The Napoleonic Wars are military campaigns against several European coalitions led by France during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte (1799-1815). Napoleon's Italian campaign 1796-1797 and his Egyptian expedition of 1798-1799 in the concept of "Napoleonic wars" is usually not included, since they took place even before Bonaparte came to power (coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799). The Italian campaign is part of the Revolutionary Wars 1792-1799. The Egyptian expedition in different sources either refers to them, or is recognized as a separate colonial campaign.

Napoleon in the Council of Five Hundred and 18 Brumaires 1799

Napoleon's war with the Second Coalition

During the coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9) 1799 and the transfer of power in France to the first consul, citizen Napoleon Bonaparte, the republic was at war with the new (Second) European coalition, in which the Russian Emperor Paul I took part, who sent an army to the West under by the administration of Suvorov. Things went badly for France, especially in Italy, where Suvorov, together with the Austrians, conquered the Cisalpine Republic, after which a monarchist restoration took place in Naples, abandoned by the French, accompanied by bloody terror against the friends of France, and then the fall of the republic in Rome took place. Dissatisfied, however, with his allies, mainly Austria, and partly with England, Paul I left the coalition and the war, and when the first consul Bonaparte let the Russian prisoners go home without ransom and re-equipped, the Russian emperor even began to draw closer to France, very pleased that in this country "anarchy was replaced by a consulate." Napoleon Bonaparte himself willingly walked towards rapprochement with Russia: in fact, the expedition to Egypt undertaken by him in 1798 was directed against England in her Indian possessions, and in the imagination of the ambitious conqueror now a Franco-Russian campaign against India was drawn, the same as later, when the memorable war of 1812 began. This combination, however, did not take place, since in the spring of 1801 Paul I fell victim to a conspiracy, and power in Russia passed to his son Alexander I.

Napoleon Bonaparte - First Consul. Painting by J. O.D. Ingres, 1803-1804

After Russia left the coalition, Napoleon's war against other European powers continued. The first consul turned to the sovereigns of England and Austria with an invitation to end the struggle, but in response, unacceptable conditions were set for him - restoration Bourbons and the return of France to its former borders. In the spring of 1800 Bonaparte personally led an army into Italy and in the summer, after Battle of Marengo, took possession of all of Lombardy, while another French army occupied southern Germany and began to threaten Vienna itself. Peace of Luneville 1801 ended the war of Napoleon with Emperor Franz II and confirmed the terms of the previous Austro-French treaty ( Campoformian 1797 G.). Lombardy became the Italian Republic, which made its president the first consul Bonaparte. Both in Italy and in Germany, a number of changes were made after this war: for example, the Duke of Tuscan (from the Habsburg surname) received the principality of the Archbishop of Salzburg in Germany for renouncing his duchy, and Tuscany, under the name of the Kingdom of Etruria, was transferred to the Duke of Parma (from the Spanish line Bourbons). Most of the territorial changes were made after this war of Napoleon in Germany, many sovereigns of which, for the cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France, were to receive rewards at the expense of smaller princes, sovereign bishops and abbots, as well as free imperial cities. In Paris, a real bargaining in territorial increments opened, and Bonaparte's government took advantage of the rivalry of the German princes with great success in order to conclude separate treaties with them. This was the beginning of the destruction of the medieval Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, which, however, even earlier, as the witches said, was neither sacred, nor Roman, nor empire, but some kind of chaos from approximately the same number of states as there are days in a year. Now, at least purely, they have been greatly reduced, thanks to the secularization of spiritual principalities and the so-called mediatization - the transformation of direct (immediacy) members of the empire into mediocre (media) ones - various state trifles, such as small counties and imperial cities.

The war between France and England ended only in 1802, when both states concluded peace in Amiens... The first consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, then acquired the glory of a peacemaker after a ten-year war, which France had to wage: a life-long consulate was, in fact, a reward for the conclusion of peace. But the war with England soon resumed, and one of the reasons for this was that Napoleon, not content with the presidency in the Republic of Italy, also established his protectorate over the Batavian Republic, that is, Holland, very close to England. The renewal of the war took place in 1803, and the English king George III, who was at the same time the Elector of Hanover, lost his ancestral possession in Germany. After that, Bonaparte's war with England did not stop until 1814.

Napoleon's war with the Third Coalition

The war was the favorite work of the emperor-commander, equal to whom history generally knows little, and his unauthorized actions, which include assassination of the Duke of Enghien, which caused general indignation in Europe, soon forced the other powers to unite against the daring "upstart Corsican". His acceptance of the imperial title, the transformation of the Italian Republic into a kingdom, the sovereign of which was Napoleon himself, who was crowned in 1805 in Milan with the old iron crown of the Lombard kings, preparation of the Batavian Republic for the transformation into the kingdom of one of his brothers, as well as various other actions of Napoleon in relation to other countries were the reasons for the formation against him of the Third anti-French coalition from England, Russia, Austria, Sweden and the Kingdom of Naples, and Napoleon, for his part, secured in the coming coalition war alliances with Spain and with the South German princes (the sovereigns of Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria, Gessen and others), who, thanks to him, significantly increased their holdings by secularization and mediatization of smaller holdings.

War of the Third Coalition. Map

In 1805, Napoleon was preparing in Boulogne to land in England, but in fact he moved his troops to Austria. However, the landing in England and the war on its very territory soon became impossible, as a result of the extermination of the French fleet by the English under the command of Admiral Nelson at Trafalgar... But Bonaparte's land war with the Third Coalition was a series of brilliant victories. In October 1805, on the eve of Trafalgar, the Austrian army surrendered in Ulm, Vienna was taken in November, December 2, 1805, on the first anniversary of Napoleon's coronation, the famous "battle of the three emperors" took place at Austerlitz (see the article The Battle of Austerlitz), which ended in the complete victory of Napoleon Bonaparte over the Austro-Russian army, with which there were Franz II, and young Alexander I. Graduated from the war with the Third Coalition The world of presburg deprived the Habsburg monarchy of all of Upper Austria, Tyrol and Venice with its region and gave Napoleon the right to widely dispose of in Italy and Germany.

Triumph of Napoleon. Austerlitz. Artist Sergei Prisekin

Bonaparte's war with the Fourth Coalition

The next year, the enemies of France were joined by the Prussian king Frederick William III - thus the Fourth Coalition was formed. But the Prussians also suffered, in October of this year, a terrible defeat at Jena, after which the German princes, who were in an alliance with Prussia, were defeated, and during this war Napoleon occupied first Berlin, then Warsaw, which belonged to Prussia after the third partition of Poland. The assistance provided to Frederick William III by Alexander I was not successful, and in the war of 1807 the Russians were defeated under Friedland, after which Napoleon occupied Königsberg as well. Then the famous Peace of Tilsit took place, which ended the war of the Fourth Coalition and was accompanied by a meeting between Napoleon Bonaparte and Alexander I in a pavilion arranged in the middle of the Niemen.

War of the Fourth Coalition. Map

In Tilsit, it was decided by both sovereigns to help each other, dividing the West and the East between themselves. Only the intercession of the Russian tsar before the formidable victor saved Prussia from disappearing from the political map of Europe after this war, but this state still lost half of its possessions, had to pay a large indemnity and took over French garrisons.

Rebuilding Europe after the wars with the Third and Fourth coalitions

After the wars with the Third and Fourth coalitions, the Presburg and Tilsit worlds, Napoleon Bonaparte was the complete master of the West. The Venetian region increased the Kingdom of Italy, where Napoleon's stepson Eugene Beauharnais was made viceroy, and Tuscany was directly annexed to the French Empire itself. On the very next day after the Peace of Presburg, Napoleon announced that “the Bourbon dynasty had ceased to reign in Naples,” and sent his elder brother Joseph (Joseph) to reign there. The Batavian Republic was turned into a Dutch kingdom with Napoleon's brother Louis (Louis) on the throne. From the regions taken from Prussia to the west of the Elbe with neighboring parts of Hanover and other principalities, the Kingdom of Westphalia was created, which was received by another brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, Jerome (Jerome), from the former Polish lands of Prussia - Duchy of Warsaw, given to the sovereign of Saxony. Back in 1804, Franz II declared the imperial crown of Germany, the former electoral, the hereditary heritage of his house, and in 1806 he removed Austria from Germany and began to be titled not Roman, but Austrian emperor. In Germany itself, after these wars of Napoleon, a complete reshuffle was carried out: again some principalities disappeared, others received an increase in their possessions, in particular Bavaria, Württemberg and Saxony, even raised to the rank of kingdoms. The Holy Roman Empire was no longer there, and the Confederation of the Rhine was now organized in the western part of Germany - under the protectorate of the French emperor.

By the Peace of Tilsit, Alexander I was given, in agreement with Bonaparte, to increase his possessions at the expense of Sweden and Turkey, from which he took away, from the first in 1809 Finland, turned into an autonomous principality, from the second - after the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812 - Bessarabia incorporated directly into Russia. In addition, Alexander I undertook to annex his empire to the "continental system" of Napoleon, as the termination of all trade relations with England was called. The new allies were, in addition, forced to the same Sweden, Denmark and Portugal, which continued to stand on the side of England. A coup d'état took place in Sweden at this time: Gustav IV was replaced by his uncle Charles XIII, and the French Marshal Bernadotte was declared his heir, after which Sweden also went over to the side of France, as did Denmark after England attacked her for a desire to remain neutral. Since Portugal opposed, Napoleon, having entered into an alliance with Spain, announced that "the House of Braganza has ceased to reign", and began the conquest of this country, which forced her king with the whole family to sail to Brazil.

The beginning of Napoleon Bonaparte's war in Spain

Soon it was the turn of Spain to turn into the kingdom of one of the brothers of Bonaparte, the ruler of the European West. There was strife in the Spanish royal family. The government was, in fact, governed by Minister Godoy, the beloved of Queen Marie Louise, the wife of the close-minded and weak-willed Charles IV, an ignorant, short-sighted and shameless man, who since 1796 completely subordinated Spain to French politics. The royal couple had a son, Ferdinand, whom his mother and her favorite did not like, and so both sides began to complain to Napoleon one against the other. Bonaparte connected Spain with France even more closely when he promised Godoy to divide her possessions with Spain for his help in the war with Portugal. In 1808, members royal family were invited to negotiate in Bayonne, and here the matter ended with the deprivation of Ferdinand of his hereditary rights and the abdication of Charles IV himself from the throne in favor of Napoleon, as "the only sovereign capable of giving prosperity to the state." The result of the "Bayonne catastrophe" was the transfer of the Neapolitan king Joseph Bonaparte to the Spanish throne, with the transfer of the Neapolitan crown to Napoleon's son-in-law, Joachim Murat, one of the heroes of the 18th Brumaire coup. Somewhat earlier, in the same 1808, French soldiers occupied the Papal States, and the next year it was included in the French Empire, depriving the Pope of secular power. The fact is that Pope Pius VII considering himself an independent sovereign, he did not follow Napoleon's instructions in everything. "Your Holiness," Bonaparte once wrote to the Pope, "enjoys the supreme power in Rome, but I am the Emperor of Rome." Pius VII responded to the deprivation of power by excommunicating Napoleon from the church, for which he was forcibly transported to live in Savona, and the cardinals were resettled to Paris. Rome was then declared the second city of the empire.

Erfurt Date 1808

In the interval between the wars, in the fall of 1808, in Erfurt, which Napoleon Bonaparte left directly behind him, as the possession of France in the very heart of Germany, a famous meeting took place between the Tilsit allies, accompanied by a congress of many kings, sovereign princes, crown princes, ministers, diplomats and generals ... This was a very impressive demonstration of both the strength that Napoleon had in the West and his friendship with the sovereign, to whom the East was placed at the disposal. England was invited to begin negotiations to end the war on the basis of preserving for the negotiators who will own at the time of the conclusion of the peace, but England rejected this proposal. The sovereigns of the Confederation of the Rhine kept themselves Erfurt Congress before Napoleon completely, like servile courtiers before their master, and for the greater humiliation of Prussia, Bonaparte arranged a hare hunt on the battlefield of Jena, inviting a Prussian prince, who had come to seek relief from the difficult conditions of 1807. Meanwhile, an uprising broke out in Spain against the French, and in the winter from 1808 to 1809 Napoleon was forced to personally go to Madrid.

Napoleon's war with the Fifth Coalition and his conflict with Pope Pius VII

Counting on the difficulties that Napoleon met in Spain, the Austrian emperor in 1809 decided on a new war with Bonaparte ( War of the Fifth Coalition), but the war was again unsuccessful. Napoleon occupied Vienna and inflicted an irreparable defeat on the Austrians at Wagram. After the end of this war Schönbrunn Peace Austria again lost several territories divided between Bavaria, the Kingdom of Italy and the Duchy of Warsaw (by the way, it acquired Krakow), and one area, the coast of the Adriatic Sea, called Illyria, became the property of Napoleon Bonaparte himself. At the same time, Franz II had to give his daughter Maria Louise to Napoleon in marriage. Even earlier, Bonaparte became related through members of his family with some of the sovereigns of the Union of Rhine, and now he himself conceived of marrying a real princess, especially since his first wife, Josephine Beauharnais, was barren, and he wanted to have an heir to his blood. (At first he wooed the Russian Grand Duchess, the sister of Alexander I, but their mother was strongly against this marriage). In order to marry an Austrian princess, Napoleon had to divorce Josephine, but then there was an obstacle on the part of the pope, who did not agree to a divorce. Bonaparte neglected this and forced the French clergy under his control to divorce him from his first wife. This further exacerbated the relationship between him and Pius VII, who took revenge on him for depriving him of secular power and therefore, by the way, refused to consecrate bishops to persons whom the emperor appointed to the vacant cathedra. The quarrel between the emperor and the pope, by the way, led to the fact that in 1811 Napoleon organized a council of French and Italian bishops in Paris, who, under his pressure, issued a decree allowing archbishops to ordain bishops if the pope did not ordain government candidates for six months. Members of the cathedral, protesting against the capture of the pope, were imprisoned in the Vincennes castle (as before, the cardinals who did not appear at the wedding of Napoleon Bonaparte with Marie Louise were deprived of their red cassocks, for which they were mockingly called black cardinals). When a son was born to Napoleon from a new marriage, he received the title of Roman king.

The period of the highest power of Napoleon Bonaparte

This was the time of the greatest power of Napoleon Bonaparte, and after the war of the Fifth Coalition, he continued to be completely arbitrary in order in Europe. In 1810, he stripped his brother Louis of the Dutch crown for non-compliance with the continental system and annexed his kingdom directly to his empire; for the same, the entire coast of the German Sea was also taken away from the rightful owners (by the way, from the Duke of Oldenburg, a relative of the Russian sovereign) and annexed to France. France now included the coast of the German Sea, all of western Germany as far as the Rhine, parts of Switzerland, all of northwestern Italy and the Adriatic coast; northeastern Italy was the special kingdom of Napoleon, and his son-in-law and two brothers reigned in Naples, Spain and Westphalia. Switzerland, the Confederation of the Rhine, covered on three sides by Bonaparte's possessions, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw were under his protectorate. Austria and Prussia, heavily curtailed after the Napoleonic wars, were squeezed, thus, between the possessions of either Napoleon himself or his vassals, while Russia, apart from Finland, had only the Bialystok and Tarnopol districts separated by Napoleon from Prussia and Austria in 1807 and 1809

Europe in 1807-1810. Map

The despotism of Napoleon in Europe was limitless. When, for example, the Nuremberg bookseller Palm refused to name the author of the booklet published by him "Germany in its greatest humiliation", Bonaparte ordered him to be arrested on foreign territory and brought to court-martial, which sentenced him to death (which was like a repetition of the episode with the Duke of Enghien).

On the mainland Western Europe after the Napoleonic wars everything, so to speak, was turned upside down: the borders were confused; some old states were destroyed and new ones were created; even many geographical names etc. The secular power of the pope and the medieval Roman Empire no longer existed, as did the spiritual principalities of Germany and its many imperial cities, these purely medieval city republics. In the territories inherited by France itself, in the states of Bonaparte's relatives and clientele, a number of reforms were carried out according to the French model - reforms of administrative, judicial, financial, military, school, ecclesiastical, often with the abolition of the estate privileges of the nobility, limitation of the power of the clergy, the destruction of many monasteries , the introduction of religious tolerance, etc., etc. One of the remarkable features of the era of the Napoleonic Wars was the abolition of the serfdom of the peasants in many places, sometimes immediately after the wars by Bonaparte himself, as was the case in the Duchy of Warsaw at its very foundation. Finally, outside the French empire, the French civil code was also enacted, “ Napoleonic Code”, Which here and there continued to operate even after the collapse of the empire of Napoleon, as it was in the western parts of Germany, where it was in use until 1900, or as it is still the case in the Kingdom of Poland, formed from the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1815. It must also be added that during the Napoleonic Wars in different countries, in general, French administrative centralization was very willingly adopted, which was distinguished by simplicity and harmony, strength and speed of action and was therefore an excellent instrument of government influence on subjects. If the republics are daughters at the end of the 18th century. were settled in the image and likeness of France at that time, their common mother, and now the states that Bonaparte put into the management of his brothers, son-in-law and stepson, received representative institutions for the most part according to the French model, that is, with a purely ghostly, decorative character. Such a device was introduced precisely in the kingdoms of Italy, Holland, Neapolitan, Westphalian, Spanish, etc. In fact, the very sovereignty of all these political creations of Napoleon was illusory: everywhere one will reigned, and all these sovereigns, relatives of the emperor of the French and his vassals were obliged to deliver a lot of money and a lot of soldiers to their supreme overlord for new wars - no matter how much he demanded.

Guerrilla war against Napoleon in Spain

It became painful for the conquered peoples to serve the goals of a foreign conqueror. While Napoleon dealt in wars only with sovereigns who relied on only armies and were always ready to receive increments of their possessions from his hands, it was easy for him to cope with them; in particular, for example, the Austrian government preferred to lose province after province, so long as the subjects sat quietly, which the Prussian government was very busy with before the defeat of Jena. Real difficulties began to be created for Napoleon only when the peoples began to revolt and wage a petty partisan war against the French. The first example of this was provided by the Spaniards in 1808, then by the Tyroleans during the Austrian War of 1809; to an even greater extent the same took place in Russia in 1812. Events in 1808-1812. in general, they showed the governments what their strength could only be.

The Spaniards, who were the first to set an example of the people's war (and whose resistance was helped by England, who did not spare money at all to fight France), gave Napoleon a lot of worries and troubles: in Spain he had to suppress the uprising, wage a real war, conquer the country and by military force support the throne of Joseph Bonaparte. The Spaniards even created general organization for waging their little wars, these famous "guerillas", which, due to our unfamiliarity with the Spanish language, later turned into some kind of "guerillas", in the sense of partisan detachments or participants in the war. The Guerilles were one; the other was the Cortes, convened by the provisional government, or regency in Cadiz, under the protection of the English fleet, the popular representation of the Spanish nation. They were collected in 1810, and in 1812 they made the famous Spanish constitution, very liberal and democratic at that time, using the model of the French constitution of 1791 and some of the features of the medieval Aragonese constitution.

