7 September 1812, about 9 am to 2 pm
The great redoubt and Uvarov’s raid
Eugène crosses the Kolocha and advances on the great redoubt with the divisions of Jean-Baptiste Broussier and Charles-Antoine Morand. Charles Auguste Bonnamy’s brigade breaks into the redoubt, and Barclay has to rally Ivan Paskevich’s routed regiment in person. Aleksey Yermolov brings up three batteries of horse artillery and fresh infantry, and the Russians retake the redoubt with the bayonet.
The great redoubt during the battle, detail of Franz Roubaud’s panorama of Borodino, 1912Wikimedia Commons, Franz Roubaud, Public domain (Battery of Raevsky.jpg)
At about 7:30 Platov’s Cossacks find a ford over the Kolocha on the Russian right. Kutuzov allows a raid, and Platov and Fyodor Uvarov ride around the French left with about 8,000 cavalry and 12 guns, reaching the rear of Eugène’s corps around midday. Eugène calls off his next attack on the redoubt and turns his corps west, and the Russian cavalry, without infantry, return to their lines.
The raid delays the attack on the redoubt by about two hours. The Russians use them to send Alexander Ostermann-Tolstoy’s corps and other reinforcements to the battered left and centre, and Kutuzov turns his army to face west. French guns on the Semyonovskaya heights and in front of the redoubt keep firing into the Russian lines.
The battle of Borodino, painting by Peter von Hess, 1843Wikimedia Commons, Peter von Hess, Public domain (Peter von Hess 002.jpg)
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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