Who won the Battle of Maloyaroslavets?
Tactically the French did: Eugène's IV Corps held the burned town at nightfall on 24 October 1812. Strategically it was a Russian success, because Kutuzov's army now barred the road south to Kaluga, and on 25 October Napoleon turned his army north onto the road it had already stripped bare on the way to Moscow.1
Maloyaroslavets is a small town south-west of Moscow, where the road to Kaluga crosses the little Luzha river. It saw only one day of serious fighting in 1812, but that day decided which road the Grande Armée would take out of Russia, and so much of what happened to it in the snow that followed.
Background: leaving Moscow
Napoleon entered Moscow on 14 September 1812. On 19 October his army began to leave the city, heading south-west toward Kaluga, where supplies could still be found in country the war had not yet touched. Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, led the advance with his IV Corps, made up largely of Italian troops.2
When the Russian commander, Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, learned that the French were moving onto the Kaluga road, he sent General Dmitry Dokhturov's corps to reach the crossing at Maloyaroslavets first.3
23 October: a race for the bridge
The French got there first. On the evening of 23 October General Alexis Delzons's division of Eugène's corps took the bridge over the Luzha and drove a few Cossacks out of the town, then pulled most of his men back to the river, leaving two battalions in the streets. Dokhturov arrived during the night and found French troops already in place. His attack before dawn pushed them back to the river line, and he placed artillery on the ridges that overlooked the bridge.4
24 October: the town changes hands
At first light Eugène attacked to retake the town. Delzons was killed early in the fighting. According to FrenchEmpire.net, his younger brother, Major Jean Baptiste Delzons, tried to drag him to safety and was himself mortally wounded. Delzons's men still took the town, but the Russians threw them out again, and through the day both sides fed fresh troops into the burning streets. General Nikolay Raevsky came up to reinforce Dokhturov.5
No one agrees how often Maloyaroslavets changed hands. John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org writes at least seven times and possibly as many as twelve. The Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia gives eight, and Napoleon Guide says the bridge alone changed hands at least seven times. Eugène finally committed his last reserves, General Domenico Pino's Italian division. Soon after midday the Russians gave up the town and fell back to the high ground beyond it. By nightfall the French and Italians held what was left of Maloyaroslavets. The Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia says almost the whole town burned down in the fighting.6
Napoleon came up in the afternoon with most of the army but did not attack the Russian position on the ridges, a choice Rickard counts as a serious mistake.7
Casualties and numbers
The figures are estimates, and they differ. Napoleon Guide puts Eugène's force at about 15,000 men and Dokhturov's at about 20,000 before the reinforcements arrived, with about 5,000 French and Italian casualties and some 6,000 Russian. Rickard gives Eugène's Italians about 4,000 to 6,000 casualties and counts seven generals killed or wounded. The Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia gives only one figure for both sides: losses of more than 5,000 on each side.8
25 October: the Cossacks and the council
On the morning of 25 October Napoleon rode out to look at the Russian position. Cossacks swept down on his party and very nearly took him prisoner; Rickard reports that one came within about twenty yards. Both sources say that from then on he carried a bag of poison, so that he would never be taken alive.9
That day Napoleon held a council of war. He could force his way south past Kutuzov, swing west through Medyn, or turn north and go back past Borodino to Smolensk along the road he had come by. He chose the last.10 › Napoleon Bonaparte
Why Maloyaroslavets mattered
The road north ran through land that two armies had already stripped of food on the march to Moscow. The Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia says the choice of the ruined road toward Vyazma, instead of the untouched country around Kaluga, hastened the destruction of Napoleon's army. On the way the army marched back across the battlefield of Borodino, which Rickard notes was a heavy blow to morale. What had begun as a planned withdrawal became the retreat from Moscow.11
That is the paradox of Maloyaroslavets. The French and Italians kept a burned town; Kutuzov kept the road. According to the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia, a cast-iron monument to the battle was set up on the town square in 1844.12
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