Battle of Maloyaroslavets

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Maloyaroslavets was fought on the 24th of October 1812, and in the course of that single day the small Russian town at its center changed hands no fewer than eight times. Two armies of nearly equal strength fought through its streets and over the heights above it. Both sides lost heavily. By nightfall the French and their Italian allies held the ground, and the narrow edge in the fighting was theirs. Yet this was the clash that pushed Napoleon toward the road he had most wanted to avoid. Why did a town on the Luzha River become the hinge of the 1812 campaign? Why did one commander walk away from a field his enemy had just won? And what did the winner grasp that night that made victory so hollow?

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• 2. The Broken Bridge

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  On the 19th of October 1812, Napoleon marched out of Moscow and turned south-west toward Kaluga, with Eugène de Beauharnais leading the advance. The British general Robert Wilson, who was attached to the Russian army, later estimated what left the city. He counted 90,000 effective infantry and 14,000 feeble cavalry. Another 12,000 armed men served the artillery, engineers, gendarmerie, headquarters staff, baggage trains and supply. More than 20,000 sick, wounded and non-combatants traveled with them.

  The column was not the whole of the exodus. A great crowd of invalids from the hospitals, women, and fugitive inhabitants of Moscow was sent toward Vereya and the straight road to Smolensk. Nobody could say how large that crowd was. Only the fighting force was meant to go on toward Kaluga.

  The Russians learned of the move in time. General Dorokhov's partisan detachment was the first to spot Napoleon heading for Maloyaroslavets, and it reported to Kutuzov at once. General Miloradovich's vanguard then confirmed that Napoleon had shifted his main advance from the old Kaluga road onto a new one. Only a week earlier, on the 18th of October, the Russians had won the Battle of Tarutino.

  General Delzons commanded the lead French units heading for the town, and the Russians themselves had already made his task harder. The mayor, P. I. Bykovsky, destroyed the permanent bridge over the Luzha. A pontoon bridge was then started, but an official named S. I. Belyayev wrecked the dam on the evening of the 23rd. The rising water washed away the unfinished crossing, and Delzons got only two battalions into the town beforehand. The rest of his division finally crossed on the morning of the 24th, using a pontoon bridge laid beside the ruined one, and they went straight at the heights where the town stood.

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• 3. Fighting for the Heights

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  General Dokhturov, sent by Kutuzov, entered Maloyaroslavets from the south on the 24th of October and found that the French spearhead had already seized a bridgehead. General Yermolov, chief of staff of Kutuzov's army, rode with him. As the fighting intensified, command of the Russian troops inside the town was handed to Yermolov. Dokhturov threw himself into the attacks personally and brought up reinforcements from his own corps.

  Then General Raevsky arrived with 10,000 more Russians. They retook the town, but they could not dislodge the French from the bridgehead. Beauharnais answered by committing the 15th Italian division under Domenico Pino, who was also Minister of War of the Kingdom of Italy. General Broussier's division went in beside it. By evening the Russians had been driven out again. Pino's division had not been in action at any point earlier in the campaign.

  The French paid for it in senior officers. Delzons was killed while trying to steady his wavering soldiers by his own example. Armand Charles Guilleminot, chief of staff of Beauharnais' corps and the first man to enter the city, took command in his place.

  Since midday Napoleon had been directing the fight himself. He sent units of Marshal Davout to support the exhausted Beauharnais. One assessment of the Italian Royal Guard under Beauharnais declared that it "had displayed qualities which entitled it evermore to take rank amongst the bravest troops of Europe".

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• 4. Kutuzov's Calculation

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  Marshal Kutuzov himself reached the field on the evening of the 24th of October. He pulled out Dokhturov's depleted corps and replaced it with General Borozdin's. He then ruled out a pitched battle against the Grande Armée the next day. Instead he chose to fall back on the prepared defensive line at Kaluga. At about two in the morning on the 25th, he led his army away in perfect order, south behind the rivulet Korizha, to secure the road to Kaluga.

  His aim was narrower than a clean victory. Kutuzov wanted Napoleon forced back along the devastated road by which he had advanced, where starvation was far more likely. A fight to the finish at Maloyaroslavets would not have served that plan as well as holding the southern road.

  Wilson did not agree. He favoured an aggressive strategy and protested loudly. According to Wilson's memoirs, Kutuzov replied: "I am by no means sure that the total destruction of the Emperor Napoleon and his army would be such a benefit to the world; his succession would not fall to Russia or any other continental power, but to that which already commands the sea (i.e. Britain), and whose domination would then be intolerable."

  The Russian army had retreated, but Napoleon did not follow it.

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• 5. A Strange Victory

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  French casualties at Maloyaroslavets ran to about 6,000-8,000 men, while the Russians lost about 8,000 killed and wounded. The French had secured the bridgehead and the town, which made the result a strange tactical victory for them. Napoleon may have realized, however, that unless he could win "a new Borodino", the way through Kaluga and Medyn was closed. Over the longer run the battle became a Russian strategic victory, because it had disturbed Napoleon's ability to wage war.

  At daybreak on the 25th of October, a Cossack regiment came close to catching Napoleon. A corps of grenadiers saved him. From that day on, he carried a bag of lethal poison hung from a string around his neck.

  On the 26th, Napoleon ordered the retreat by way of Mozhaisk and Borodino to Smolensk. His reasons are unknown, and the detour looks odd on a map of the invasion. The decision suggests he was keenly aware of how weak his army had become. The march ahead was 260 miles through ravaged country, where towns that had been sacked and burnt offered no shelter or supplies against the coming winter.

  The rearguards of Davout and Miloradovich stood in sight of one another until the night of the 26th-the 27th of October, trading a few cannon shots. That same night the Grande Armée's rear guard left the ruins of the city, crossed the Luzha to its northern bank and joined the general retreat.

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• 6. The Long Escort

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  Kutuzov's orders to Platov were simple: follow Napoleon directly with his Cossacks. The next major battle for the Russian army was the Battle of Vyazma, fought on the 3rd of November 1812.

  Kutuzov, in effect, "escorted" Napoleon away from the more southern roads, where food and shelter were better. In doing so he secured the south against the French army. His next attack on the remnants of the Grande Armée, the Battle of Krasnoi, began on the 15th of November 1812, three weeks after Maloyaroslavets.

  The last battle of the campaign for Napoleon was the Battle of Berezina, fought from the 26th to the 29th of November 1812.

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