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very few prisoners. The Russians showed the utmost tenacity: their fieldworks and the ground they were forced to yield were given up without disorder. Their ranks did not break; pounded by the artillery, sabred by the cavalry, forced back at bayonet-point by our infantry, their somewhat immobile masses met death bravely, and only gave way slowly before the fury of our attacks. Never had ground been attacked with more fury and skill or more stubbornly defended.38

In all, casualties of the battle of 7 September 1812 amounted to 30,000 French and 44,000 Russians. Gone, too, was the last chance of French victory. Though the French now entered Moscow without a fight, Napoleon could do no more. ‘Peace lies in Moscow,’ the emperor had claimed after Borodino. ‘When the great nobles of Russia see us masters of the capital, they will think twice about fighting on. If I liberated the serfs it would smash all those great fortunes. The battle will open the eyes of my brother, Alexander, and the capture of Moscow will open the eyes of his nobles . . . Swords have been crossed, honour is satisfied in the eyes of the world, and the Russians have suffered so much harm that there is no other satisfaction I can ask of them. They will be no more anxious for me to pay them a second visit than I shall be to return to Borodino.’39 But from St Petersburg there was silence. Though physically ill and under great stress, Alexander would not respond to Napoleon’s increasingly desperate communications. Borodino, after all, had been reported as a Russian victory and the tsar had come under such criticism from his sister the Grand Duchess Catherine - an influential figure in the court, and one much associated with Russian traditionalism - for losing Moscow that it was not hard to imagine his fate should he compound the disgrace by surrender. Yet with less than 100,000 troops, the emperor could not compel obedience to his will. With Moscow set alight by Russian agents, partisan activity increasing, supplies desperately short, Kutuzov’s army a mere seventy-five miles to the south, large numbers of fresh conscripts pouring into Russia’s recruiting depots, substantial regular forces closing in on his thinly protected lines of communication and the discipline and morale of the grande armée at breaking point, the position was clearly desperate. Once it became clear that Alexander would not make peace, retreat therefore became inevitable. For Napoleon it was beyond doubt one of the hardest decisions of his career:

Overcome in this struggle of obstinacy, [Napoleon] deferred from day to day the declaration of his defeat. Amid the dreadful storm of men and elements which was gathering around him, his ministers and aides saw him pass whole days in discussing the merits of some new verses he had received . . . He would then pass whole hours, half reclined, as if lifeless . . . On beholding this obstinate and inflexible character struggling with impossibility, his officers would then observe to one another that, having arrived at the summit of his glory, he no doubt foresaw that from his first retrograde step would date its downfall, [and] that for this reason he continued immovable, clinging to and lingering a few moments longer on this peak.40

Beginning on 19 October 1812, there followed the retreat from Moscow. Much time having been wasted by a pointless battle at Maloyaroslavets, the grande armée was soon assailed by heavy snow and bitter cold. Meanwhile, Kutuzov repeatedly cut the French column in two, thereby involving it in a series of desperate battles that delayed its march still further. With the army encumbered by immense caravans of baggage and non-combatants, food, clothing and footwear in short supply, and the soldiers exhausted by the endless retreat, formation after formation lost all cohesion as their men died by the hundreds or fell away to join the ever-growing crowd of stragglers. Barely escaping complete destruction when they were attacked from all sides at the river Berezina, the survivors staggered on under the command of Marshal