November, 9 (October,28),1812
(Zhilin "The Patriotic War Of 1812", Moscow,1988;
Beskrovny L.G. "Russian Military Art Of XIX Century", Moscow,1974)
There were three devastating blows delivered to the Napoleonic army on the way from Viazma to Smolensk: at the village Liakhovo, and when crossing the Vop and Dnieper rivers.
The Napoleonic army continued its hard, cold march: without enough arms, footwear or warm clothes. Many soldiers had self-made ragged footwear made of old uniform caps instead of boots. They wore pieces of sacking and skins of dead horses instead of warm clothes.
The partisan detachments of Denis Davidov, Seslavin and Figner, that had foughtnear Viazma, South of the Smolensk road, moved forward on November 7th tothe area West of Elnya. At the time, the French Brigade of General Augereau was near Liakhovo village. The Russians decided to combine all the partisan detachments and attack the French together with the big detachment of Orlov-Denisov that was approaching. On the morning of November 9th, 1500 partisans surrounded the Brigade of General Augereau (more than 2500 men). The French resisted furiously, but as Orlov-Denisov wrote afterwards, "They were surrounded on all sides and cut off from the rest of the French army, so in the end they suffered utter defeat" (1)
. The hopeless situation of Augereau's troops and the very big losses ("The whole battlefield was covered with dead bodies") (2) forced them to lay down their arms. About 60 officers and 2 thousand soldiers were captured. (3)
Cossacks attacking the retreating French
(from the picture by Desarnout)
- The Patriotic War of 1812. Materails of the Military Historical Archive, V.19,p.115
- The same
- M.I.Kutuzov. V.4.,Part 2,p.248