Movement against Bonaparte in Germany. Prussian reformers Hardenberg, Stein and Scharnhorst

Considerable fermentation also took place among the Germans, who were eager to get out of their humiliation through a new war. Napoleon knew about this, but he fully relied on the loyalty of the sovereigns of the Rhine League and on the weakness of Prussia and Austria after 1807 and 1809, and the ostracism that cost the life of the unfortunate Palma was supposed to serve as a warning that every German who dared to become enemy of France. During these years, the hopes of all German patriots hostile to Bonaparte were pinned on Prussia. This state, so exalted in the second half of the XVIII century. The victories of Frederick the Great, reduced by a whole half after the war of the Fourth Coalition, was in the greatest humiliation, the way out of which was only in internal reforms. Among the king's ministers Frederick Wilhelm III there were people who just stood for the need for serious transformations, and among them the most outstanding were Hardenberg and Stein. The first of them was a great admirer of new French ideas and orders. In 1804-1807. he held the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs and in 1807 proposed to his sovereign a whole plan of reforms: the introduction in Prussia of popular representation with strictly, however, centralized management according to the Napoleonic model, the abolition of noble privileges, the emancipation of the peasants from serfdom, the elimination of the constraints that lay on industry and trade. Considering Hardenberg his enemy, which he really was, Napoleon demanded that Frederick Wilhelm III, at the end of the war with him in 1807, that this minister be given a resignation, and advised him to take Stein in his place, as a very efficient person, not knowing that he was also an enemy of France. Baron Stein had previously been a minister in Prussia, but did not get along with the court spheres, and even with the king himself, and received a resignation. In contrast to Hardenberg, he was opposed to administrative centralization and stood for the development of self-government, as in England, with the preservation, within certain limits, of class, guilds, etc., but he was a man of a greater mind than Hardenberg, and showed a greater ability to development in a progressive direction to the extent that life itself pointed out to him the need to destroy antiquity, remaining, however, still an enemy of the Napoleonic system, since he wanted the initiative of society. Appointed minister on October 5, 1807, Stein, on the 9th of the same month, published a royal edict abolishing serfdom in Prussia and allowing non-nobles to acquire noble lands. Further, in 1808, he began to implement his plan to replace the bureaucratic system of government with local self-government, but managed to give the latter only to the cities, while the villages and regions remained under the old order. He also thought about government representation, but of a purely deliberative nature. Stein did not remain in power for long: in September 1808, the French official newspaper published his letter intercepted by the police, from which Napoleon Bonaparte learned that the Prussian minister strongly recommended the Germans to follow the example of the Spaniards. After this and another article hostile to him in a French government body, the reformer minister was forced to resign, and after a while Napoleon even directly declared him an enemy of France and the Rhine Union, his estates confiscated and himself subject to arrest, so that Stein had to flee and hide in various cities of Austria, until in 1812. he was not summoned to Russia.

After one insignificant minister who replaced such an important person, Frederick William III again called Hardenberg to power, who, being a supporter of the Napoleonic system of centralization, began to transform the Prussian administration in this direction. In 1810, the king, at his insistence, promised to give his subjects even national representation, and with the aim of both developing this issue and introducing other reforms in 1810 - 1812. convened in Berlin meetings of notables, that is, representatives of the estates at the choice of the government. More detailed legislation on the redemption of peasant duties in Prussia also dates back to this time. The military reform carried out by the general was also important for Prussia. Scharnhorst; according to one of the conditions of the Tilsit peace, Prussia could not have more than 42 thousand troops, and such a system was invented: universal conscription was introduced, but the periods of stay of soldiers in the army were greatly reduced so that, having trained them in military affairs, they could take new ones in their place , and enrolled trained in the reserve, so that Prussia, if necessary, could have a very large army. Finally, in the same years, according to the plan of the enlightened and liberal Wilhelm von Humboldt, the University in Berlin was founded, and the famous philosopher Fichte read his patriotic "Speeches to the German Nation" to the sound of the drums of the French garrison. All these phenomena, which characterize the internal life of Prussia after 1807, made this state the hope of the majority of German patriots hostile to Napoleon Bonaparte. Among the interesting manifestations of the liberation mood of that time in Prussia, it is necessary to include the education in 1808. Tugendbund, or the Union of Valor, secret society, which included scientists, military, officials and whose goal was the revival of Germany, although in fact the union did not play a big role. The Napoleonic police followed the German patriots, and, for example, Stein's friend Arndt, author of the spirit of the time imbued with national patriotism, had to flee from Napoleon's wrath to Sweden in order not to suffer the sad fate of Palma.

The national excitement of the Germans against the French began to intensify since 1809. Beginning this year, the war with Napoleon, the Austrian government had already explicitly set its goal as the liberation of Germany from the foreign yoke. In 1809, uprisings against the French broke out in Tyrol under the leadership of Andrei Gopher, in Stralsund, which was seized by the insanely brave Major Schill, in Westphalia, where the "black legion of revenge" of the Duke of Braunschweig was operating, etc., but Gopher was executed, Schill killed in a military battle, the Duke of Brunswick had to flee to England. At the same time, in Schönbrunn, an attempt was made on the life of Napoleon by one young German, Staps, who was then executed for this. “Fermentation has reached the highest degree,” his brother, the King of Westphalia once wrote to Napoleon Bonaparte, “the most reckless hopes are accepted and supported; They set themselves up as a model for Spain, and, believe me, when the war begins, the countries between the Rhine and the Oder will be the theater of a great uprising, for one should fear the extreme despair of peoples who have nothing to lose. " This prediction came true after the failure of the campaign to Russia undertaken by Napoleon in 1812 and the former, according to the apt expression of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Talleyrand, "The beginning of the end".

Relationship of Napoleon Bonaparte with Tsar Alexander I

In Russia, after the death of Paul I, who was thinking about rapprochement with France, "the days of the Alexandrovs had a wonderful beginning." The young monarch, a pupil of the republican Laharpe, who himself almost considered himself a republican, at least the only one in the entire empire, and in other respects recognized itself as a "happy exception" to the throne, from the very beginning of his reign made plans for internal reforms - right up to the end after all, before the introduction of the constitution in Russia. In 1805-07. he was in a war with Napoleon, but in Tilsit they entered into an alliance with each other, and two years later in Erfurt they cemented their friendship in the face of the whole world, although Bonaparte immediately guessed in his friend-rival the "Byzantine Greek" (and himself, however, being, according to Pope Pius VII, a comedian). And Russia in those years had its own reformer, who, like Hardenberg, bowed before Napoleonic France, but much more original. This reformer was the famous Speransky, the author of a whole plan for the state transformation of Russia on the basis of representation and separation of powers. Alexander I brought him closer to him at the beginning of his reign, but Speransky began to use a particularly strong influence on his sovereign during the years of Russia's rapprochement with France after the Peace of Tilsit. By the way, when Alexander I, after the war of the Fourth Coalition, went to Erfurt to meet with Napoleon, he took Speransky with him along with other confidants. But then this outstanding statesman was overtaken by the tsarist disfavor, just at the very time that relations between Alexander I and Bonaparte deteriorated. It is known that Speransky in 1812 was not only removed from the case, but also had to go into exile.

The relationship between Napoleon and Alexander I soured for many reasons, including the main role played Russia's non-observance of the continental system in all its severity, the hope of the Poles on the part of Bonaparte regarding the restoration of their former fatherland, the seizure of possessions by France from the Duke of Oldenburg, who was related to the Russian royal family, etc. In 1812, things came to a complete rupture and the war that was "the beginning of the end."

A murmur against Napoleon in France

Prudent people have long predicted that sooner or later there will be a disaster. Even during the proclamation of the empire, Cambaceres, who was one of the consuls with Napoleon, said to another, Lebrun: “I have a premonition that what is being built now will not be durable. We fought a war with Europe in order to impose republics on it as daughters of the French Republic, and now we will wage a war in order to give her monarchs, sons or our brothers, and it will end with France, exhausted by wars, falling under the weight of these insane enterprises. ". “You are happy,” Minister of the Sea, Dekres, once said to Marshal Marmont, because now you have been made a Marshal, and everything seems to you in a rosy light. But don't you want me to tell you the truth and pull back the veil behind which the future is hidden? The emperor went crazy, completely crazy: all of us, how many of us are, he will make us fly head over heels, and all this will end in a terrible catastrophe. Before the Russian campaign of 1812 and in France itself, some opposition began to appear against the constant wars and despotism of Napoleon Bonaparte. It was already mentioned above that Napoleon met with a protest against his treatment of the Pope by some members of the church council, which he convened in Paris in 1811, and in the same year a deputation from the Paris Chamber of Commerce with the idea of ​​ruinousness came to him. continental system for French industry and trade. The population began to be weighed down by the endless wars of Bonaparte, the increase in military spending, the growth of the army, and already in 1811 the number of those who avoided military service reached almost 80 thousand people. In the spring of 1812, a dull murmur in the Parisian population forced Napoleon to move to Saint-Cloud especially early, and only with such a mood of the people could a general, named Malet, have the daring idea of ​​using Napoleon's war in Russia to carry out a coup d'état in Paris with the aim of restoring the republic. Suspected of being unreliable, Male was arrested, but escaped from his confinement, appeared in some barracks and there announced to the soldiers the death of the "tyrant" Bonaparte, who allegedly ended his life in a distant military campaign. Part of the garrison went to Male, and he, having then prepared a forged senatus consultant, was already preparing to organize a provisional government, when he was captured and, along with his accomplices, was put on a military court, which sentenced all of them to death. Upon learning of this conspiracy, Napoleon was extremely annoyed that some even representatives of the authorities believed the attackers, and that the public was rather indifferent to all this.

Napoleon's campaign to Russia 1812

Male's conspiracy dates back to the end of October 1812, when the failure of Napoleon's campaign against Russia had already been sufficiently revealed. Of course, the military events of this year are too well known to be necessary in their detailed exposition, and therefore it remains only to recall the main moments of the war with Bonaparte of 1812, them "twelve languages".

In the spring of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte concentrated large military forces in Prussia, which was forced, like Austria, to enter into an alliance with him, and in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and in mid-June, his troops, without declaring war, entered the then borders of Russia. Napoleon's "great army" of 600 thousand people consisted only of half of the French: the rest were various other "peoples": Austrians, Prussians, Bavarians, etc., that is, in general, subjects of Napoleon Bonaparte's allies and vassals. The Russian army, which was three times smaller and, moreover, scattered, had to retreat at the beginning of the war. Napoleon quickly began to occupy one city after another, mainly on the way to Moscow. Only at Smolensk did the two Russian armies manage to connect, which, however, were unable to stop the enemy's advance. Kutuzov's attempt to detain Bonaparte at Borodino (see the articles The Battle of Borodino in 1812 and the Battle of Borodino in 1812 - briefly), made at the end of August, was also unsuccessful, and at the beginning of September Napoleon was already in Moscow, from where he thought to dictate the terms of peace to Alexander I. But just at this time the war with the French became popular. After the battle near Smolensk, the inhabitants of the areas through which the army of Napoleon Bonaparte moved, began to burn everything in its path, and with its arrival in Moscow, fires began in this ancient capital of Russia, from where most of the population left. Little by little, the city was almost completely burned down, the reserves that it had were depleted, and the supply of new ones was hampered by Russian partisan detachments, which unleashed a war on all the roads that led to Moscow. When Napoleon was convinced of the futility of his hope that they would ask for peace from him, he himself wished to enter into negotiations, but from the Russian side he did not meet the slightest desire to conclude peace. On the contrary, Alexander I decided to wage war until the final expulsion of the French from Russia. While Bonaparte was inactive in Moscow, the Russians began to prepare to completely cut off Napoleon's exit from Russia. This plan did not come true, but Napoleon realized the danger and hastened to leave the devastated and burned-out Moscow. At first, the French made an attempt to break through to the south, but the Russians cut off the road in front of them when Maloyaroslavets, and the remnants of the great army of Bonaparte had to retreat along the former, devastated Smolensk road with a very harsh winter that began early this year. The Russians followed this disastrous retreat almost on their heels, inflicting defeat after defeat on the lagging troops. Napoleon himself, who happily escaped captivity while crossing his army across the Berezina, abandoned everything in the second half of November and left for Paris, only now deciding to officially notify France and Europe of the failure that befell him during the Russian war. The retreat of the remnants of Bonaparte's great army was now a real escape amid the horrors of cold and hunger. On December 2, less than six full months after the start of the Russian war, the last troops of Napoleon crossed the Russian border back. After that, the French had no choice but to abandon the Grand Duchy of Warsaw to the mercy of fate, the capital of which was occupied by the Russian army in January 1813.

The crossing of Napoleon's army across the Berezina. Painting by P. von Hess, 1844

Foreign campaign of the Russian army and the War of the Sixth Coalition

When Russia was completely cleared of the enemy hordes, Kutuzov advised Alexander I to limit himself to this and stop further war. But in the soul of the Russian sovereign, a mood prevailed, forcing him to postpone military operations against Napoleon outside Russia. In this latter intention, the emperor was strongly supported by the German patriot Stein, who found shelter against the persecution of Napoleon in Russia and to a certain extent subordinated Alexander to his influence. The failure of the war of the great army in Russia made a great impression on the Germans, among whom national enthusiasm was spreading more and more, the patriotic lyrics of Kerner and other poets of the era remained a monument. At first, the German governments did not dare, however, to follow their subjects, who rose up against Napoleon Bonaparte. When, at the very end of 1812, the Prussian general York, on his own fear, concluded a convention with the Russian general Diebitsch in Taurogen and stopped the struggle for the cause of France, Frederick William III Stein's thoughts, the provincial militia for the war against the enemy of the German nation. It was only when the Russians entered Prussian territory that the king, forced to choose between an alliance with either Napoleon or Alexander I, leaned towards the latter, and even then not without some hesitation. In February 1813, in Kalisz, Prussia concluded a military treaty with Russia, accompanied by an appeal by both sovereigns to the population of Prussia. Then, Frederick William III declared war on Bonaparte, and a special royal proclamation to his loyal subjects was published. In this and other proclamations, with which the new allies also addressed the population of other parts of Germany and in the compilation of which Stein played an active role, much was said about the independence of peoples, about their right to control their fate, about the power of public opinion, before which the sovereigns themselves must bow , etc.

From Prussia, where, next to the regular army, detachments of volunteers were formed from people of every rank and state, often not Prussian subjects, the national movement began to be transferred to other German states, whose governments, on the contrary, remained loyal to Napoleon Bonaparte and restrained manifestations in their possessions. German patriotism. Meanwhile, Sweden, England and Austria joined the Russian-Prussian military alliance, after which the members of the Rhine Union began to fall away from their allegiance to Napoleon - under the condition of the inviolability of their territories or, at least, equivalent rewards in cases where some or changes in the boundaries of their possessions. So it was formed Sixth coalition against Bonaparte. Three-day (October 16-18) battle with Napoleon at Leipzig, which was unfavorable for the French and forced them to start retreating to the Rhine, resulted in the destruction of the Rhine Union, the return to their possessions of the dynasties expelled during the Napoleonic wars and the final transition to the side of the anti-French coalition of the South German rulers.

By the end of 1813, the lands east of the Rhine were free of the French, and on the night of January 1, 1814, part of the Prussian army under the command of Blucher crossed this river, which then served as the eastern border of Bonaparte's empire. Even before the Battle of Leipzig, the allied sovereigns offered Napoleon to enter into peace negotiations, but he did not agree to any conditions. Before transferring the war to the territory of the empire itself, Napoleon was once again offered peace on the condition of preserving the Rhine and Alpine borders for France, but only giving up domination in Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain, but Bonaparte continued to persist, although in France itself the public the opinion considered these conditions quite acceptable. A new peace proposal in mid-February 1814, when the Allies were already in French territory, likewise came to nothing. The war went on with varying happiness, but one defeat of the French army (at Arsy-sur-Aube on March 20-21) opened the way for the Allies to Paris. On March 30, they took the Montmartre heights dominating over this city by attack, and on the 31st, their solemn entry into the city took place.

Deposition of Napoleon in 1814 and restoration of the Bourbons

The next day after this, the Senate proclaimed the deposition of Napoleon Bonaparte from the throne with the formation of a provisional government, and two days later, that is, on April 4, he himself, in the Château de Fontainebleau, abdicated the throne in favor of his son after he learned about the transition of Marshal Marmont to the side of the Allies. The latter were not content with this, however, and a week later Napoleon was forced to sign an act of unconditional abdication. The title of the emperor was retained for him, but he had to live on the island of Elbe, which was given to him. During these events, the fallen Bonaparte was already the subject of extreme hatred of the population of France, as the culprit of devastating wars and enemy invasion.

The Provisional Government, formed after the end of the war and the deposition of Napoleon, drew up a draft of a new constitution, which was adopted by the Senate. Meanwhile, at that time, in agreement with the victors of France, the restoration of the Bourbons was already being prepared in the person of the brother of Louis XVI, who was executed during the Revolutionary Wars, who, after the death of his little nephew, who was recognized by the royalists as Louis XVII, began to be called Louis XVIII... The Senate proclaimed him king, freely called to the throne by the nation, but Louis XVIII wanted to reign solely by his inheritance right. He did not accept the Senate constitution, and instead granted (entrusted) his power to the constitutional charter, and even then under strong pressure from Alexander I, who agreed to restoration only under the condition of granting France a constitution. One of the main figures who were bustling after the end of the Bourbon War was Talleyrand, who said that only the restoration of the dynasty will be the result of the principle, all the rest is simple intrigue. With Louis XVIII returned his younger brother and heir, the Comte d'Artois, with his family, other princes and numerous émigrés from the most implacable representatives of pre-revolutionary France. The nation immediately felt that both the Bourbons and the émigrés in exile, in the words of Napoleon, "had forgotten nothing and learned nothing." Anxiety began throughout the country, numerous reasons for which were given by the statements and behavior of princes, returned nobles and clergy, clearly striving for the restoration of antiquity. The people even started talking about the restoration of feudal rights, etc. Bonaparte watched on his Elbe how irritation against the Bourbons grew in France, and at the congress that met in Vienna in the fall of 1814 to arrange European affairs, wrangling began, which could embroil the allies. In the eyes of the fallen emperor, these were favorable circumstances for the return of power in France.

