry swept in from the rear, catching the defenders unaware. In a flash, the Redoubt was overrun, its garrison slaughtered to the last man. Sensing the kill, Napoleon unleashed his cavalry reserves, hoping the fall of the Great Redoubt would shatter Russian morale. But the Russians, defiant as ever, countered with a perfectly timed cavalry charge of their own, buying time for a disciplined withdrawal.

By now, Napoleon commanded the very positions the Russians had defended so fiercely, and he watched as they retreated. But then, to his astonishment, they halted on a nearby ridgeline, forming up once more, ready for yet another round of bloodletting. With the sun sinking low and the battlefield a graveyard of the fallen, Napoleon held his ground. The day’s fight was over, but the war was far from won. Years later, Napoleon would reflect on Borodino in his memoirs: "The most terrible of all my battles was the one before Moscow. The French showed themselves worthy of victory, but the Russians showed themselves worthy of being invincible."

Kutuzov, ever the realist, chose not to test the limits of his army’s endurance. Under the cover of night, he withdrew, slipping away like a specter, leaving the battlefield to the French but denying them a final triumph. The toll at Borodino was staggering—30,000 Frenchmen lay dead or wounded, while the Russians paid an even higher price, losing 44,000 men in a single, brutal day. Of all the Russians who fought that day, only a few hundred fell into French hands as prisoners. The rest either lay dead or lived to fight another day. Borodino would go down in history as the bloodiest single day of the nineteenth century—a day where human life was spent like coin, the price of victory too high for either side. The cost was not only measured in soldiers. Forty-seven French generals and thirty-two staff officers were among the dead. The Russians, too, had lost many of their finest leaders to the carnage.

Before slipping into the night, Kutuzov gathered his commanders in the town of Gorky. There, with the weight of the war on his shoulders, he made it clear: Moscow would not be defended. The ancient capital was to be sacrificed. The army’s survival came first. True to his word, Kutuzov withdrew, and with him fled nearly the entire population of Moscow. The city, once the heart of Russian culture and power, was abandoned to its fate. On September 14, Napoleon’s forces marched into Moscow, but the city they found was a hollow shell. Its streets echoed with an eerie silence, broken only by the shuffle of a few ragged prisoners, recently freed from their chains. Among those prisoners lurked disguised Russian soldiers, left behind with a singular mission: to deny Moscow, Russia’s sacred heart, to the French invaders—just as they had denied them food and supplies since the invasion began.

It didn’t take long for disaster to strike. Within hours, flames leapt from building to building, engulfing the city in an inferno. Even the mighty Kremlin, Russia’s fortress of power, could not escape the firestorm. In just four days, the once-great city of Moscow had been reduced to ashes. All that remained was a smoldering ruin—a grim monument to Napoleon’s ambition. Napoleon, now the master of Moscow’s smoking ruins, sent desperate demands for Russia’s surrender. But from St. Petersburg, Tsar Alexander gave no answer. His silence was as cold and unforgiving as the Russian winter that loomed. And then, as if summoned by the will of Russia itself, winter came.

Moscow was a death trap, not a prize. With no shelter and no surrender, Napoleon was forced to issue the bitter order: retreat. His once-proud army would march back toward Poland, leaving behind the ruins of their conquest. Historians would later criticize Napoleon for pressing past Smolensk, for not turning back sooner. But even had he tried, his supply lines were already stretched to the breaking point, and the barren, scorched lands offered nothing to sustain his starving legions. The moment the French turned their backs on Moscow, the Russians pounced. Kutuzov’s forces shadowed their every step, relentless, striking without warning. There was no rest, no reprieve—only constant harassment by an enemy that had tasted survival and was now hungry for revenge. Day after day, Russian cavalry and wild Cossack raiders hunted the retreating French. Stragglers were cut down, entire units swallowed by the frozen plains, leaving trails of bodies in the snow.

Winter struck early, fierce and unyielding, only to deliver one last cruel twist. The Beresina River, which should have frozen solid, remained treacherously unfrozen, a liquid barrier mocking the frozen men who now sought escape. The Grand Army, desperate to escape, was forced to cross the icy Beresina on makeshift bridges. But fate was merciless. The bridges collapsed under the weight of men, cannons, and horses. Nearly 10,000 soldiers and camp followers were left stranded, easy prey for the waiting Cossacks who showed no mercy. With grim determination, Napoleon pushed his broken army toward Vilna, the French stronghold in Lithuania. But winter, like death, stalked his every move, grinding his men into the snow and ice. The cold was beyond comprehension. Some accounts speak of temperatures plunging to -32 degrees Celsius, cold enough to freeze flesh in moments, turning soldiers into statues of ice.

As Napoleon struggled to survive the Russian wasteland, word reached him of a coup back in France. The conspirators had spread rumors of his death in Russia, seeking to topple his empire while he froze on the steppes. Faced with the threat to his throne, Napoleon made a fateful decision. He abandoned his shattered army and raced back to Paris, desperate to crush the rumors of his death and reassert his control. He arrived on December 18, the master of his empire once more—if only in name. Four days before Napoleon’s return, the remnants of his once-mighty army stumbled across the Nieman River, back into Poland. Of the 600,000 who had begun the invasion, only a pitiful 5,000 to 13,000 remained. The rest were dead, captured, or lost forever in the Russian wilderness.

Borodino was the turning point—the battle that marked the slow death of Napoleon’s empire. Though he claimed the field, the real victory belonged to Russia and to the winter that would soon crush him. On that fateful September 7, the fire that once defined Napoleon’s genius flickered. His aggression, his brilliance, all dulled. The spark that had once made him invincible appeared only fleetingly in the years that followed. Napoleon’s sudden return to Paris crushed the budding conspiracies against him. By the time news of his catastrophic failure in Russia spread, he had already set plans in motion for a new army. But this time, the invincible force he once commanded was gone, replaced by hastily trained recruits. The army that now stood under his banner was a shadow of its former self—young, inexperienced, with only a handful of hardened veterans pulled from the blood-soaked fields of Spain to hold it together.

The disaster in Russia shattered Napoleon’s aura of invincibility. The nations he had crushed under his boot for years smelled blood and rose against him. By October of the following year, at Leipzig, this new coalition would deal him a devastating blow, one from which he would never recover. Surrounded by enemies and with too few men left to fight his wars, Napoleon’s fate was sealed. His empire, once vast and unstoppable, was crumbling beneath him.

To this day, the Russians revere Borodino as a symbol of their resilience. Yet they hold an even deeper reverence for Nature herself, whose brutal hand defended their homeland in ways no army ever could. Napoleon, like King Charles XII of Sweden before him, underestimated the Russian winter—a fatal mistake that Adolf Hitler, too, would repeat 130 years later. Yet it is 1812 that stands immortal in the Russian memory, not just for its historical weight, but because the world itself has come to appreciate it—through the sweeping pages of Tolstoy’s War and Peace and the resounding notes of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. As historian David Chandler aptly put it, "It is quite possible that the French retreat from Moscow is the best-known military disaster in recorded human history. The scale is epic, the suffering incalculable, the outcome catastrophic."