7 September 1812, 6 to 11:30 am
The flèches
The battle opens at 6 am, when a French grand battery of 102 guns fires on the Russian centre. Davout sends Jean Dominique Compans’s division against the southernmost flèche, with Joseph Dessaix’s division echeloned to its left. Both generals are wounded and Davout is thrown when his horse is shot under him, but by 7:30 the French hold the three flèches.
The fighting at the Bagration flèches, detail of Franz Roubaud’s panorama of Borodino, 1912Wikimedia Commons, Franz Roubaud, Public domain (Roubaud fleshes.jpg)
Bagration counterattacks and throws them out, Ney retakes the earthworks, and Barclay sends guard regiments, grenadiers and guns from the Russian right to help the 2nd Army. The French make seven assaults on the flèches. At about 11 am Bagration is hit in the leg by splinters of a cannonball, and by 11:30 Louis Friant’s division holds the position and the Russians fall back behind the village of Semyonovskaya. Bagration dies of the wound on 24 September.
Bagration leading an attack at Borodino, by Nikolai SamokishWikimedia Commons, Nikolai Samokish, Public domain (General Pyotr Bagration advances at Borodino.jpg)
On the French left Eugène’s corps takes the village of Borodino from the Russian Guard jägers. In the south Poniatowski’s Poles take Utitsa and its mound on the Old Smolensk road, Nikolay Tuchkov is mortally wounded while retaking them by 8 am, and the Poles and Junot’s Westphalians take the village again.
Sources
- Alexander Mikaberidze, The Battle of Borodino: Napoleon Against Kutuzov (2007).
- Christopher Duffy, Borodino and the War of 1812 (1972).
- Richard K. Riehn, 1812: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign (1990).
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