"One Hundred Days" of Napoleon and the War of the Seventh Coalition

On March 1, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte with a small detachment secretly left Elba and unexpectedly landed near Cannes, from where he moved to Paris. The former ruler of France brought with him proclamations to the army, to the nation, and to the population of the coastal departments. “I,” it was said in the second of them, “was enthroned by your election, and everything that was done without you is illegal ... feudal law, but it can secure the interests of only a small handful of enemies of the people! .. The French! in my exile, I heard your complaints and desires: you demanded the return of the government chosen by you and therefore the only legal one ”, etc. On the way of Napoleon Bonaparte to Paris, his small detachment grew from soldiers who joined him everywhere, and his new military campaign received kind of triumphal procession. In addition to the soldiers who adored their "little corporal", the people, who now saw in him a savior from the hated emigrants, also went over to Napoleon's side. Marshal Ney, sent against Napoleon, boasted before leaving that he would bring him in a cage, but then with his entire detachment went over to his side. On March 19, Louis XVIII hurriedly fled from Paris, having forgotten Talleyrand's reports from the Congress of Vienna and a secret treaty against Russia in the Tuilerand Palace, and the next day a crowd of people literally carried Napoleon into the palace in their arms, which had only been abandoned by the king the day before.

The return of Napoleon Bonaparte to power was the result not only of a military revolt against the Bourbons, but also of a popular movement that could easily turn into a real revolution. In order to reconcile with himself the educated classes and the bourgeoisie, Napoleon now agreed to a liberal reform of the constitution, calling to this cause one of the most prominent political writers of the era, Benjamena Constant, who earlier spoke out sharply against his despotism. A new constitution was even drawn up, which, however, received the name of an "additional act" to the "constitutions of the empire" (that is, to the laws of the VIII, X and XII years), and this act was submitted for the approval of the people, who adopted it with one and a half million votes ... On June 3, 1815, the opening of new representative chambers took place, in front of which, a few days later, Napoleon delivered a speech announcing the introduction of a constitutional monarchy in France. However, the emperor did not like the reciprocal addresses of the representatives and peers, since they contained warnings and admonitions, and he expressed his displeasure with them. However, he did not have a further continuation of the conflict, since Napoleon had to rush to the war.

The news of Napoleon's return to France forced the sovereigns and ministers who had gathered for the congress in Vienna to end the strife that had begun between them and to unite again in a general alliance for a new war with Bonaparte ( Seventh Coalition Wars). On June 12, Napoleon left Paris to go to his army, and on the 18th at Waterloo he was defeated by the Anglo-Prussian army under the command of Wellington and Blucher. In Paris, Bonaparte, defeated in this new short war, faced a new defeat: the House of Representatives demanded that he abdicate the throne in favor of his son, who was proclaimed emperor under the name of Napoleon II. The allies, who soon appeared under the walls of Paris, decided the matter differently, namely, they restored Louis XVIII. Napoleon himself, when the enemy approached Paris, thought to flee to America and for this purpose arrived in Rochefort, but was intercepted by the British, who placed him on the island of St. Helena. This secondary reign of Napoleon, accompanied by the War of the Seventh Coalition, lasted only about three months and was called in history the "hundred days". In his new imprisonment, the second deposed Emperor Bonaparte lived for about six years, having died in May 1821.

On June 24 (June 12, old style), 1812, the Patriotic War began - Russia's liberation war against Napoleonic aggression.

The invasion of the Russian Empire by the troops of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was caused by the aggravation of Russian-French economic and political contradictions, the actual refusal of Russia to participate in the continental blockade (the system of economic and political measures used by Napoleon I in the war with England), etc.

Napoleon strove for world domination, Russia interfered with the implementation of his plans. He counted, having inflicted the main blow on the right flank of the Russian army in the general direction of Vilno (Vilnius), to defeat it in one or two general battles, to seize Moscow, force Russia to surrender and dictate to her a peace treaty on favorable terms.

June 24 (June 12, old style) 1812 Napoleon's "Great Army" without declaring war, having crossed the Niemen, invaded Russian Empire... It numbered over 440 thousand people and had a second echelon, in which there were 170 thousand people. The "Great Army" included the troops of all the countries of Western Europe conquered by Napoleon (French troops accounted for only half of its strength). She was opposed by three Russian armies, far apart from each other, with a total strength of 220-240 thousand people. Initially, only two of them acted against Napoleon - the first, under the command of Infantry General Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, covering the St. Petersburg direction, and the second, under the command of Infantry General Pyotr Bagration, focused on the Moscow direction. The third army of general from the cavalry Alexander Tormasov covered the southwestern borders of Russia and began hostilities at the end of the war. At the beginning of hostilities, the general leadership of the Russian forces was carried out by Emperor Alexander I, in July 1812 he transferred the main command to Barclay de Tolly.

Four days after the invasion of Russia, French troops occupied Vilna. On July 8 (June 26, old style) they entered Minsk.

Having figured out Napoleon's plan to separate the Russians of the first and second armies and defeat them one by one, the Russian command began a systematic withdrawal of them for connection. Instead of a phased dismemberment of the enemy, the French troops were forced to move behind the elusive Russian armies, stretching communications and losing superiority in forces. Retreating, the Russian troops fought rearguard battles (a battle undertaken with the aim of delaying the advancing enemy and thereby ensuring the retreat of the main forces), inflicting significant losses on the enemy.

To help the active army to repel the invasion of the Napoleonic army on Russia, on the basis of the manifesto of Alexander I of July 18 (July 6, old style) of 1812 and his appeal to the inhabitants of the "Capital of our Moscow" with an appeal to become the initiators, temporary armed formations began to form - the people's militia. This allowed the Russian government to mobilize large human and material resources for the war in a short time.

Napoleon tried to prevent the connection of the Russian armies. On July 20 (July 8, old style), the French occupied Mogilev and did not allow the Russian armies to connect in the Orsha region. Only thanks to stubborn rearguard battles and the high skill of maneuvering the Russian armies, which managed to upset the enemy's plans, they united on August 3 (July 22, according to the old style) near Smolensk, keeping their main forces combat-ready. The first big battle took place here. Patriotic War 1812 The Smolensk battle lasted three days: from 16 to 18 August (from 4 to 6 August according to the old style). The Russian regiments repelled all French attacks and retreated only by order, leaving the burning city to the enemy. Almost all the inhabitants left it with the troops. After the battles for Smolensk, the combined Russian armies continued to withdraw in the direction of Moscow.

The retreat strategy of Barclay de Tolly, unpopular neither in the army nor in Russian society, leaving the enemy a significant territory forced Emperor Alexander I to establish the post of commander-in-chief of all Russian armies and on August 20 (August 8, old style) to appoint infantry general Mikhail Golenishchev to it. Kutuzov, who had great combat experience and was popular both among the Russian army and among the nobility. The emperor not only put him in charge of the army in the field, but also subordinated the militias, reserves and civilian authorities to him in the war-torn provinces.

Based on the requirements of Emperor Alexander I, the mood of the army, eager to give the enemy a battle, the commander-in-chief Kutuzov decided, relying on a pre-selected position, 124 kilometers from Moscow, near the village of Borodino near Mozhaisk, to give the French army a general battle in order to inflict the greatest possible damage on it and stop the attack on Moscow.

By the beginning of the Battle of Borodino, the Russian army had 132 (according to other sources, 120) thousand people, the French - about 130-135 thousand people.

It was preceded by the battle for the Shevardinsky redoubt, which began on September 5 (August 24, according to the old style), in which Napoleon's troops, despite more than three-fold superiority in forces, only by the end of the day managed to master the redoubt with great difficulty. This battle allowed Kutuzov to unravel the plan of Napoleon I and to strengthen his left wing in a timely manner.

The battle of Borodino began at five o'clock in the morning on September 7 (August 26, old style) and lasted until 20 o'clock in the evening. Napoleon did not manage to break through the Russian position in the center for the whole day, nor to bypass it from the flanks. The private tactical successes of the French army - the Russians retreated from their original position by about one kilometer - did not become victorious for it. Late in the evening, the frustrated and bloodied French troops were withdrawn to their original positions. The Russian field fortifications they had taken were so destroyed that there was no point in holding them back. Napoleon never succeeded in defeating the Russian army. In the Battle of Borodino, the French lost up to 50 thousand people, the Russians - over 44 thousand people.

Since the losses in the battle turned out to be huge, and the reserves were used up, the Russian army withdrew from the Borodino field, retreating to Moscow, while waging rearguard battles. On September 13 (September 1, old style), at the military council in Fili, the decision of the commander-in-chief "for the sake of preserving the army and Russia" to leave Moscow to the enemy without a fight was supported by a majority vote. The next day, Russian troops left the capital. Together with them, most of the population left the city. On the very first day of the entry of French troops into Moscow, fires began, devastating the city. For 36 days, Napoleon languished in the burnt-out city, waiting in vain for an answer to his proposal to Alexander I about peace, on favorable terms for him.

The main Russian army, leaving Moscow, made a march and settled in the Tarutino camp, reliably covering the south of the country. From here, Kutuzov launched a small war with the forces of army partisan detachments. During this time, the peasantry of the Great Russian provinces, engulfed in war, rose to a large-scale people's war.

Attempts by Napoleon to enter into negotiations were rejected.

On October 18 (October 6, old style), after the battle on the Chernishna River (near the village of Tarutino), in which the vanguard of the "Great Army" under the command of Marshal Murat was defeated, Napoleon left Moscow and sent his troops towards Kaluga to break through into the southern Russian provinces rich in food resources. Four days after the departure of the French, the advance detachments of the Russian army entered the capital.

After the battle at Maloyaroslavets on October 24 (October 12, old style), when the Russian army blocked the enemy's path, Napoleon's troops were forced to start retreating along the ruined old Smolensk road. Kutuzov organized the pursuit of the French along the roads passing south of the Smolensk highway, acting with strong vanguards. Napoleon's troops lost people not only in clashes with their pursuers, but also from attacks by partisans, from hunger and cold.

To the flanks of the retreating French army, Kutuzov pulled up troops from the south and north-west of the country, which began to actively act and inflict defeat on the enemy. Napoleon's troops actually found themselves surrounded on the Berezina River near the city of Borisov (Belarus), where on November 26-29 (November 14-17, old style) they fought with the Russian troops, who were trying to cut off their escape routes. The French emperor, having misled the Russian command with a false crossing, was able to transfer the remnants of the troops across two hastily erected bridges across the river. On November 28 (November 16, old style), Russian troops attacked the enemy on both banks of the Berezina, but, despite the superiority of forces, due to indecision and incoherence of actions, they did not succeed. On the morning of November 29 (November 17, old style), the bridges were burned on the orders of Napoleon. On the left bank there were carts and crowds of lagging French soldiers (about 40 thousand people), most of whom drowned during the crossing or were captured, and the total losses of the French army in the battle of Berezina amounted to 50 thousand people. But Napoleon in this battle managed to avoid complete defeat and retreat to Vilna.

The liberation of the territory of the Russian Empire from the enemy ended on December 26 (December 14, old style), when Russian troops occupied the border towns of Bialystok and Brest-Litovsk. The enemy lost up to 570 thousand people on the battlefields. The losses of the Russian troops amounted to about 300 thousand people.

The official end of the Patriotic War of 1812 is considered to be the manifesto signed by Emperor Alexander I on January 6, 1813 (December 25, 1812 according to the old style), in which he announced that he had kept his promise not to end the war until the enemy was completely expelled from the territory of the Russian Federation. empire.

The defeat and death of the "Great Army" in Russia created the conditions for the liberation of the peoples of Western Europe from Napoleonic tyranny and predetermined the collapse of Napoleon's empire. The Patriotic War of 1812 showed the complete superiority of Russian military art over the military art of Napoleon, and caused a nationwide patriotic enthusiasm in Russia.

(Additional

Research by Archpriest Alexander Ilyashenko “Dynamics of the number and losses of the Napoleonic army in the Patriotic War of 1812”.

In 2012 it will be two hundred years old and. These events are described by many contemporaries and historians. However, despite many published sources, memoirs and historical studies, there is no established point of view either for the size of the Russian army and its losses in the Battle of Borodino, or for the number and losses of the Napoleonic army. The range of values ​​is significant both in the number of armies and in the amount of losses.

Lecture on the losses of the Russian and Napoleonic armies, read in the church of St. mts. Tatians at Moscow State University

Archpriest Alexander Ilyashenko

In the "Military Encyclopedic Lexicon" published in St. Petersburg in 1838 and in the inscription on the Main Monument installed on the Borodino field in 1838, it is recorded that under Borodino there were 185 thousand Napoleonic soldiers and officers against 120 thousand Russians. The monument also indicates that the losses of the Napoleonic army amounted to 60 thousand, the losses of the Russian - 45 thousand people (according to modern data, respectively - 58 and 44 thousand).

Along with these estimates, there are others that are radically different from them.

So, in the bulletin No. 18 of the "Great" army, issued immediately after the Battle of Borodino, the emperor of France defined the losses of the French as only 10 thousand soldiers and officers.

The spread of estimates is clearly demonstrated by the following data.

Table 1. Estimates of the opposing forces made at different times by various authors
Estimates of the sizes of opposing forces made at different times by different historians

A similar picture is observed for the losses of the Napoleonic army. In the table below, the losses of the Napoleonic army are presented in ascending order.

Table 2. Losses of the Napoleonic army, according to historians and participants in the battle

As we can see, indeed, the range of values ​​is quite large and amounts to several tens of thousands of people. In table 1, the data of the authors, who considered the size of the Russian army to be superior to the number of Napoleonic ones, are highlighted in bold. It is interesting to note that Russian historians have joined this point of view only since 1988, i.e. since the beginning of perestroika.

The most widespread for the size of the Napoleonic army was 130,000, for the Russian - 120,000, for losses, respectively - 30,000 and 44,000.

As P.N. Grunberg, starting with the work of General MI Bogdanovich "History of the Patriotic War of 1812 according to reliable sources", is recognized for the reliable number of troops of the Great Army at Borodino, proposed back in the 1820s. J. de Chambray and J. Pele de Clozo. They were guided by the roll call data in Gzhatsk on September 2, 1812, but ignored the arrival of reserve units and artillery, which had replenished Napoleon's army before the battle.

Many modern historians reject the data indicated on the monument, and some researchers even cause irony. So, A. Vasiliev in his article “Losses of the French Army at Borodino” writes that “unfortunately, in our literature about the Patriotic War of 1812, the figure of 58,478 people is very often found. It was calculated by the Russian military historian V.A.Afanasyev based on data published in 1813 by order of Rostopchin. The calculations are based on the information of the Swiss adventurer Alexander Schmidt, who deserted to the Russians in October 1812 and passed himself off as a major who allegedly served in the personal office of Marshal Berthier. " One cannot agree with this opinion: "General Count Toll, based on official documents captured from the enemy during his flight from Russia, counts 185,000 people in the French army, and up to 1,000 pieces of artillery."

The command of the Russian army had the opportunity to rely not only on "official documents captured from the enemy during his flight from Russia", but also on the information of captured enemy generals and officers. For example, General Bonami was captured at the Battle of Borodino. British General Robert Wilson, who served with the Russian army, wrote on December 30, 1812: “There are at least fifty generals among our prisoners. Their names have been published and will undoubtedly appear in English newspapers. "

These generals, as well as the captured officers of the General Staff, had reliable information. It can be assumed that it was on the basis of numerous documents and testimonies of captured generals and officers in hot pursuit by domestic military historians that the true picture of events was restored.

Based on the facts available to us and their numerical analysis, we tried to estimate the number of troops that Napoleon brought to the Borodino field, and the loss of his army in the Battle of Borodino.

Table 3 shows the strength of both armies in the Battle of Borodino according to a widespread point of view. Modern Russian historians estimate the losses of the Russian army at 44,000 soldiers and officers.

Table 3. The number of troops in the Battle of Borodino

At the end of the battle, reserves remained in each army that did not take a direct part in it. The number of troops of both armies directly participating in the battle, equal to the difference in the total number of troops and the size of reserves, practically coincides, in terms of artillery, the Napoleonic army was inferior to the Russian one. The losses of the Russian army are one and a half times greater than the losses of the Napoleonic one.

If the proposed picture is true, then what is Borodin's day glorious for? Yes, of course, our soldiers fought bravely, but the enemy is braver, ours skillfully, and they are more skillful, our military leaders are experienced, and theirs is more experienced. So which army deserves more admiration? With this balance of power, the impartial answer is obvious. If we remain impartial, we will also have to admit that Napoleon won another victory.

True, there is some bewilderment. Of the 1,372 guns that were with the army that crossed the border, about a quarter were assigned to auxiliary sectors. Well, of the remaining more than 1,000 guns, only a little more than half was delivered to the Borodino field?

How could Napoleon, who deeply understood the importance of artillery from a young age, allow not all the guns, but only some of them to be put up for the decisive battle? It seems ridiculous to accuse Napoleon of his uncharacteristic carelessness or inability to ensure the transportation of weapons to the battlefield. The question is, does the proposed picture correspond to reality and is it possible to put up with such absurdities?

Such perplexed questions are dispelled by the data taken from the Monument installed on the Borodino field.

Table 4. The number of troops in the Battle of Borodino. Monument

With such a balance of forces, a completely different picture emerges. Despite the glory of a great commander, Napoleon, possessing one and a half superiority in forces, not only could not crush the Russian army, but his army suffered losses by 14,000 more than the Russian. The day on which the Russian army endured the onslaught of superior enemy forces and was able to inflict heavier losses on it than its own is undoubtedly the day of glory for the Russian army, a day of valor, honor, courage of its commanders, officers and soldiers.

In our opinion, the problem is of a fundamental nature. Or, to use Smerdyakov's phraseology, in the Battle of Borodino the “smart” nation defeated the “stupid” one, or the numerous forces of Europe united by Napoleon turned out to be powerless before the greatness of spirit, courage and martial art of the Russian Christian army.

In order to better imagine the course of the war, we present data characterizing its end. The eminent German military theorist and historian Karl Clausewitz (1780-1831), an officer in the Prussian army who fought in the 1812 war with the Russian army, described these events in the 1812 Campaign to Russia, published in 1830 shortly before his death.

Drawing on Shaumbra, Clausewitz estimates the total number of Napoleonic forces that crossed the Russian border during the campaign at 610,000.

When the remnants of the French army gathered in January 1813 beyond the Vistula, “it turned out that they number 23,000 people. The Austrian and Prussian troops returning from the campaign numbered approximately 35,000 people, therefore, all together they amounted to 58,000 people. Meanwhile, the created army, including here and the troops that later approached, numbered in fact 610,000 people.

Thus, 552,000 people remained killed and captured in Russia. The army had 182,000 horses. Of these, counting the Prussian and Austrian troops and the troops of MacDonald and Rainier, 15,000 survived, therefore, 167,000 were lost. The army had 1,372 guns; the Austrians, Prussians, MacDonald and Rainier brought back with them up to 150 guns, therefore, over 1200 guns were lost. "

The data given by Clausewitz are summarized in a table.

