the French lost heavily, but finally gained the position:  and the hope that the foe were determined to fight the decisive battle at Dorogobuzh lured Napoleon on, despite his earlier decision.[265] Besides, his position seemed less hazardous than it was before Austerlitz.  The Grand Army was decidedly superior to the united forces of Barclay and Bagration.  On the Dwina, Oudinot held the Russians at bay; and when he was wounded, his successor, Gouvion St. Cyr, displayed a tactical skill which enabled him easily to foil a mere fighter like Wittgenstein.  On the French right flank, affairs were less promising; for the ending of the Russo-Turkish war now left the Russian army of the Pruth free to march into Volhynia.  But, for the present, Napoleon was able to summon up strong reserves under Victor, and assure his rear.

With full confidence, then, he pressed onwards to wrest from Fortune one last favour.  It was granted to him at Borodino.  There the Russians made a determined stand.  National jealousy of Barclay, inflamed by his protracted retreat, had at last led to his being superseded by Kutusoff; and, having about 110,000 troops, the old fighting general now turned fiercely to bay.  His position on the low convex curve of hills that rise behind the village of Borodino was of great strength.  On his right was the winding valley of the Kolotza, an affluent of the Moskwa, and before his centre and left the ground sloped down to a stream.  On this more exposed side the Russians had hastily thrown up earthworks, that at the centre being known as the Great Redoubt, though it had no rear defences.

Napoleon halted for two days, until his gathering forces mustered some 125,000 men, and he now prepared to end the war at a blow.  After surveying the Russian position, he saw Kutusoff’s error in widely extending his lines to the north; and while making feints on that side, so as to prevent any concentration of the Muscovite array, he planned to overwhelm the more exposed centre and left, by the assaults of Davoust and Poniatowski on the south, and of Ney’s corps and Eugene’s Italians on the redoubts at the centre.  Davoust begged to be allowed to outflank the Russian left; but Napoleon refused, perhaps owing to a fear that the Russians might retreat early in the day, and decided on dealing direct blows at the left and centre.  As the 7th of September dawned with all the splendour of a protracted summer, cannon began to thunder against the serried arrays ranged along the opposing slopes, and Napoleon’s columns moved against the redoubts and woods that sheltered the Muscovite lines.  The defence was most obstinate.  Time after time the smaller redoubts were taken and retaken; and while, on the French right centre, the tide of battle surged up and down the slope, the Great Redoubt dealt havoc among Eugene’s Italians, who bravely but, as it seemed, hopelessly struggled up that fatal rise.