Battle of Borodino

September 7, 1812

Seventy miles west of Moscow, Kutuzov's Russians stood and let Napoleon batter them all day. Seventy thousand men fell in twelve hours; the Russians withdrew in good order. A week later Napoleon entered an empty Moscow. Borodino was his costliest victory and, in the end, his undoing. Tolstoy would recreate the battle in War and Peace, turning its chaos into the centerpiece of the greatest novel ever written.