Table 5. Total losses of the "Great" army in the war of 1812

Only 10% of the personnel and equipment of the army, which proudly called itself "Great", returned back. History does not know anything like that: an army more than twice superior to its enemy was utterly defeated by him and almost completely destroyed.

The emperor

Before proceeding directly to further research, let us touch on the personality of the Russian Emperor Alexander I, which has undergone a completely undeserved distortion.

The former French ambassador to Russia, Armand de Caulaincourt, a man close to Napoleon, who moved in the highest political spheres of the then Europe, recalls that on the eve of the war, in a conversation with him, the Austrian Emperor Franz said that Emperor Alexander

“They described him as an indecisive, suspicious and influenced sovereign; meanwhile, in matters that may entail such enormous consequences, one must rely only on oneself and, in particular, not go to war before all the means of preserving peace have been exhausted. "

That is, the Austrian emperor, who betrayed the alliance with Russia, considered the Russian emperor soft and dependent.

With school years many people remember the words:

The ruler is weak and crafty,
Bald dandy, enemy of labor
Then he reigned over us.

This false idea of ​​Emperor Alexander, launched at one time by the political elite of Europe at that time, was uncritically perceived by liberal Russian historians, as well as the great Pushkin, and many of his contemporaries and descendants.

The same Caulaincourt preserved the story of de Narbonne, which characterizes the Emperor Alexander from a completely different perspective. De Narbonne was sent by Napoleon to Vilna, where the Emperor Alexander was.

“Emperor Alexander from the very beginning told him frankly:

- I will not draw my sword first. I do not want Europe to hold me responsible for the blood that will be shed in this war. I have been threatened for 18 months. French troops are on my borders, 300 leagues from their country. I am at my place for now. Fortifying and arming fortresses that almost touch my borders; send troops; incite the Poles. The emperor enriches his treasury and ruins individual unfortunate subjects. I stated that in principle I did not want to act in the same way. I don’t want to take money from the pockets of my subjects to put it in my own pocket.

300 thousand Frenchmen are preparing to cross my borders, and I still abide by the union and remain faithful to all the obligations I have assumed. When I change course, I will do it openly.

He (Napoleon - author) just called Austria, Prussia and all of Europe to arms against Russia, and I am still loyal to the union - to such an extent my reason refuses to believe that he wants to sacrifice real benefits to the chances of this war. I do not create illusions for myself. I value his military talents too highly to ignore all the risk to which the lot of war may expose us; but if I did my best to preserve the honorable peace and political system that can lead to universal peace, then I will not do anything incompatible with the honor of the nation I rule. The Russian people are not one of those who retreat in the face of danger.

If all the bayonets of Europe are gathered on my borders, they will not force me to speak in a different language. If I was patient and restrained, it was not because of weakness, but because it was the duty of the sovereign not to listen to the voices of discontent and to keep in mind only the calmness and interests of his people, when it comes about such big issues, and when he hopes to avoid a fight that could cost so many victims.

Emperor Alexander told de Narbonne that at the moment he had not yet assumed any obligation contrary to the alliance, that he was confident in his righteousness and in the justice of his cause and would defend himself if attacked. In conclusion, he opened before him a map of Russia and said, pointing to the distant outskirts:

- If the Emperor Napoleon decided to go to war and fate is not favorable to our just cause, then he will have to go to the very end in order to achieve peace.

Then he repeated once more that he would not be the first to draw his sword, but that he would be the last to put it in its sheath ”.

Thus, a few weeks before the outbreak of hostilities, Emperor Alexander knew that a war was being prepared, that the invasion army was already numbering 300,000 men, and he pursued a firm policy, guided by the honor of the nation he ruled, knowing that “the Russian people are not one of those who retreat in the face of danger. " In addition, we note that the war with Napoleon is not a war with France only, but with a united Europe, since Napoleon "called Austria, Prussia and all of Europe to arms against Russia."

There was no question of any "treachery" and surprise. The leadership of the Russian Empire and the command of the army had extensive information about the enemy. On the contrary, Caulaincourt stresses that

“Prince Ekmülsky, the General Staff and everyone else complained that they had not been able to obtain any information so far, and not a single intelligence officer had yet returned from that bank. There, on the other side, only a few Cossack patrols were visible. The emperor inspected the troops in the afternoon and once again took up reconnaissance of the surroundings. The corps on our right flank knew no more of the enemy's movements than we did. There was no information about the position of the Russians. Everyone complained that not one of the spies was returning, which greatly annoyed the emperor. "

The situation did not change even with the outbreak of hostilities.

“The king of Naples, who commanded the vanguard, often made day trips of 10 and 12 leagues. People did not leave the saddle from three in the morning until 10 in the evening. The sun, almost never descending from the sky, made the emperor forget that a day has only 24 hours. The vanguard was reinforced by carabinieri and cuirassiers; horses, like people, were exhausted; we lost a lot of horses; the roads were covered with horse corpses, but the emperor every day, every moment cherished the dream of overtaking the enemy. At any cost he wanted to get the prisoners; this was the only way to get any information about the Russian army, since it could not be obtained through spies, who immediately ceased to bring us any benefit as soon as we found ourselves in Russia. The prospect of the whip and Siberia froze the ardor of the most skillful and most fearless of them; to this was added the real difficulty of penetrating the country, and especially into the army. Information was received only through Vilno. Nothing came directly. Our marches were too long and too fast, and our too exhausted cavalry could not send out reconnaissance detachments or even flank patrols. Thus, the emperor most often did not know what was happening two leagues from him. But no matter what price was attached to the capture of prisoners, it was not possible to capture them. The Cossacks had a better guard than ours; their horses used the best care than ours, they turned out to be more resilient in the attack, the Cossacks attacked only when the opportunity arises and never got involved in battle.

By the end of the day, our horses were usually so tired that the smallest collision cost us a few brave men, as their horses lagged behind. When our squadrons departed, one could observe how the soldiers dismounted in the midst of the battle and pulled their horses behind them, while others were even forced to abandon their horses and flee on foot. Like everyone else, he (the emperor - author) was surprised by this retreat of the 100-thousandth army, in which there was not a single laggard, not a single cart. For 10 leagues around it was impossible to find any horse to guide. We had to put guides on our horses; often it was not even possible to find a person who would serve as a guide to the emperor. It happened that the same guide led us three or four days in a row and, in the end, ended up in an area that he knew no better than us. "

While the Napoleonic army followed the Russian, unable to obtain even the most insignificant information about its movements, M.I.Kutuzov was appointed commander-in-chief of the army. On August 29, he "arrived at the army in Tsarevo-Zaymishche, between Gzhatsk and Vyazma, and the Emperor Napoleon did not yet know about it."

This testimony of de Caulaincourt is, in our opinion, a special praise for the unity of the Russian people, so amazing that no intelligence and enemy espionage was possible!

Now we will try to trace the dynamics of the processes that led to such an unprecedented defeat. The campaign of 1812 naturally falls into two parts: the offensive and the retreat of the French. We will only consider the first part.

According to Clausewitz, "The war is fought in five separate theaters of war: two to the left of the road leading from Vilna to Moscow make up the left wing, two on the right make up the right wing, and the fifth is the huge center itself." Clausewitz goes on to write that:

1. Napoleonic Marshal MacDonald on the lower reaches of the Dvina with an army of 30,000 oversees the Riga garrison, numbering 10,000.

2. Along the middle reaches of the Dvina (in the Polotsk region), first Oudinot stands with 40,000 men, and later Oudinot and Saint Cyr with 62,000 against the Russian general Wittgenstein, whose forces at first reached 15,000 people, and later 50,000.

3. In southern Lithuania, Schwarzenberg and Rainier were located in front of the Pripyat swamps with 51,000 people against General Tormasov, who was later joined by Admiral Chichagov with the Moldavian army, only 35,000 people.

4. General Dombrovsky with his division and a small number of cavalry, only 10,000 men, oversees Bobruisk and General Gertel, who are forming a reserve corps of 12,000 people near the city of Mozyr.

5. Finally, in the middle are the main forces of the French, numbering 300,000, against the two main Russian armies - Barclay and Bagration - with a force of 120,000; these French forces are directed to Moscow to conquer it.

Let's summarize the data given by Clausewitz in a table and add the column "The ratio of forces".

Table 6. Distribution of forces by directions

With more than 300,000 soldiers in the center against 120,000 Russian regular troops (Cossack regiments do not belong to regular troops), that is, having an advantage of 185,000 people at the initial stage of the war, Napoleon strove to defeat the Russian army in a general battle. The deeper he invaded deep into the territory of Russia, the more acute this need became. But the persecution of the Russian army, exhausting for the center of the "Great" army, contributed to an intensive reduction in its numbers.

The fierceness of the Borodino battle, its bloody nature, as well as the scale of losses can be judged from the fact that cannot be ignored. Domestic historians, in particular, employees of the museum on the Borodino field, estimate the number of people buried in the field at 48-50 thousand people. And in total, according to the military historian General A.I. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, 58,521 bodies were buried or burned in the Borodino field. We can assume that the number of buried or burned bodies is equal to the number of soldiers and officers of both armies who died and died from wounds in the Battle of Borodino.

The data of the French officer Denier, who served as an inspector at Napoleon's General Staff, were widely spread about the losses of the Napoleonic army in the Battle of Borodino, presented in Table 7:

Table 7. Losses of the Napoleonic army.

Denier figures, rounded up to 30 thousand, are currently considered the most reliable. Thus, if we accept that Denier's data are correct, then the share of the losses of the Russian army will only have to be killed

58,521 - 6,569 = 51,952 soldiers and officers.

This value significantly exceeds the value of the losses of the Russian army, equal, as indicated above, to 44 thousand, including the killed, and the wounded, and prisoners.

Denier's data is also questionable for the following reasons.

The total losses of both armies at Borodino amounted to 74 thousand, including a thousand prisoners on each side. Subtract from this value the total number of prisoners, we get 72 thousand killed and wounded. In this case, both armies will have only

72,000 - 58,500 = 13,500 wounded,

This means that the ratio between wounded and killed will be

13 500: 58 500 = 10: 43.

Such a small number of wounded in relation to the number of those killed seems completely implausible.

We are faced with clear contradictions with the available facts. The losses of the "Great" army in the Battle of Borodino, equal to 30,000 people, are obviously underestimated. We cannot consider this amount of losses realistic.

We will proceed from the assumption that the losses of the "Great" army amount to 58,000 people. Let's estimate the number of killed and wounded in each army.

According to table 5, which contains Denier's data, 6,569 were killed in the Napoleonic army, 21,517 were wounded, 1,176 officers and soldiers were captured (the number of prisoners is rounded to 1,000). Russian soldiers were taken prisoner, too, about a thousand people. Let us subtract from the number of losses of each army the number of those taken prisoner, we get, respectively, 43,000 and 57,000 people, in the amount of 100 thousand. We will assume that the number of those killed is proportional to the amount of losses.

Then, in the Napoleonic army died

57,000 58,500 / 100,000 = 33,500,

57 000 – 33 500 = 23 500.

Perished in the Russian army

58 500 – 33 500 = 25 000,

43 000 – 25 000 = 18 000.

Table 8. Losses of the Russian and Napoleonic armies
in the battle of Borodino.

Let's try to find additional arguments and, with their help, substantiate the realistic value of the losses of the "Great" army in the Battle of Borodino.

In our further work, we relied on an interesting and very original article by I.P. Artsybashev "Losses of Napoleon's generals on September 5-7, 1812 in the Battle of Borodino." Having carried out a thorough study of the sources, I.P. Artsybashev established that not 49, as is commonly believed, but 58 generals were out of action in the Battle of Borodino. This result is confirmed by the opinion of A. Vasiliev, who writes in this article: "The Battle of Borodino was marked by large losses of generals: 26 generals were killed and wounded in the Russian troops, and 50 in Napoleon's (according to incomplete data)."

After the battles given to him, Napoleon published bulletins containing information about the size and losses of his and the enemy army so far from reality that in France a saying arose: "Lies like a bulletin."

1. Austerlitz. The Emperor of France acknowledged the loss of the French: 800 killed and 1,600 wounded, a total of 2,400 people. In fact, the losses of the French amounted to 9,200 soldiers and officers.

2. Eylau, 58th bulletin. Napoleon ordered the publication of data on the losses of the French: 1,900 killed and 4,000 wounded, only 5,900 people, while the actual losses amounted to 25 thousand soldiers and officers killed and wounded.

3. Wagram. The emperor agreed to a loss of 1,500 killed and 3,000-4,000 wounded French. Total: 4,500-5,500 soldiers and officers, but in fact 33,900.

4. Smolensk. 13th Bulletin of the "Great Army". Losses of 700 Frenchmen killed and 3,200 wounded. Total: 3,900 people. In fact, the losses of the French amounted to over 12,000 people.

We will summarize the given data in a table.

Table 9. Napoleon's bulletins

The average underestimation for these four battles is 4.5, therefore, it can be assumed that Napoleon underestimated the losses of his army more than four times.

"A lie must be monstrous in order to be believed," - said at one time the Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany, Dr. Goebbels. Looking at the table above, one has to admit that he had famous predecessors, and he had someone to learn from.
Of course, the accuracy of this estimate is low, but since Napoleon said that his army at Borodino lost 10,000 men, it can be assumed that the actual losses were approximately 45,000 people. These considerations are of a qualitative nature, we will try to find more accurate estimates on the basis of which we can draw quantitative conclusions. For this we will rely on the ratio of generals and soldiers of the Napoleonic army.

Consider the well-described battles of the empire of 1805-1815, in which the number of Napoleonic generals who were out of action was more than 10.

Table 10. Losses of out-of-action generals and out-of-action soldiers

On average, there are 958 soldiers and officers who are out of action for every general who is out of action. This is a random variable, its variance is 86. We will proceed from the fact that in the Battle of Borodino, there were 958 ± 86 soldiers and officers who were out of action for one general who was out of action.

958 58 = 55 500 people.

The variance of this quantity is

86 58 = 5,000.

With a probability of 0.95, the true value of the losses of the Napoleonic army lies in the range from 45,500 to 65,500 people. The amount of losses of 30-40 thousand lies outside this interval and, therefore, is statistically insignificant and can be discarded. On the contrary, a loss value of 58,000 lies within this confidence interval and can be considered significant.

As we moved deeper into the territory of the Russian Empire, the size of the “Great” army was greatly reduced. Moreover, the main reason for this was not combat losses, but losses caused by the exhaustion of people, the lack of sufficient food, drinking water, hygiene and sanitation and other conditions necessary to support the march of such a large army.

Napoleon's goal was in a rapid campaign, using the superiority of forces and his own outstanding military leadership, to defeat the Russian army in a general battle and from a position of strength to dictate his terms. Contrary to expectations, it was not possible to impose a battle, because the Russian army maneuvered so skillfully and set such a pace of movement that the "Great" army could withstand with great difficulty, experiencing hardships and needing everything necessary.

The principle of "war feeds itself", which proved itself well in Europe, turned out to be practically inapplicable in Russia with its distances, forests, swamps and, most importantly, a rebellious population that did not want to feed the enemy army. But Napoleonic soldiers suffered not only from hunger, but also from thirst. This circumstance did not depend on the wishes of the neighboring peasants, but was an objective factor.

First, in contrast to Europe, settlements in Russia are quite far from each other. Secondly, there are as many wells in them as is necessary to meet the needs of residents for drinking water, but absolutely not enough for many passing soldiers. Thirdly, the Russian army was in front, the soldiers of which drank these wells “to the mud,” as he writes in the novel “War and Peace”.

The lack of water also led to an unsatisfactory sanitary condition of the army. This entailed fatigue and exhaustion of the soldiers, caused their diseases, as well as the death of horses. All this taken together entailed significant non-combat losses of the Napoleonic army.
We will consider the change over time in the size of the center of the "Great" army. The table below uses Clausewitz's data on changes in the size of the army.

Table 11. The size of the "Great" army

In the column "Number" of this table, based on Clausewitz's data, the number of soldiers of the center of the "Great" army at the border, on the 52nd day near Smolensk, on the 75th near Borodino and on the 83rd at the time of entry into Moscow is presented. To ensure the security of the army, as noted by Clausewitz, detachments were allocated to guard communications, flanks, etc. The number of soldiers in the ranks is the sum of the two previous values. As you can see from the table, on the way from the border to the Borodino field, the "Great" army lost

301,000 - 157,000 = 144,000 people,

that is, a little less than 50% of its initial population.

After the Battle of Borodino, the Russian army retreated, the Napoleonic army continued its pursuit. The fourth corps, under the command of the Viceroy of Italy, Eugene Beauharnais, moved through Ruza to Zvenigorod in order to get on the path of the retreat of the Russian army, detain it and force it to take a battle with the main forces of Napoleon in unfavorable conditions. The detachment of Major General F.F. Wincengerode detained the Viceroy's corps for six hours. Russian troops occupied the hill, resting their right flank against a ravine, and with their left flank against a swamp. The slope facing the enemy was a plowed field. Natural obstacles on the flanks, as well as loose ground, hampered the maneuver of enemy infantry and cavalry. A well-chosen position allowed the small detachment "to offer vigorous resistance, which cost the French several thousand killed and wounded."

We accepted that in the battle near the Crimean, the losses of the “Great” army amounted to four thousand people. The rationale for this choice will be given below.
The column "Hypothetical strength" shows the number of soldiers who would have remained in the ranks if there were no combat losses, and detachments for protection would not have been allocated, that is, if the size of the army was reduced only because of the difficulties of the march. Then the hypothetical strength of the center of the army should be a smooth, monotonically decreasing curve and it can be approximated by some function n (t).

Suppose that the rate of change of the approximating function is directly proportional to its current value, that is

dn / dt = - λn.

n (t) = n0 e- λ t,

where n0 is the initial number of troops, n0 = 301 thousand.

The hypothetical number is related to the real one - it is the sum of the real number with the number of troops allocated for protection, as well as with the amount of losses in battles. But we must take into account that if there were no battles, and the soldiers remained in the ranks, their number would also decrease over time at the rate with which the size of the entire army was reduced. For example, if there were no battles and no guards were allocated, then in Moscow there would be

90 + (12 e- 23 λ + 30) e- 8 λ + 4 + 13 = 144.3 thousand soldiers.

The coefficients for λ are the number of days that have passed since the given battle.
The parameter λ is found from the condition

Σ (n (ti) - ni) 2 = min, (1)

where ni is taken from the line "Hypothetical number", ti is the number of days in a day from the moment of crossing the border.

Relative losses per day is a value that characterizes the intensity of changes in the hypothetical population. It is calculated as the logarithm of the ratio of the abundance at the beginning and at the end of a given period to the duration of this period. For example, for the first period:

ln (301 / 195.5) / 52 = 0.00830 1 / day

Noteworthy is the high intensity of non-combat losses during the pursuit of the Russian army from the border to Smolensk. On the transition from Smolensk to Borodino, the intensity of losses decreases by 20%, this is obviously due to the fact that the rate of pursuit has decreased. But on the way from Borodino to Moscow, the intensity, let us emphasize, of non-combat losses increases two and a half times. The sources do not mention any epidemics that would cause increased morbidity and mortality. This again suggests that the size of the losses of the "Great" army in the Battle of Borodino, which according to Denier is 30 thousand, is underestimated.

