Most of the fighting at Borodinó took place in a nearby open field. The marshals and generals had little control of the troops’ movements.
Most of the fighting at Borodinó took place in a nearby open field. The marshals and generals had little control of the troops’ movements.
Book 10, Chapter 33
Most of the fighting at Borodinó took place in a nearby open field. The marshals and generals had little control of the troops’ movements.
Summary:
The chief action of the battle of Borodinó was fought on an open space between Borodinó and Bagratión’s entrenchments. It began with both sides’ cannons, several hundred of them, firing until the air was thick with smoke. Then both sides divisions advanced into the smoke covered field. The men fought in the simplest, most unsophisticated way. The marshals and generals, even Napoleon, had scant control over movements on the battlefield, because of distance, smoke-cover, and the rapidity of events – and the troops efforts at self-preservation. It didn’t really matter how the troops moved on the fields, though, because disablement and death were happening. Balls and bullets were flying everywhere in the air.
quote from the chapter:
The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and only occasionally went within musket range, made their own arrangements without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in what direction to fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry should run. But even their orders, like Napoleon’s, were seldom carried out, and then but partially. For the most part things happened contrary to their orders. Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on meeting grapeshot; soldiers ordered to remain where they were, suddenly, seeing Russians unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed back and sometimes forward, and the cavalry dashed without orders in pursuit of the flying Russians. In this way two cavalry regiments galloped through the Semënovsk hollow and as soon as they reached the top of the incline turned round and galloped full speed back again. The infantry moved in the same way, sometimes running to quite other places than those they were ordered to go to
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