On October 18, 1812, the Battle of Tarutino took place in the Kaluga region to the south of Moscow. It was the first battle won by the Russian army after the Battle of Borodino.
After the Battle of Borodino, Marshall Kutuzov realized that the Russian army would not survive one more large engagement and ordered the army to leave Moscow and retreat. The army pitched camp in a village of Tarutino near Kaluga. French troops under the command of Marshal Murat soon discovered the location of the camp and remained not far away to keep his eye on the Russians.
On October 18 Kutuzov ordered Bennigsen and Miloradovich to attack Murat’s corps (26,000 men) with two columns stealthily crossing the forest in the dead of night. Bennigsen’s main column included three columns led by Vasily Orlov-Denisov, Karl Gustav von Baggehufwudt and Alexander Osterman-Tolstoy respectively. The other column was supposed to play an auxiliary role. In the darkness most of the troops got lost. By the morning only Cossack troops under the command of general Orlov-Denisov reached the original destination, suddenly attacked the French troops and captured the French camp with transports and cannons. Since other Russian units came late the French were able to recover.
When the Russians emerged from the forest they came under French fire and suffered casualties. Finally Murat had to retreat but he escaped being surrounded. The French forces suffered 2,500 dead and 2,000 prisoners, the Russians lost 1,200 dead. This Russian victory is considered to have hastened Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.
The total number of cannon captured by the Russians at Tarutino – 38 pieces in all – was noteworthy because until this point in the war, neither side had lost nearly as many guns in a single encounter. This was regarded by the Russian rank-and-file as a sign that the tide of the war was finally turning in their favor.
Later in a letter to his wife Kutuzov wrote: “The village of Tarutino, where my camp was deployed, spelled disaster for the enemy.” General Alexander Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, a participant of the 1812 war wrote: “The army’s stay in Tarutino was one of the brilliant periods Kutuzov’s glorious life. Since the times of Prince Pozharsky nobody was so much in center of attention of the whole Russia. In Tarutino, during a very short period, Kutuzov strengthened the army which was exhausted after a long retreat and bloody battles. He armed people, besieged Napoleon in Moscow and managed to benefit from a new type of war”.
Russkiy Mir Foundation Information Service