Again, we will proceed from the fact that the size of the "Great" army in the Borodino field was 185 thousand, and its losses - 58 thousand. But at the same time we are faced with a contradiction: according to Table 9, there were 130 thousand Napoleonic soldiers and officers on the Borodino field. This contradiction, in our opinion, is removed by the following assumption.

The General Staff of the Napoleonic army recorded the number of soldiers who crossed the border with Napoleon on June 24, according to one statement, and suitable reinforcements - according to another. It is a fact that reinforcements were coming. In a report to Emperor Alexander of August 23 (September 4, NS) Kutuzov wrote: “Yesterday several officers and sixty privates were taken prisoners. According to the numbers of the corps to which these prisoners belong, it is doubtless that the enemy is concentrated. The fifth battalions of the French regiments subsequently arrive to him. "

According to Clausewitz, "during the campaign, 33,000 men came with Marshal Viktor, 27,000 with the divisions of Durutte and Loison, and 80,000 other reinforcements, hence about 140,000." Marshal Victor and the divisions of Durutte and Loison joined the "Great" army a long time after it left Moscow, and could not participate in the Battle of Borodino.
Of course, the number of reinforcements on the march also decreased, so of the 80 thousand soldiers who crossed the border, Borodin reached

185 - 130 = 55 thousand top-ups.

Then we can assert that on the Borodino field there were 130 thousand soldiers of the "Great" army itself, as well as 55 thousand reinforcements, the presence of which remained "in the shadows", and that the total number of Napoleon's troops should be taken equal to 185 thousand people. Let us assume that the losses are proportional to the number of troops directly involved in the battle. Provided that 18 thousand remained in the reserve of the "Great" army, the recorded losses amount to

58 (130 - 18) / (185 - 18) = 39 thousand.

This value agrees surprisingly well with the data of the French General Segur and a number of other researchers. We will assume that their assessment is more consistent with reality, that is, we will assume that the amount of recorded losses is 40 thousand people. In this case, the "shadow" losses will be

58 - 40 = 18 thousand people.

Therefore, we can assume that in the Napoleonic army, double-entry bookkeeping was carried out: some of the soldiers went through one sheet, some - according to others. This applies to both the total number of the army and its losses.

With the found value of the accounted losses, condition (1) is satisfied with the value of the approximation parameter λ equal to 0.00804 1 / day and the value of losses in battle at Krymsky - 4 thousand soldiers and officers. In this case, the approximating function approximates the value of hypothetical losses with a sufficiently high accuracy of the order of 2%. This approximation accuracy indicates the validity of the assumption that the rate of change of the approximating function is directly proportional to its current value.
Using the results obtained, create a new table:

Table 12. The size of the center of the "Great" army

We now see that the relative losses per day are in good agreement with each other.

With λ = 0.00804 1 / day, daily non-combat losses were 2,400 at the beginning of the campaign and slightly more than 800 people per day when approaching Moscow.

To be able to take a closer look at the Battle of Borodino, we proposed a numerical model of the dynamics of the losses of both armies in the Battle of Borodino. The mathematical model provides additional material for analyzing whether a given set of initial conditions corresponds to reality or not, helps to discard extreme points, and also to choose the most realistic option.

We assumed that the loss of one army in this moment time is directly proportional to the current population of the other. Of course, we are aware that such a model is highly imperfect. It does not take into account the division of the army into infantry, cavalry and artillery, it also does not take into account such important factors as the talent of commanders, the valor and military skill of soldiers and officers, the effectiveness of command and control of troops, their equipment, etc. But, since opponents of approximately equal level opposed each other, even such an imperfect model will give qualitatively plausible results.

Based on this assumption, we obtain a system of two ordinary linear differential equations of the first order:

dx / dt = - py
dy / dt = - qx

The initial conditions are x0 and y0 - the number of armies before the battle and the amount of their losses at the time t0 = 0: x'0 = - py0; y'0 = - qx0.

The battle lasted until dark, but the bloodiest actions that brought the largest number losses, actually continued until the capture of the Raevsky battery by the French, then the intensity of the battle subsided. Therefore, we will assume that the active phase of the battle lasted ten hours.

Solving this system, we find the dependence of the size of each army on time, as well as, knowing the losses of each army, the proportionality coefficients, that is, the intensity with which the soldiers of one army hit the soldiers of the other.

x = x0 ch (ωt) - p y0 sh (ωt) / ω
y = y0 ch (ωt) - q x0 sh (ωt) / ω,
where ω = (pq) ½.

Table 7 below presents data on losses, the number of troops before and after the battle, taken from various sources. The data on the intensity, as well as on the losses in the first and last hour of the battle, were obtained from the mathematical model we proposed.

When analyzing the numerical data, we must proceed from the fact that opposing each other were opponents approximately equal in training, technique and high professional level of both ordinary soldiers and officers and army commanders. But we must also take into account the fact that “Under Borodino, it was going to be - to be or not to be Russia. This battle is our own, our own battle. In this sacred lottery, we were the contributors of everything inseparable from our political existence: all our past glory, all our true national honor, national pride, the greatness of the Russian name - all our future destiny. "

In the course of a fierce battle with a numerically superior enemy, the Russian army retreated somewhat, maintaining order, command, artillery and combat capability. The attacking side suffers greater losses than the defending side until it defeats its opponent and he turns to flight. But the Russian army did not flinch and did not run.

This circumstance gives us reason to believe that the total losses of the Russian army should be less than the losses of Napoleon's. One cannot but take into account such an intangible factor as the spirit of the army, to which the great Russian commanders attached such great importance, and which Leo Tolstoy so subtly noted. It is expressed in valor, fortitude, the ability to defeat the enemy. We can, of course, conditionally, assume that this factor in our model is reflected in the intensity with which the soldiers of one army defeat the soldiers of another.

Table 13. The number of troops and losses of the parties

The first line of Table 13 shows the values ​​of the initial strength and losses indicated in the Bulletin No. 18 of the "Great Army" issued by Napoleon. With such a ratio of the initial number and the amount of losses, according to our model, it turns out that during the battle the losses of the Russian army would be 3-4 times higher than the losses of the Napoleonic one, and the Napoleonic soldiers fought three times more effectively than the Russians. With such a course of battle, it would seem that the Russian army should have been defeated, but this did not happen. Therefore, this set of initial data is not true and should be rejected.

The next line presents the results based on data from French professors Lavisse and Rambeau. As our model shows, the losses of the Russian army would be almost three and a half times greater than the losses of the Napoleonic one. In the last hour of the battle, the Napoleonic army would lose less than 2% of its strength, and the Russian - more than 12%.

The question is, why did Napoleon stop the battle, if the Russian army was soon to be defeated? This is contradicted by eyewitness accounts. We present the testimony of Caulaincourt about the events that followed the capture of the Raevsky battery by the French, as a result of which the Russian army was forced to retreat.

“A sparse forest covered their passage and hid their movements in this place from us. The emperor hoped that the Russians would speed up their retreat, and counted on throwing his cavalry on them in order to try to break the line of the enemy troops. Parts of the young guard and the Poles were already moving to approach the fortifications that remained in Russian hands. The emperor, in order to better see their movements, went ahead and walked all the way to the very line of the riflemen. Bullets whistled around him; he left his retinue behind. The emperor was at that moment in great danger, since the firing became so hot that the Neapolitan king and several generals rushed to persuade and beg the emperor to leave.

The emperor then went to the approaching columns. The old guard followed; the carabinieri and cavalry marched in echelons. The emperor, apparently, decided to capture the last enemy fortifications, but the prince of Neuchâtel and the king of Naples pointed out to him that these troops did not have a commander, that almost all divisions and many regiments also lost their commanders, who were killed or wounded; the number of cavalry and infantry regiments, as the emperor can see, has greatly diminished; the time is already late; the enemy is really retreating, but in this order, he maneuvers and defends his position with such courage, although our artillery crushes his army masses that one cannot hope for success unless the old guard is launched into the attack; in this state of affairs, the success achieved at this cost would be a failure, and failure would be such a loss that would negate the gain in the battle; finally, they drew the attention of the emperor to the fact that one should not risk the only corps, which still remains intact, and should be reserved for other occasions. The Emperor hesitated. He rode forward again to observe the enemy's movements for himself. "

The emperor “made sure that the Russians were in positions, and that many corps not only did not retreat, but concentrated together and, apparently, were going to cover the retreat of the rest of the troops. All the reports that followed one after another said that our losses were very significant. The emperor made a decision. He canceled the order to attack and limited himself to an order to support the corps still fighting in case the enemy tried to do something that was unlikely, for he also suffered enormous losses. The battle ended only at nightfall. Both sides were so tired that at many points the shooting stopped without a command. "

The third line contains the data of General Mikhnevich. The very high level of losses of the Russian army is striking. The loss of more than half of its initial staff can not be sustained by any army, even the Russian one. In addition, the assessments of modern researchers agree that the Russian army lost 44 thousand people in the battle. Therefore, these initial data seem to us to be untrue and should be discarded.

Consider the data in the fourth line. With such a balance of forces, our proposed model shows that the Napoleonic army fought extremely effectively and inflicted heavy losses on its enemy. Our model allows us to consider some possible situations. If the number of armies were the same, then with the same efficiency, the number of the Russian army would be reduced by 40%, and the Napoleonic - by 20%. But the facts contradict such assumptions. In the battle at Maloyaroslavets, the forces were equal, and for the Napoleonic army it was not about victory, but about life. Nevertheless, the Napoleonic army was forced to retreat and return to the devastated Smolensk road, dooming itself to hunger and hardship. In addition, we have shown above that the value of losses equal to 30 thousand is underestimated, therefore Vasiliev's data should be excluded from consideration.

According to the data given in the fifth line, the relative losses of the Napoleonic army, amounting to 43%, exceed the relative losses of the Russian army, equal to 37%. It cannot be expected that European soldiers who fought for winter quarters and the opportunity to cash in on the plundering of a defeated country could withstand such high relative losses, exceeding the relative losses of the Russian army, which fought for their Fatherland and defended the Orthodox faith from the atheists. Therefore, although these data are based on the ideas of modern domestic scientists, nevertheless, they seem unacceptable to us.

Let's move on to considering the data of the sixth line: the number of Napoleon's army is taken equal to 185 thousand, Russian - 120 thousand, losses - 58 and 44 thousand people. According to our proposed model, the losses of the Russian army throughout the battle are somewhat lower than the losses of the Napoleonic army. Let's pay attention to an important detail. The efficiency with which the Russian soldiers fought was twice that of their opponents! The late veteran of the Great Patriotic War, to the question: "What is war?", Answered: "War is work, hard, dangerous work, and it must be done faster and better than the enemy." This is quite consistent with the words of the famous poem by M.Yu. Lermontov:

The enemy experienced a lot that day,
What does Russian fight mean,
Our hand-to-hand combat!

This gives us reason to understand why Napoleon did not send the guard into the fire. The valiant Russian army fought more effectively than its adversary and, despite the inequality of forces, inflicted heavier losses on it. One cannot but take into account the fact that the losses in the last hour of the battle were practically the same. Under such conditions, Napoleon could not count on the defeat of the Russian army, just as he could not exhaust the forces of his army in a battle that had become hopeless. The results of the analysis allow us to accept the data presented in the sixth row of Table 13.

So, the number of the Russian army was 120 thousand people, the Napoleonic one - 185 thousand, respectively, the losses of the Russian army - 44 thousand, the Napoleonic one - 58 thousand.

Now we can put together a summary table.

Table 14. The number and losses of the Russian and Napoleonic armies
in the battle of Borodino.

Valor, selflessness, martial art of Russian generals, officers and soldiers, who inflicted huge losses on the “Great” army, forced Napoleon to abandon the decision to bring his last reserve, the Guards Corps, into action at the end of the battle, since even the Guards could not achieve decisive success. He did not expect to meet such exceptionally skillful and fierce resistance from Russian soldiers, because

And we promised to die
And they kept the oath of allegiance
We are in the Borodino battle.

At the end of the battle, MI Kutuzov wrote to Alexander I: “This day will remain an eternal monument to the courage and excellent bravery of Russian soldiers, where all the infantry, cavalry and artillery fought desperately. Everyone's desire was to die on the spot and not yield to the enemy. The French army under the leadership of Napoleon himself, being in the most excellent forces, did not overcome the firmness of the spirit of the Russian soldier, who sacrificed his life with vigor for his fatherland. "

Everyone, from a soldier to a general, sacrificed their lives for their fatherland with courage.

“Confirm in all companies,” the chief of artillery Kutaisov wrote on the eve of Borodin, “that they should not withdraw from their position until the enemy has mounted the cannons. To tell the commanders and all gentlemen officers that only by bravely holding on to the closest grape-shot can it be achieved so that the enemy does not yield a single step to our position.

Artillery must sacrifice itself. Let them take you with the guns, but fire the last shot at point-blank range ... If the battery had been taken for all this, although it can almost be guaranteed otherwise, it has completely atoned for the loss of the guns ... ”.

It should be noted that these were not empty words: General Kutaisov himself died in the battle, and the French were able to capture only a dozen guns.

The task of Napoleon in the battle of Borodino, as well as at the stage of the pursuit, was the complete defeat of the Russian army, its destruction. To defeat an enemy approximately equal in level of military skill, a large numerical superiority is required. Napoleon concentrated on the main direction 300 thousand against the Russian army of 120 thousand. Possessing a superiority of 180 thousand at the initial stage, Napoleon could not keep it. “With more care and better organization of the food business, with a more deliberate organization of marches, in which huge masses of troops would not be uselessly piled up on one road, he could have prevented the famine that prevailed in his army from the very beginning of the campaign, and thus it would have retained it in a more complete composition. "

Huge non-combat losses, testifying to the neglect of his own soldiers, who for Napoleon were just "cannon fodder", were the reason that in the Battle of Borodino, although he had one and a half superiority, he lacked one or two corps to deliver a decisive blow ... Napoleon could not reach main goal- the defeat and destruction of the Russian army neither at the stage of pursuit, nor in the Battle of Borodino. Failure to fulfill the tasks facing Napoleon is an indisputable achievement of the Russian army, which, thanks to the skill of command, the courage and valor of officers and soldiers, snatched success from the enemy at the first stage of the war, which was the reason for his heavy defeat and complete defeat.

“Of all my battles, the most terrible is the one I gave near Moscow. The French in it showed themselves worthy to win, while the Russians acquired the right to be invincible, ”Napoleon wrote later.

As for the Russian army, in the course of the most difficult, brilliantly carried out strategic retreat, in which not a single rearguard battle was lost, it retained its forces. The tasks that Kutuzov set for himself in the Battle of Borodino - to preserve his army, bleed and deplete Napoleon's army - were just as brilliantly accomplished.

On the Borodino field, the Russian army withstood the one and a half times larger army of Europe united by Napoleon and inflicted significant losses on its enemy. Yes, indeed, the battle near Moscow was "the most terrible" of those given by Napoleon, and he himself admitted that "the Russians acquired the right to be invincible." One cannot but agree with this assessment of the Emperor of France.

Notes:

1 Military encyclopedic lexicon. Part two. SPb. 1838.S. 435-445.
2 P.A. Zhilin. M. Science. 1988 S. 170.
3 Battle of Borodino from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. We have corrected errors in lines 4 and 15, in which the compilers rearranged the numbers of the Russian and Napoleonic armies.
4 Artsybashev I.P. Losses of Napoleonic generals on September 5-7, 1812 in the Battle of Borodino.
5 Grunberg P.N. On the size of the Great Army in the Battle of Borodino // The era of Napoleonic wars: people, events, ideas. Materials of the Vth All-Russian scientific conference. Moscow 25 April 2002 M. 2002. S. 45-71.
6A. Vasiliev. "Losses of the French army at Borodino" "Rodina", No. 6/7, 1992. P.68-71.
7 Military encyclopedic lexicon. Part two. SPb. 1838.S. 438
8 Robert Wilson. “Diary of travels, services and social events during his stay in European armies during the campaigns of 1812-1813. SPb. 1995 p. 108.
9 According to Shaumbra, from whom in general we borrowed data on the size of the French armed forces, we determined the size of the French army when it entered Russia at 440,000 people. During the campaign, 33,000 more men approached with Marshal Victor, with the divisions of Durutte and Loison - 27,000 and other reinforcements of 80,000 people, therefore, about 140,000 people. The rest is made up of transport units. (Clausewitz's note). Clausewitz. A trip to Russia in 1812. Moscow. 1997, p. 153.
10 Clausewitz. A trip to Russia in 1812. Moscow. 1997, p. 153.
11 Armand de Caulaincourt. Memoirs. Smolensk. 1991.S. 69.
12 Armand de Caulaincourt. Memoirs. Smolensk. 1991.S. 70.
13 Armand de Caulaincourt. Memoirs. Smolensk. 1991.S. 77.
14 Armand de Caulaincourt. Memoirs. Smolensk. 1991.S. 177.178.
15 Armand de Caulaincourt. Memoirs. Smolensk. 1991.S. 178.
16 Clausewitz. 1812 Moscow. 1997, p. 127.
17 "Rodina", No. 2 of 2005
18 http://ukus.com.ua/ukus/works/view/63
19 Clausewitz. A trip to Russia in 1812. Moscow. 1997 s. 137-138.
20 M.I. Kutuzov. Letters, notes. Moscow. 1989 p. 320.
21 Denis Davydov. Library for reading, 1835, vol. 12.
22 E. Lavisse, A. Rambeau, "History of the XIX century", M. 1938, v.2, p. 265
23 "Patriotic War and Russian Society". Volume IV.
24 A. Vasiliev. "Losses of the French army at Borodino" "Rodina", No. 6/7, 1992. P.68-71.
25 P.A. Zhilin. M. Science. 1988 S. 170.
26 Armand de Caulaincourt. Memoirs. Smolensk. 1991.S. 128,129.
27 M.I. Kutuzov. Letters, notes. Moscow. 1989 p. 336
28 M. Bragin. Kutuzov. ZhZL. M. 1995.p.116.
29 Clausewitz. 1812 Moscow. 1997, p. 122.

The beginning of the Patriotic War of 1812

2012 marks the 200th anniversary of the military-historical patriotic event - the Patriotic War of 1812, which is of great importance for the political, social, cultural and military development of Russia.

The beginning of the war

June 12, 1812 (old style) The French army of Napoleon, having crossed the Neman near the city of Kovno (now Kaunas in Lithuania), invaded the Russian Empire. This day is listed in history as the beginning of the war between Russia and France.

In this war, two forces clashed. On the one hand, Napoleon's half-million army (about 640 thousand people), which consisted of only half of the French and included, in addition to them, representatives of almost all of Europe. An army intoxicated by numerous victories, led by renowned marshals and generals led by Napoleon. The strengths of the French army were large numbers, good material and technical support, combat experience, and belief in the invincibility of the army.

She was opposed by the Russian army, which at the beginning of the war represented one third of the French in number. Before the start of the Patriotic War of 1812, the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812 had just ended. The Russian army was divided into three groups far apart from each other (under the command of generals MB Barclay de Tolly, P.I.Bagration and A.P. Tormasov). Alexander I was at the headquarters of Barclay's army.

The attack of Napoleon's army was taken over by the troops stationed on the western border: the 1st army of Barclay de Tolly and the 2nd army of Bagration (a total of 153 thousand soldiers).

Knowing his numerical superiority, Napoleon pinned his hopes on lightning war. One of his main miscalculations was underestimation of the patriotic impulse of the army and the people of Russia.

The beginning of the war was successful for Napoleon. At 6 o'clock in the morning on June 12 (24), 1812, the vanguard of the French troops entered the Russian city of Kovno. The crossing of 220 thousand soldiers of the Great Army near Kovno took 4 days. 5 days later, another grouping (79 thousand soldiers) under the command of the Viceroy of Italy Eugene Beauharnais crossed over to the south of Kovno Neman. At the same time, even further south, near Grodno, the Neman was crossed by 4 corps (78-79 thousand soldiers) under the general command of King Jerome Bonaparte of Westphalia. In the northern direction near Tilsit, the Neman crossed the 10th corps of Marshal MacDonald (32 thousand soldiers), which was aimed at St. Petersburg. In the southern direction from Warsaw through the Bug, a separate Austrian corps of General Schwarzenberg (30-33 thousand soldiers) began to invade.

The rapid advance of a powerful French army forced the Russian command to retreat inland. The commander of the Russian troops, Barclay de Tolly, avoided a general engagement, keeping the army and striving to unite with the army of Bagration. The numerical superiority of the enemy raised the question of urgent replenishment of the army. But in Russia there was no general military service. The army was recruited by recruiting. And Alexander I decided to take an unusual step. On July 6, he issued a manifesto calling for the creation of a militia. So the first partisan detachments began to appear. This war united all segments of the population. As now, so then, the Russian people are united only by misfortune, grief, tragedy. There was no difference who you are in society, what kind of wealth you have. The Russian people fought unitedly, defending the freedom of their homeland. All people have become a single force, which is why the name "Patriotic War" was defined. The war became an example of the fact that the Russian people will never allow freedom and spirit to be enslaved, he will defend his honor and name to the end.

The armies of Barclay and Bagration met at Smolensk at the end of July, thus achieving their first strategic success.

Battle of Smolensk

By August 16 (according to the new style), Napoleon approached Smolensk with 180 thousand soldiers. After the connection of the Russian armies, the generals began to insistently demand from the commander-in-chief Barclay de Tolly a general battle. At 6 am 16 august Napoleon began storming the city.

In the battles near Smolensk, the Russian army showed the greatest staunchness. The battle for Smolensk marked the unfolding of a nationwide war between the Russian people and the enemy. Napoleon's hope for a lightning war was dashed.

Battle of Smolensk. Adam, circa 1820

The stubborn battle for Smolensk lasted 2 days, until the morning of August 18, when Barclay de Tolly withdrew his troops from the burning city in order to avoid a big battle with no chance of victory. Barclay had 76 thousand, 34 thousand more (Bagration's army). After the capture of Smolensk, Napoleon moved to Moscow.

Meanwhile, the protracted retreat caused public discontent and protest among most of the army (especially after the surrender of Smolensk), therefore, on August 20 (according to the new style), Emperor Alexander I signed a decree appointing M.I. Kutuzov. At that time, Kutuzov was 67 years old. The commander of the Suvorov school, who had half a century of military experience, he was universally respected both by the army and among the people. However, he too had to retreat in order to gain time to collect all his forces.

Kutuzov could not avoid a general battle for political and moral reasons. By September 3 (New Style), the Russian army retreated to the village of Borodino. Further retreat meant the surrender of Moscow. By that time, Napoleon's army had already suffered significant losses, and the difference in the size of the two armies had narrowed. In this situation, Kutuzov decided to give a decisive battle.

West of Mozhaisk, 125 km from Moscow near the village of Boro-dina August 26 (September 7 new style) 1812 there was a battle that forever entered the history of our people. - the largest battle of the Patriotic War of 1812 between the Russian and French armies.

The Russian army numbered 132 thousand people (including 21 thousand poorly armed militias). The French army, pursuing her on the heels, -135 thousand. Kutuzov's headquarters, believing that there are about 190 thousand people in the enemy's army, chose a defensive plan. In fact, the battle was an assault by French troops on the line of Russian fortifications (flushes, redoubts and lunettes).

Napoleon hoped to defeat the Russian army. But the perseverance of the Russian troops, where every soldier, officer, and general was a hero, overturned all the calculations of the French commander. The battle lasted all day. The losses were enormous on both sides. The Battle of Borodino is one of the bloodiest battles of the 19th century. According to the most conservative estimates of cumulative casualties, 2,500 people died on the field every hour. Some divisions have lost up to 80% of the composition. There were almost no prisoners on either side. The losses of the French were 58 thousand people, the Russians - 45 thousand.

Emperor Napoleon later recalled: “Of all my battles, the worst one is that I gave near Moscow. The French showed themselves worthy to win in it, and the Russians - to be called invincible. "

Cavalry battle

On September 8 (21), Kutuzov ordered a retreat to Mozhaisk with a firm intention to save the army. The Russian army retreated, but retained its combat effectiveness. Napoleon failed to achieve the main thing - the defeat of the Russian army.

September 13 (26) in the village of Fili Kutuzov had a meeting on a further plan of action. After a military council in Fili, the Russian army was withdrawn from Moscow by Kutuzov's decision. "With the loss of Moscow, Russia is not yet lost, with the loss of the army, Russia is lost."... These words of the great commander, which went down in history, were confirmed by subsequent events.

A.K. Savrasov. The hut where the famous council in Fili was held

Military Council in Fili (A.D. Kivshenko, 1880)

The capture of Moscow

In the evening September 14 (September 27 new style) Napoleon entered the deserted Moscow without a fight. In the war against Russia, all Napoleon's plans were consistently ruined. Expecting to receive the keys to Moscow, he in vain stood for several hours on Poklonnaya Hill, and when he entered the city, he was greeted by deserted streets.

Fire in Moscow 15-18 September 1812 after the capture of the city by Napoleon. Painting by A.F. Smirnova, 1813

Already on the night of 14 (27) to 15 (28) September, the city was engulfed in fire, which by the night of 15 (28) to 16 (29) September intensified so much that Napoleon was forced to leave the Kremlin.

On suspicion of arson, about 400 townspeople from the lower classes were shot. The fire raged until September 18 and destroyed most of Moscow. Of the 30 thousand houses that were in Moscow before the invasion, after Napoleon left the city, "hardly 5 thousand" remained.

While Napoleon's army was inactive in Moscow, losing its combat effectiveness, Kutuzov retreated from Moscow first to the southeast along the Ryazan road, but then, turning west, went to the flank of the French army, occupied the village of Tarutino, blocking the Kaluga road. gu. In the Tarutino camp, the foundation was laid for the final defeat of the “great army”.

When Moscow flared up, bitterness against the invaders reached the highest intensity. The main forms of the war of the Russian people against Napoleon's invasion were passive resistance (refusal to trade with the enemy, leaving grain unharvested in the fields, destroying food and fodder, going into the forests), partisan warfare and massive participation in militias. To the greatest extent, the course of the war was influenced by the refusal of the Russian peasantry to supply the enemy with provisions and fodder. The French army was on the verge of starvation.

From June to August 1812, Napoleon's army, pursuing the retreating Russian armies, covered about 1200 kilometers from the Neman to Moscow. As a result, its lines of communication were severely stretched. Considering this fact, the command of the Russian army decided to create flying partisan detachments for operations in the rear and on the enemy's communication lines, in order to interfere with his supply and destroy his small detachments. The most famous, but far from the only commander of the flying detachments was Denis Davydov. The army partisan detachments received all-round support from the spontaneously emerging peasant partisan movement. As the French army moved deeper into Russia, as violence from the Napoleonic army grew, after the fires in Smolensk and Moscow, after the discipline in Napoleon's army was reduced and a significant part of it turned into a gang of marauders and robbers, the population of Russia began to move from passive to active resistance to the enemy. During its stay in Moscow alone, the French army lost more than 25 thousand people from the actions of the partisans.

The partisans constituted, as it were, the first circle of encirclement around Moscow, which was occupied by the French. The second ring was made up of militias. Partisans and militias surrounded Moscow in a tight ring, threatening to turn Napoleon's strategic encirclement into a tactical one.

Tarutino battle

After the surrender of Moscow, Kutuzov obviously avoided a major battle, the army was accumulating strength. During this time, in the Russian provinces (Yaroslavl, Vladimir, Tula, Kaluga, Tver and others), 205 thousand militias were recruited, in Ukraine - 75 thousand. By October 2, Kutuzov led the army south to the village of Tarutino, closer to Kaluga.

In Moscow, Napoleon was trapped, it was not possible to spend the winter in a city devastated by a fire: foraging outside the city was a poor success, the stretched communications of the French were very vulnerable, and the army was beginning to decay. Napoleon began to prepare for a retreat to winter quarters somewhere between the Dnieper and Dvina.

When the "great army" retreated from Moscow, its fate was decided.

18 october(new style) Russian troops attacked and defeated near Tarutino Murat's French corps. Having lost up to 4 thousand soldiers, the French retreated. The Tarutino battle became a landmark event that marked the transition of the initiative in the war to the Russian army.

Napoleon's retreat

19 october(according to n. style) the French army (110 thousand) with a huge baggage train began to leave Moscow along the Old Kaluga road. But the road to Kaluga to Napoleon was blocked by Kutuzov's army, located near the village of Tarutino on the Old Kaluga road. Due to the lack of horses, the French artillery fleet was reduced, large cavalry formations practically disappeared. Not wanting to break through with a weakened army through a fortified position, Napoleon turned in the area of ​​the village of Troitskoye (modern Troitsk) onto the New Kaluga road (modern Kievskoye highway) in order to bypass Tarutino. However, Kutuzov transferred the army near Maloyaroslavets, cutting off the French retreat along the New Kaluga road.

By October 22, Kutuzov's army numbered 97 thousand regular troops, 20 thousand Cossacks, 622 guns and more than 10 thousand militia warriors. Napoleon had up to 70 thousand combat-ready soldiers at hand, the cavalry practically disappeared, the artillery was much weaker than the Russian.

October 12/24 took place battle near Maloyaroslavets... The city passed from hand to hand eight times. In the end, the French managed to capture Maloyaroslavets, but Kutuzov took a fortified position outside the city, which Napoleon did not dare to storm. On October 26, Napoleon ordered a retreat north to Borovsk-Vereya-Mozhaisk.

In the battles for Maloyaroslavets, the Russian army solved a major strategic task - it thwarted the plan for a breakthrough of the French troops into the Ukraine and forced the enemy to retreat along the Old Smolensk road, which it had devastated.

From Mozhaisk, the French army resumed its movement to Smolensk along the road along which it attacked Moscow

The final defeat of the French troops took place while crossing the Berezina. The battles on November 26-29 between the French corps and the Russian armies of Chichagov and Wittgenstein on both banks of the Berezina River during Napoleon's crossing went down in history as battle on the Berezina.

The retreat of the French through the Berezina on November 17 (29), 1812. Peter von Hess (1844)

While crossing the Berezina, Napoleon lost 21 thousand people. In total, up to 60 thousand people managed to cross the Berezina, most of them are civilian and non-combatant remnants of the "Great Army". The unusually strong frosts, which struck even during the crossing of the Berezina and continued in the following days, finally exterminated the French, already weakened by hunger. On December 6, Napoleon left his army and went to Paris to recruit new soldiers to replace those killed in Russia.

The main result of the battle on the Berezina was that Napoleon avoided a complete defeat in the conditions of a significant superiority of the Russian forces. In the memoirs of the French, the crossing of the Berezina occupies no less place than the largest battle of Borodino.

By the end of December, the remnants of Napoleon's army were expelled from Russia.

Results of the war

The main result of the Patriotic War of 1812 was the almost complete destruction of Napoleon's Great Army. Napoleon lost about 580 thousand soldiers in Russia. These losses include 200,000 killed, 150,000 to 190,000 prisoners, and about 130,000 deserters who fled to their homeland. The losses of the Russian army, according to some estimates, amounted to 210 thousand soldiers and militias.

In January 1813, the "Foreign campaign of the Russian army" began - fighting moved to the territory of Germany and France. In October 1813, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig, and in April 1814 he abdicated the throne of France.

The victory over Napoleon raised the international prestige of Russia as never before, which played a decisive role at the Congress of Vienna and in the following decades had a decisive influence on European affairs.

Key dates

June 12, 1812- the invasion of Napoleon's army into Russia across the Neman River. 3 Russian armies were at a great distance from each other. Tormasov's army, being in Ukraine, could not participate in the war. It turned out that only 2 armies took the blow. But they had to retreat to connect.

August 3rd- the connection of the armies of Bagration and Barclay de Tolly near Smolensk. The enemies lost about 20 thousand, and ours about 6 thousand, but Smolensk had to be abandoned. Even the united armies were 4 times less than the enemy!

8 August- Kutuzov was appointed commander-in-chief. An experienced strategist, many times wounded in battles, Suvorov's disciple fell in love with the people.

August, 26th- The Battle of Borodino lasted more than 12 hours. It is considered a general battle. On the outskirts of Moscow, the Russians displayed massive heroism. The losses of the enemies were greater, but our army could not go on the offensive. The numerical superiority of the enemies was still great. Reluctantly, they decided to surrender Moscow in order to save the army.

September October- sitting of Napoleon's army in Moscow. His expectations were not met. Victory was not achieved. Kutuzov rejected requests for the conclusion of peace. The attempt to go south has failed.

October December- the expulsion of Napoleon's army from Russia along the destroyed Smolensk road. From 600 thousand enemies left about 30 thousand!

December 25, 1812- Emperor Alexander I issued a manifesto on the victory of Russia. But the war had to continue. Napoleon still had armies in Europe. If they are not defeated, he will attack Russia again. The foreign campaign of the Russian army lasted until the victory in 1814.

Perception of the events of the Patriotic War of 1812 by the Russian common people

The theme of the perception of the events of the war of 1812 by contemporaries remains one of the least developed in the extensive historiography of this event. The focus remains solely on the military and political aspects of the topic.

People have been interested in this problem for a long time. Back in 1882 N.F. Dubrovin spoke about the need to create a non-military history of 1812, in 1895 he published a number interesting articles on the perception of Napoleon by Russian society at the beginning of the 19th century.

In 1893, on the pages of the magazine "Russian antiquity" V.A. Bilbasov wrote that the study of the influence of the war of 1812 on contemporaries (both on representatives of the educated class and on the common people) is especially interesting for history; numerous memoirs of the era contain valuable material on this problem. In the famous seven-volume edition "Patriotic War and Russian Society", in the creation of which more than 60 prominent Russian historians participated, only a few articles contained material on the perception of the events of the Patriotic War by Russian contemporaries (educated society). Almost nothing was said about the attitude of the main mass of the population to the war (peasantry, common people in cities, semi-educated urban society), only information about the anti-serf uprisings of 1812 was given, as well as some general arguments about the "people in 1812", which were not based on to sources.

Until the revolution of 1917, according to the prominent historian K.A. Voyensky, the "everyday" history of 1812 remained completely undeveloped.

In the Soviet period, the theme of the Patriotic War of 1812 remained unclaimed until 1937. In the 1920s, the theory of “historian number one” M.N. Pokrovsky, voiced in his "History of Russia in the most concise sketch", as well as in the collection "Diplomacy and wars of tsarist Russia in the XIX century." The author, as he himself admitted, basically “reworked literature,” he portrayed the war of 1812 as a struggle between reactionary Russia and the progressive Napoleonic army, the bearer of democratic principles. The people in 1812 thought only about the liberation and overthrow of the hated regime. The work of Z. and G. Gukovsky "Peasants in 1812" was written in the same spirit.

Since the late 1930s and especially after 1951, Soviet historians have actually revived the monarchist myth about the people during the Patriotic War of 1812, only without the tsar. The people acted as a faceless gray mass, doing nothing but patriotic feats.

From works related to the theme of the perception of the war of 1812 by contemporaries, two articles were published in the Soviet period on the educated Russian society.

Of the latest research, only one article can be noted, also devoted to the reflection of the events of 1812 in the minds of an educated society (based on letters from contemporaries). The bulk of Russians in 1812 again remained outside the field of view of researchers. As far as we know, there are no special studies of the problem of the perception of the war of 1812 by the common people.

The main source for the study of the Russian common people in 1812 is the memoir works of Russians and foreigners. There is very little information about the people among the memoirs of the Russian educated society, since the memoirists had almost no contact with them at all and, as a rule, did not consider the "rabble" worthy of their attention. A typical example is the famous memoirs of A.T. Bolotov, who left one of the largest memoirs of the epoch of the 18th - early 19th centuries. (not yet fully published). As soon as in his notes it comes to the "rabble", the "vile people" the author immediately says that everything related to this, "does not deserve any attention." As Bolotov himself points out, he first met the "Russian people" in 1762, when he drove all his peasants to arrange the garden. The nobles of 1812 did not know their people at all, revolving exclusively in a narrow circle of a select society - for example, the landowner M.A. Volkova in 1812 first got acquainted with the provincial society (Tambov), this happened due to extreme military circumstances that forced her to leave Moscow. Also as a result of this move, she got some idea of ​​the "people", watching the warriors from the window of her house.

From the memoirs of an educated society greatest interest for the study, the memoirs of a Muscovite A. Ryazantsev, who survived the entire period of the occupation of the capital and left detailed notes about this time, are presented. The author himself was very close to the urban common people, in 1812 he was 14 years old, he studied at the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy. His memoirs paint a detailed portrait of Moscow in 1812: the author used many records of peasant conversations, dialogues between Moscow common people and residents of villages near Moscow, described in detail the position of Moscow under the French, cited valuable data on contacts between the local population and the enemy.

In addition, some interesting information about the masses of 1812 is scattered across the vast memoir literature of other representatives of the educated Russian class, of particular interest are synchronistic sources - diaries and letters.

The main source for studying our topic is the memoirs of the representatives of the common people of 1812 themselves: soldiers, peasants, servants, poor merchants and priests of lower rank. Unfortunately, the tradition of writing memoirs among the bulk of Russian contemporaries in 1812 was completely absent: for the entire 18th century, only 250 Russians left memories, of which only one peasant. Memories created by the representatives of the common people in 1812 are extremely rare, as a rule, their memories have come down to us in the form of oral records.

We know one memoir by a soldier in 1812 and two memoir notes from 1839 from the words of a private and non-commissioned officer who participated in the Battle of Borodino. "Notes" by Pamphiliy Nazarov is a rare memoir written by a soldier in 1812. The author is completely alien to any historical or ideological assessments of the events of 1812-1814, he is poorly aware of the importance of what he has experienced. In form, these are notes for himself and a narrow circle of loved ones, which he wrote in 1836 at the end of his service. The publishers of Russkaya Starina noted the uniqueness of this source, which "is not like anything."

The works of I.N. Skobelev, published in the 1830-1840s. In the 1800s, the author served for more than four years in the lower ranks, later rising to the rank of general, a participant in the Patriotic War (with the rank of captain). Contemporaries quite rightly argued that he knew the Russian soldier like no other. In his works "Soldier's Correspondence of 1812" and "Stories of a Russian Armless Disabled" the author, on behalf of a simple soldier, describes the events of the Patriotic War. These books contain the most valuable material: this is the soldier's language of the epoch of 1812 and the peculiarities of the perception of war by Russian soldiers, transmitted by Skobelev.

Of particular interest are the memoirs of A.V. Nikitenko - in 1803-1824. serf Count Sheremetyev, later a professor at St. Petersburg University and a prominent official of the Ministry of Public Education. The author describes in detail the life and customs of serfs, the provincial society of Russia in the 1800s-1820s.

The most valuable material on the topic was collected in the 1860s - 1880s. writer E.V. Novosiltseva (pseudonym T. Tolychev). She focused on collecting memories of 1812 among the common people, as a result of searches in Moscow and Smolensk she collected unique memories of surviving witnesses of the Patriotic War from peasants, former serfs and servants, merchants and clergymen. In total, she managed to record the memoirs of 33 witnesses to the war of 1812. In 1894, Novosiltseva created a work for the people "The Old Lady's Tale of the Twelfth Year" - a story about the events of 1812 from the beginning of the invasion to the expulsion of Napoleon from Russia, where the story is told in the first person. As Novosiltseva pointed out in the preface, the information given in the book was not fictional, all of them were gleaned by her when interviewing contemporaries of 1812 from the people, many of the memoirs collected by the author were not published, but they were reflected in this book.

Analysis of the memoirs published by Novosiltseva shows that the original recordings underwent stylistic and systematic processing in order to give them a more coherent and literary look.

In 1912, by the centenary of the Patriotic War, the Smolensk Diocesan Gazette published interesting memoirs and legends of the inhabitants of the Smolensk province about the period of the Napoleonic invasion, compiled on the basis of materials from local archives, as well as on the basis of inquiries from old-timers. It is also worth noting that the records of the memoirs of three peasants, who witnessed the crossing of Napoleon's army across the Berezina, published in 1869, are, unfortunately, extremely short and uninformative.

Rumors were the main source of information about the war for most Russians in 1812 (both educated society and commoners). Printed materials played an important role; on their basis, some rumors circulated among the people were formed; during the Patriotic War, the indirect influence of the press on the population was quite significant. It is impossible to clearly distinguish between the influence of oral and printed sources of information on Russians, since both sources were closely related.

More or less reliable information about the war of 1812 was provided by printed materials. Using them presupposes the ability to read, and the level of literacy in Russia in 1812 was negligible. The most detailed and closest to the studied period research of literacy in Russia took place in 1844, 735,874 people were surveyed. :

Estate	Number of respondents	Total literate%
State peasants
Church peasants
Landlord peasants
Yard people (in cities)

Thus, of all the respondents, only 3.6% were literate and semi-literate. In France, even by the end of the Old Order (1788-1789), the total number of literate was at least 40% of the population (52% of men and about 27% of women), during the Revolution and especially under Napoleon, many new schools were opened, education was provided free of charge , or for the most reasonable fee.

Under Alexander I, they talked a lot about "enlightenment", but all the achievements in this environment were solely in words: the total number of secular students educational institutions Russia increased from 46 thousand (1808) to 69 thousand (1824), the figures are so insignificant that they hardly need mentioning! For comparison - in 12-million Prussia in 1819, more than 1.5 million people studied in primary secular schools alone (even then almost all the school-age population received an education), in 1830 this number exceeded 2.2 million people.

In Russia at the beginning of the XIX century. up to 2.8 million people lived in the cities, the main population of the cities was burghers, merchants and servants, as can be seen from the table, their level of education was approximately the same, on average about 30% of them could read, this amounted to 750 thousand people per the whole empire. The average literacy rate among peasants did not exceed 3%, or about 1 million people. So, the number of literate people in cities in 1812 was almost equal to the number of literate people throughout the rest of Russia.

In addition, bookstores were located exclusively in cities (in 1811, of the 115 available bookstores, 85 were located in Moscow and St. Petersburg), there was an opportunity to subscribe to time-based editions. In addition to general illiteracy, the most important obstacle to the distribution of printed matter was its high cost and, of course, the poverty of the population: in 1812, as can be seen from advertisements placed in St. Petersburg Vedomosti and Moskovskiye Vedomosti, the average cost of a book was 5-7 rubles, and the price of an annual subscription to a newspaper or magazine is 15-20 rubles, amounts unthinkable for most Russians. For clarity, we present information about the earnings of residents of territories exposed to the invasion of Napoleonic troops (although these data refer to the 1840s, they almost correspond to the realities of 1812): in a fairly wealthy Moscow province, a farmer earned an average of 35-47 rubles. per year, in Vitebsk province - 12-20 rubles, less often - 36 rubles, in Smolensk - 10-15 rubles, very rarely - up to 40 rubles. (women and adolescents were paid several times less); the majority of urban residents (bourgeois) at that time did not have regular earnings, their incomes were extremely low; in the most privileged position were Moscow coachmen, who received up to 20-30 rubles. per month (240-360 rubles per year), as well as watchmen and janitors who earned 100-130 rubles. per month, however, the latter constituted an extremely insignificant part of the population.

Russian books had the least influence on the population. According to researchers, the total number of active readers of Russia in 1820 was only 50 thousand people, or less than 0.1% of the population of the Empire. The number of publications was extremely small, they almost did not touch on any relevant topics, most of them were novels. In the most educated Moscow in 1803, only about 20 thousand books were sold with a population of 250 thousand people, that is, one book for every ten. Presumably greatest influence the common people of the era of the Patriotic War were influenced by a small essay by F.V. Rostopchin "Thoughts aloud on the Red Porch of the Russian nobleman Sila Andreevich Bogatyrev", published in 1807 and sold in an unprecedented circulation of 7 thousand copies. As far as we know, this is the most widely circulated work of secular literature of that time, moreover, it is one of the few books addressed to the people. The work is a monologue of a drunken nobleman trying to speak in a "folk style". In fact, this is a continuous abuse against the French and their imitators, where the French are presented as worthless and worthless people. The book contributed to the maintenance of frivolous and shappy-handed moods among the people. During the campaign of 1812, only a few propaganda books about the war were published, they were initially aimed at the upper strata of society, in general, their influence was negligible.

More or less timely information about the events was provided by periodicals. Due to censorship constraints (despite the liberal censorship charter of 1804), she also hardly touched on topical issues, in fact, she had no right to express her point of view on anything. The situation as a whole almost corresponded to the words of L.V. Dubelt on the rights of the periodical press, said in a conversation with F.V. Bulgarin in 1826: "Theater, exhibitions, guest houses, flea markets, taverns, pastry shops - this is your area, and not a step further!"

In 1801-1806. in Russia there were only 27 newspapers and magazines, by 1810 - 60, by 1824 - 67 (of which only 33 were in Russian). The most circulated time-based editions during this period were the newspaper "Severnaya Pochta", which had 1768 subscribers in 1810, by 1816 - 2306 people, the journal "Vestnik Evropy" with a circulation of 1200 copies. (1802), by 1820 this figure had dropped to 1,000 copies. The popular patriotic magazine of S. N. Glinka "Russian Bulletin" in 1811 had only 750 subscribers (of which 300 were in Moscow). The rest of the publications came out in microscopic editions. Under Alexander I, the newspaper "Russian invalid" had the largest circulation - 4 thousand copies (1821). In general, the reading audience of the Russian periodicals was very small, however, as already mentioned, it exerted an indirect influence on the common people.

In Russian villages in 1812, newspapers and magazines met, here literate people read them in the presence of the entire population. It should be especially noted that the common people of that time had great confidence in the printed word. In 1807-1812. for political reasons, the government diligently concealed its contradictions with France, only brief correspondence appeared on the pages of newspapers, reporting, as a rule, about the successes of the French. Extremely valuable evidence of the influence of the press on the common people is contained in the secret report of M. Ya. von Fock (dated May 15, 1812): “unenlightened people who live inside the Empire, and especially the middle class and commoners, accustomed to consider everything that is printed as an irrefutable truth, come to despondency and hear only about victories and conquests Napoleon, all the peoples who enslave, lose the spirit of vigor, especially in remote cities and villages, where every deacon and literate is a luminary and every line printed with the Gospel. "

Information from the pre-war press about Napoleon's successes caused panic among the Russian population, the rumors they generated, which exaggerated everything many times, convinced many commoners that the enemy was invincible.

During the war, Russian newspapers and magazines published official news from the army about the course of hostilities, letters, captured documents (rarely), correspondence from different places, and translations of foreign articles. In publicistic articles, the enemy humiliated himself in every possible way, often in a rude way, the idea of ​​the superiority of everything Russian over foreign was carried out. During 1812, the main printed source of information about the war was flying leaflets published by the army by the marching printing house and sent to officials, the texts of these leaflets were reprinted by newspapers and published as supplements (often in a distorted form). In total, in July - December 1812, about 80 such leaflets were issued. They contained daily records of army movements, military clashes, enemy losses and trophies (always greatly exaggerated), from the fall of 1812 they described the plight of the French army.

It was difficult for an ordinary person to delve into the text of many leaflets published in the summer - early autumn of 1812, since they contained a lot of inaccurate names of settlements, many names unknown to him. The leaflets were read publicly in the presence of a large crowd of people. DI. Zavalishin recalled how the governor of Vologda read the news of the hostilities, and the people listened to him and sobbed. All that could be understood was that the Russian army was retreating, and from October 1812 it was advancing.

In Moscow, the posters of F.V. Rostopchin, the governor's printed appeals to the residents, written in the folk style, they very much resembled the chatter of the drunken Sila Andreevich Bogatyrev. In total, researchers have identified 57 Moscow "posters" created in July-December 1812, of which 23 are attributed to FV Rostopchin. The author reassured and encouraged the residents, assuring them that the enemy was about to be defeated, sneered at the French, sometimes retelling the content of the official news of the hostilities, citing astronomical figures about the number of Russian troops. Posters were famous not only in Moscow.

Already since 1811, among the Russian common people, a variety of rumors about the impending war with Napoleon were circulating; among the mass of absurdities, quite reliable information circulated that Russia would be helped by England and Sweden. However, it was not political news that had the greatest influence on the Russians of that time, but the famous comet of 1811, to which they began to pay close attention in August. Here is what D.I. Zavalishin, who lived in Tver at that time: “It was in August and, therefore, when we went to church, it was still very light. But towards the end of the all-night vigil, but even before the time when the people were dispersed, an unusual movement took place on the porch at the door of the church. People somehow left and again entered and, entering, somehow sighed heavily and began to pray fervently. It was finally time to leave the church, but the first ones to leave the church stopped, and the crowd thickened so that it was impossible to squeeze through it. And those standing behind, having lost patience, began to ask loudly: “What is it? Why are they not coming? " The answer was: "Star". Little by little, the crowd, however, dispersed, so that we could go out almost behind everyone and right in front of us saw the famous comet of 1811.

The next day, even before the sun went down, people began to go out and look at the place where they saw the rising of a star yesterday. At dusk, our square was almost completely crowded with people, so that it was very difficult not only for the carriages to pass through, but also on foot. At the place where the star appeared yesterday, there was, however, a black cloud. For all that, the people did not leave, but persisted in waiting. In other parts of the sky, it was clear and there were already small stars. But as soon as 9 o'clock struck, the cloud seemed to settle under the horizon, and yesterday's star appeared in an even more formidable form. As if at a signal, everyone took off their hats and crossed themselves. Heavy sighs were heard, where suppressed, where loud sighs. We stood in silence for a long time. But then one woman fell into hysterics, others burst into tears, a conversation began, then loud exclamations: "True, the Lord was angry with Russia," "We sinned by mistake, well, they waited," and so on. Comparisons began: who said that the tail of a comet this is a bunch of rods, who likened to a broomstick to sweep away all the untruths from Russia, etc. Since then, people crowded in the streets every evening, and the star became more and more formidable. Talk began about the end of the world, about the fact that Napoleon is the foretold Antichrist, indicated right in the apocalypse under the name of Apolion. "

Interesting information about the comet of 1811 was recorded by a contemporary of the Patriotic War, Muscovite Pyotr Kicheev (according to "Annuaire pour l'an 1832"): the light from this comet at the moment of the highest voltage was equal to 1/10 of the light of the full moon, on October 15, 1811 the comet approached Earth at a minimum distance (47 million leagues), the diameter of its core was 1,089 leagues, and the length of the tail reached 41 million leagues (172 million 200 thousand versts). In the firmament, the comet took up to 23 degrees. Kicheev also noted the great impression made by the comet on Muscovites.

An inexperienced Russian in 1812 was convinced that war is God's punishment, therefore, it cannot depend on the tricks of diplomats and the will of individuals; he tried to unravel the traces of its approach and its course by all sorts of signs (the comet of 1811, frequent fires, etc.). During the war, Russians tried to find answers to all questions in the most respected and authoritative source - the Bible. D. Zavalishin recalled how the inhabitants of the province came to people who had the Slavic Bible, and asked them what was written there about Bonaparte and what he would do with Russia, deeply convinced that all this was described there. In 1812, all kinds of predictions, revelations, descriptions of signs, etc., became extremely widespread among the people.

The most detailed notes on the reaction of the common people to the invasion were left by the Muscovite A. Ryazantsev: after the news of the declaration of war, the Moscow people gathered in the square and began to reason. First of all, it was unanimously decided that war was God's punishment and one should pray fervently, and one merchant said that he had sensed something was wrong for a long time: his porridge was cooking in his pot, and brownie got naughty and the cat Vaska began to look unkindly. Fables about the French began to spread vigorously, here is one of them: “The French, leaving the Christian faith, turned to idolatry, invented for themselves some kind of God, Clever Man, and obsequiously worship him, that this blockhead Clever Man ordered them all to be equal and free, forbade believing in true God and not accept any earthly authority. The idolaters, obeying their idol, rebelled, plundered their churches and turned them into entertainment establishments, destroyed civil laws and, to complete their evil deeds, killed their innocent, good, legitimate king. " This description of the French Revolution almost literally coincides with the description of F.V. Rostopchin from the aforementioned book "Thoughts aloud on the Red Porch ...", that is why it is more or less plausible, here we are dealing with the indirect influence of his work, which confirms its importance for the formation of public opinion. Or: “The French surrendered to the Antichrist, chose his son Apolion as their commanders, a wizard who, along the course of the stars, determines, foresees the future, knows when to start and when to end a war, in addition, has a wife, a sorceress who speaks firearms, opposed to her why the French come out to her husband as winners. " E.V. Novosiltseva wrote down some folk legends of 1812, where it was said that the French were afraid of the cross, etc. A. Ryazantsev recalled that in the summer of 1812, from everything he heard, his “young fantastic imagination drew the French not as people, but as some kind of monsters with wide mouth, huge fangs, bloodshot eyes with a copper forehead and an iron body, from which, like peas, bullets bounce off the wall, and bayonets and sabers break like torches. " At the end of August 1812, he went to look at a group of prisoners of war that had arrived in Moscow to make sure "are the enemy soldiers really not like people, but like terrible monsters?" ... Almost all of Moscow gathered to look at the prisoners.

In the rumors described, the worldview of the Russians is well traced - a bizarre mixture of pagan and Christian ideas. The pagan element seems to be stronger. This is most clearly confirmed by the following example: a Moscow janitor explained the cause of death of the French cavalrymen killed by the Cossacks as follows: the brownie strangled them, because they did not pray to God when they went to bed. A.T. Bolotov was convinced that most of the Russian peasants remained pagans. A.V. Nikitenko, having visited in the summer of 1839 in the village of Timokhovka, Mogilev province, wrote in his diary that local peasants go to pray to gods and gods.

Official propaganda added fuel to the fire, in 1812 the Synod, as before in 1807, obediently proclaimed Napoleon the Antichrist; for propaganda in the army, professor of the University of Dorpat V. Getsel sent M.B. To Barclay de Tolly, an article in which he argued that Napoleon is the Antichrist, he proposed to disseminate its content among the soldiers. For the French, this had the most dire consequences. Among the Russian common people and soldiers, the Great Army was literally perceived as the army of the devil. I.N. Skobelev in the "Soldiers' Correspondence of 1812" calls Napoleon "the warlock Bunaparte", Napoleon's soldiers - "sorcerers", describing the retreat of the Napoleonic army, he writes that Napoleon calculated when to retreat "along his black (that is, witchcraft - L. A.) books ".

Many times distorted and completely ridiculous rumors reached the province, a resident of the Smolensk province F.I. Levitsky recalled: “It was scary in Moscow, and even worse in the district towns and villages. Something that was not told among the people! You used to listen to these rumors, you won’t fall asleep at night. ” Many residents were convinced that the French ... eat people! Back in 1807, when Napoleon was first declared the Antichrist by the Synod, a captured Russian officer asked the French not to eat his subordinates! Such absurd statements were based on primitive counterrevolutionary propaganda, which in every possible way portrayed that in France, since 1793, almost the end of the world had come. F.V. Rostopchin in "Thoughts aloud ..." argued that the French during the revolution fried people and ate! F.N. Glinka seriously believed that the French during the revolution unnecessarily “killed, roasted and ate many of their mayors. Their own history is not silent about this. " Colonel M.M. Petrov believed that the French guillotined during the revolution millions their compatriots. The peasant woman Agafya Ignatieva from the village of Volti (Smolensk province) recalled that in 1812 she was sure that the French would eat her (she was then 9 years old), so all peasant children believed. Meanwhile, the French (natural French, not their allies) almost never offend children and treated them very kindly. In a number of settlements, they did not know anything about the war. This was due to the fact that in 1812, on the territory of Belarus and central Russia (the main theater of military operations), the absolute majority of villages were located far from roads, population migration was minimal, many villages were in impassable wilderness, where the foot of an outsider never set foot. In Russia at the beginning of the XIX century. the bulk of the population had absolutely no experience of communicating with foreigners, the enemy did not appear on the primordially Russian territories for almost 200 years, which was quite rightly pointed out by M.I. Kutuzov in a conversation with the French ambassador Loriston in the fall of 1812. Russian peasants lived in a closed and traditional way, everything new was decidedly alien to them. As can be seen from a number of memoirs, for many residents of the Russian hinterland, a meeting with a Napoleonic soldier was an event more surprising than a meeting with an alien for a modern person. As we showed above, the imagination of the peasants was fueled by the most monstrous rumors about the enemy, very often precisely fear before the enemy, as such, forced them to leave their homes. Napoleonic officer Italian C. Logier in his diary describes the occupation of the Great Army of Smolensk - the locals for the most part fled, those who remained, hid in churches and prayed fervently, hoping that the holy place would protect them from the enemy. The Italian soldiers who entered the church, wanting to distribute food to them, were themselves dumbfounded with fear, when those who were there began to utter wild cries of horror, it was truly animal fear .

In August 1812, a deaconess from the village of Novy Dvor (Smolensk province), seeing the French cavalry, fainted and did not come to her senses for a long time, she was introduced to Napoleon, and she, trembling, constantly baptized and prayed, convinced that the French were devils from hell .

Of course, not all representatives of the common people perceived the French so primitively: an old peasant woman from the village of Staraya Rusa (80 miles from Moscow) was not afraid of the French, saying: “They will not touch me, an old woman. And what self-interest would they have to kill me? After all, they are not any beasts either. "

Kuzma Yegorovich Shmatikov, a resident of Smolensk, tells how the people perceived the war of 1812 in their own way, this is how he describes the storming of Smolensk in August 1812: assumed how the city would be taken. Well, let's say we were children, and there are all women around us. Yes, some men were no smarter than we reasoned: they thought that the armies would go one against the other in fistfights. Many climbed the trees to see it. " Comments are generally superfluous here. When Napoleon's army entered Moscow, crowds of people for about two hours (exactly as long as the French troops entered the capital) argued whether they were Swedes or British who came to our aid.

Having processed a large array of materials, we came to the conclusion that the behavior of the inhabitants of central Russia during 1812 can be divided into four main types: 1) panic; 2) perfect calmness and haughty, haughty moods; 3) the desire to throw off the yoke of serfdom, the hope for the help of Bonaparte; 4) absolute ignorance or indifference. Arrogant sentiments, the belief in absolute superiority over the enemy were extremely common among the people, especially in the territories that had not been invaded. Even the most educated strata of the population had similar sentiments, the commander-in-chief of the 2nd Western Army P.I. Bagration was deeply convinced that the French would be defeated instantly; on June 8, 1812, he wrote to the tsar, begging him to allow the Russians to attack and invade Poland themselves. Many other memoirs also record similar shapkozakidatelny moods, they were actively supported by the press, especially the posters of Rostopchin. The grandfather of P. Kicheev sacredly believed them and therefore remained in Moscow, one Moscow priest on the very day of the surrender of Moscow laughed at his wife, who claimed that there were French in the city, his argument was as follows: “You believe the clergyman, but you don’t believe the governor-general!” when the French came to his house, he fell silent and tore up the poster.

I must say that such moods instantly disappeared with the approach of the enemy, impudent self-confidence was instantly replaced by panic and apathy, which is described in detail in the memoirs.

In Russia in 1812 there were many people who thought about the possibility of freeing themselves from the serf yoke, the war provided a good opportunity for this. In 1812, the serfs made up about 44% of the population of the Empire (23 million people), the living conditions of most serfs were monstrous, both materially and morally. V Lately in historiography, the realities of serfdom are actively hushed up, trying in every possible way to embellish it. The most detailed and accurate life of serfs at the beginning of the XIX century. described in the memoirs of A.V. Nikitenko, it is supplemented by the memoirs of the surgeon F. Mercier, who spent two years in Russian captivity. The overwhelming majority of Russian landowners were small landowners and owned, as a rule, several dozen peasants, and in order to live "decently to the title", they needed hundreds or even thousands of rubles a year. Knowing the size of the peasants' earnings (see above), it is easy to calculate that the serf gave most of the money earned to the landowner, who sucked all the juices out of him. Add to this the robbery of estate managers, whom virtually no one controlled, oppression by rich peasants, etc. For thinking people, such as A.V.'s father was. Nikitenko, the most terrible thing in their situation was the complete lack of rights and the terrible humiliation associated with it, to which this noble man was subjected until his death. The following figure gives an idea of ​​the scale of the atrocities of the landowners in relation to the serfs: only for 1834 - 45. 2838 landowners were brought to trial for cruel treatment of peasants, 630 of them were convicted. At the same time, the absolute majority of the crimes of the landowners remained unpunished.

According to historians, only in 1796-1825. in Russia there were more than 1200 large peasant uprisings, these figures are far from complete. Since 1961, it is believed that in 1812 there were 60-67 anti-serf uprisings, this figure is greatly underestimated and needs to be clarified. Here, information about the uprisings in the occupied territories, which were most affected by the anti-serf movement, was almost completely ignored. As contemporaries note, in particular, the brigadier general of the Great Army Dedem de Gelder, the quartermaster of the Vitebsk province A. Pastore (an official of the French occupation administration), who acted in the rear of the French partisans A.Kh. Benckendorf, all Belarus (the territories of Vitebsk, Minsk and Mogilev provinces) was engulfed in an anti-serf fire, the peasants here rebelled against their landlords everywhere.

Sometimes anti-serf uprisings occurred “not without incitement from the enemy,” such as, for example, a major uprising in the Baryshnikovs' estate in the Dorogobuzh district.

Hatred of the nobles continued to smolder among the people; only 37 years have passed since the time of the Pugachev regime in 1812. The nobles themselves instinctively felt this hatred and were extremely afraid of it. The number of uprisings cannot estimate the range of anti-serfdom sentiments in 1812; it is clear from the memoirs that the hope for freedom from Bonaparte was extremely widespread. A memoirist from the Moscow common people with his own ears heard from the peasants near Moscow, who were ordered to the bar to prepare horses: “Why! We will begin to cook horses about the good of the master. Bonaparte will come, he will give us freedom, but we don’t want to know the gentlemen anymore! ”Only after making sure that the French were robbing and not giving freedom, these peasants went into the forest. Former serf A.A. Sazonova recalled that “the people murmured very much against the gentlemen,” Muscovite G.Ya. Kozlovsky, who survived the occupation of Moscow, argued that he feared Russian peasants much more than the French. D.M. Volkonsky in his diary on September 10, 1812 noted with horror that the people were already ready for unrest. Marshal L.G. Saint-Cyr was absolutely right when he wrote that the war of 1812 demonstrated the internal weakness of Russia, it was just that the French did not take advantage of it.

A.V. Nikitenko (lived in Ukraine in 1812): “It is strange that at this moment of strong upheavals that Russia was going through, not only our close circle, with the exception of young Tatarchukov, but the entire surrounding society was indifferent to the fate of the fatherland. ... I have never heard in their conversations the notes of warm sympathy for the events of the time. Everyone, apparently, was interested only in their own personal affairs. The name of Napoleon evoked more surprise than hatred. In a word, our society amazed with its equanimity towards the trouble that threatened Russia. This could partly be due to the remoteness of the theater of war ... But the main reason for this, I believe, was hiding in the apathy inherent in people, alienated, as the Russians were then, from participation in public affairs and accustomed not to talk about what was happening around, but only to obey the orders of the authorities unquestioningly. "

In Russian historiography, the myth is often repeated that in 1812 the people gladly went into the army. It is based on the memoirs of representatives of the nobility. Here is the most valuable testimony from the diary of the Rostov official M.I. Marakuev, entry dated July 12, 1812: Emperor Alexander arrived in the Kremlin, a huge number of people gathered, suddenly a rumor spread that they would order “to lock all the gates and take everyone by force as a soldier. As soon as this rumor ran, the rabble rushed out and in a few minutes the Kremlin was empty. An echo spread from the Kremlin throughout Moscow and many black people fled from it. " This happened in the presence of the emperor himself! The next day, outside Moscow, he met crowds of men who had fled from the capital. They asked him if he was being taken as a soldier in Moscow. P. Nazarov, drafted into the army in September 1812, wrote that no one from his village wanted to serve. During the war, the authorities repeatedly reassured the militias, confirming that they were serving in the army only temporarily. The war ends sooner or later, and you will have to serve 25 years, if you are not killed, you will be disabled, most likely without a pension. P. Nazarov for 25 years of service and several serious wounds received a pension of 20 rubles. a year, this was barely enough for food. Here is what the soldiers themselves said about their problems (from the memoirs of DI Zavalishin): “I tell the truth that even after December 14, the soldiers of those regiments and detachments where there were no members of society and were not, therefore, the goals of the coup were explained to them, willingly in conversations with us ... discussing the double oath of allegiance to Constantine and Nicholas, they constantly told us the same thing: “We didn't care what the other was. Now, if, gentlemen, you told us then that there would be a reduction in service, but they would not be driven into the coffin with sticks, but after retirement you won’t go with a bag, but children will not be irrevocably taken into soldiers, well, we would have gone for that ” ". Only for 1815-1825. 15 uprisings took place in the Russian army.

As a result of the study, we have outlined some prospects for studying the topic of perception of the Patriotic War by the common people.

Napoleon leads the battle

The Napoleonic Wars (1796-1815) - an era in the history of Europe, when France, which embarked on the capitalist path of development, tried to impose the principles of freedom, equality, brotherhood, with which its people made their Great Revolution, on the surrounding states.

The soul of this grandiose undertaking, its driving force was the French commander, political figure who eventually became emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. That is why the numerous European wars of the early nineteenth century are called Napoleonic

"Bonaparte - short stature, not very slender: its body is too long. Hair is dark brown, eyes are gray-blue; complexion, at first, with youthful thinness, yellow, and then, with age, white, matte, without any blush. Its features are beautiful, reminiscent of antique medals. A slightly flat mouth becomes pleasant when he smiles; the chin is a little short. The lower jaw is heavy and square. The legs and arms are graceful, he is proud of them. The eyes, usually dull, give the face, when it is calm, a melancholic, pensive expression; when he is angry, his gaze becomes suddenly stern and threatening. The smile suits him very much, makes him suddenly very kind and young; it is difficult for him then to resist, so he all looks prettier and transforms "(from the memoirs of Madame Remus, a lady at the court of Josephine)

Biography of Napoleon. Briefly

• 1769, August 15 - born in Corsica
• 1779, May-1785, October - training in military schools in Brienne and Paris.
• 1789-1795 - in one way or another, participation in the events of the Great French Revolution
• 1795, June 13 - appointment as general of the Western Army
• 1795, October 5 - by order of the Convention, dispersed the royalist coup.
• 1795, October 26 - appointment as general of the Internal Army.
• 1796, March 9 - marriage to Josephine Beauharnais.
• 1796-1797 - Italian company
• 1798-1799 - Egyptian company
• 1799, November 9-10 - coup d'état. Napoleon becomes consul along with Sieyes and Roger-Ducos
• 1802, August 2 - Consulate for life presented to Napoleon
• 1804, May 16 - proclaimed emperor of the French
• 1807, January 1 - the proclamation of the continental blockade of Great Britain
• 1809, December 15 - divorce from Josephine
• 1810, April 2 - marriage to Maria Louise
• 1812, June 24 - the beginning of the war with Russia
• 1814, March 30-31 - the army of the anti-French coalition entered Paris
• 1814, April 4-6 - Napoleon's abdication from power
• 1814, May 4 - Napoleon on the island of Elba.
• 1815, February 26 - Napoleon left Elba
• 1815, March 1 - Napoleon's landing in France
• 1815, March 20 - Napoleon's army entered Paris in triumph
• 1815, June 18 - Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.
• 1815, June 22 - second abdication
• 1815, October 16 - Napoleon imprisoned on Saint Helena
• 1821, May 5 - Napoleon's death

Napoleon is considered by unanimous experts to be the greatest military genius in world history.(academician Tarle)

Napoleonic Wars

Napoleon waged wars not so much with individual states as with alliances of states. There were seven unions or coalitions in total.
First coalition (1791-1797): Austria and Prussia. The war of this coalition with France is not included in the list of Napoleonic wars.

Second Coalition (1798-1802): Russia, England, Austria, Turkey, the Kingdom of Naples, several German principalities, Sweden. The main battles took place in the regions of Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Holland.
—

• 1799, April 27 - at the Adda River, the victory of the Russian-Austrian troops under the command of Suvorov over the French army under the command of J. V. Moreau
• 1799, June 17 - at the Trebbia River in Italy, the victory of the Russian-Austrian troops of Suvorov over the French army of MacDonald
• 1799, August 15 - at Novi (Italy), the victory of the Russian-Austrian troops of Suvorov over the French army of Joubert
• 1799, September 25-26 - at Zurich, the defeat of the coalition forces by the French under the command of Massena
• 1800, June 14 - at Marengo, Napoleon's French army defeated the Austrians
• 1800, December 3 - Moreau's French army defeated the Austrians at Hohenlinden

• 1801, February 9 - Peace of Luneville between France and Austria
• 1801, October 8 - peace treaty in Paris between France and Russia
• 1802, March 25 - Peace of Amiens between France, Spain and the Batavian Republic on the one hand and England on the other

—
France took control of the left bank of the Rhine. The Cisalpine (in Northern Italy), Batavian (Holland) and Helvetic (Switzerland) republics are recognized as independent

Third Coalition (1805-1806): England, Russia, Austria, Sweden. The main hostilities took place on land in Austria, Bavaria and at sea
—

• 1805, October 19 - Napoleon's victory over the Austrians at Ulm
• 1805, October 21 - Defeat of the Franco-Spanish fleet by the British at Trafalgar
• 1805, December 2 - Napoleon's victory over Austerlitz over the Russian-Austrian army ("Battle of the Three Emperors")

• 1805, December 26 - Peace of Presburg (Pressburg - present-day Bratislava) between France and Austria

—
Austria ceded to Napoleon the Venetian region, Istria (a peninsula in the Adriatic Sea) and Dalmatia (today it mainly belongs to Croatia) and recognized all French conquests in Italy, as well as lost its possessions west of Carinthia (today a federal land within Austria)

Fourth Coalition (1806-1807): Russia, Prussia, England. The main events took place in Poland and East Prussia
—

• 1806, October 14 - Napoleon's victory at Jena over the Prussian army
• 1806, 12 October Napoleon occupied Berlin
• 1806, December - entry into the war of the Russian army
• 1806, December 24-26 - battles at Charnovo, Golymin, Pultusk, which ended in a draw
• 1807, February 7-8 (New Style) - Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Preussisch-Eylau
• 1807, June 14 - Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Friedland

• 1807, June 25 - Peace of Tilsit between Russia and France

—
Russia recognized all the conquests of France and promised to join the continental blockade of England

Napoleon's Pyrenees Wars: Napoleon's attempt to conquer the countries of the Iberian Peninsula.
From October 17, 1807 to April 14, 1814, then dying out, then resuming with new ferocity, the hostilities of the Napoleonic marshals continued with the Spanish-Portuguese-Angian forces. France did not manage to completely subjugate Spain and Portugal on the one hand because the theater of war was on the periphery of Europe, on the other, because of the opposition to the occupation of the peoples of these countries.

Fifth Coalition (April 9 - October 14, 1809): Austria, England. France acted in an alliance with Poland, Bavaria, Russia. the main events took place in Central Europe
—

• 1809, April 19-22 - victorious for the French Teugen-Hausen, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl battles in Bavaria.
• The Austrian army suffered one setback after another, and the allies in Italy, Dalmatia, Tyrol, Northern Germany, Poland and Holland did not do well.

• 1809, 12 July - an armistice was concluded between Austria and France
• 1809, October 14 - Peace of Schönbrunn between France and Austria

—
Austria lost access to Adriatic Sea... France - Istria with Trieste. Western Galicia passed to the Duchy of Warsaw, Tyrol and the Salzburg region received Bavaria, Russia - the Tarnopol district (as compensation for its participation in the war on the side of France)

Sixth Coalition (1813-1814): Russia, Prussia, England, Austria and Sweden, and after the defeat of Napoleon in the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig in October 1813, the German states of Württemberg and Bavaria joined the coalition. Spain, Portugal and England fought independently with Napoleon on the Iberian Peninsula

The main events of the war of the sixth coalition with Napoleon took place in Central Europe
—

• 1813, October 16-19 - Napoleon's defeat by the allied forces in the Battle of Leipzig (Battle of the Nations)
• 1813, October 30-31 - the battle at Hanau, in which the Austro-Bavarian corps unsuccessfully tried to block the retreat of the French army, defeated in the Battle of the Nations
• 1814, January 29 - the victorious battle for Napoleon at Brienne with the Russian-Prussian-Austrian forces
• 1814, February 10-14 - victorious battles for Napoleon at Champaubert, Montmiral, Chateau-Thierry, Voshan, in which the Russians and Austrians lost 16,000 people
• 1814, March 9 - a successful battle for the coalition army near the city of Laon (northern France), in which Napoleon was still able to save the army
• 1814, March 20-21 - the battle of Napoleon and Main army Allies on the Aube River (center of France), in which the coalition army drove back a small army of Napoleon and marched on Paris, which they entered on March 31

• 1814, May 30 - The Paris Peace Treaty, which put an end to Napoleon's war with the countries of the sixth coalition

—
France returned to the borders that existed on January 1, 1792, and most of the colonial possessions that it had lost during the Napoleonic Wars were returned to it. Monarchy was re-established in the country

Seventh Coalition (1815): Russia, Sweden, England, Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal. The main events of Napoleon's war with the countries of the seventh coalition took place in France and Belgium.
—

• 1815, on March 1, Napoleon, who fled from the island, landed in France
• 1815, March 20 Napoleon occupied Paris without resistance

  How the headlines of French newspapers changed as Napoleon approached the capital of France:
  "The Corsican monster has landed in the Bay of Juan", "The man-eater goes to the Route", "The usurper has entered Grenoble", "Bonaparte has occupied Lyon", "Napoleon is approaching Fontainebleau", "His imperial majesty enters into Paris, faithful to him"

• 1815, March 13 England, Austria, Prussia and Russia outlawed Napoleon, March 25 formed the Seventh Coalition against him.
• 1815, mid-June - Napoleon's army entered Belgium
• 1815, June 16, the French defeated the British at Quatre Bras and the Prussians at Liny
• 1815, June 18 - Napoleon's defeat

Outcome of the Napoleonic Wars

"The defeat of feudal-absolutist Europe by Napoleon had a positive, progressive historical significance ... Napoleon inflicted such irreparable blows on feudalism from which he could never recover, and this is the progressive meaning of the historical epic of the Napoleonic wars"(academician E. V. Tarle)