The Russian army had come to a stop at last! Miloradovich, with sixteen thousand recruits, and a multitude of peasants carrying crosses and shouting God wills it, swarmed up to join the ranks. We were told that they were turning up the whole plain of Borodino, throwing up breastworks and digging in with the evident intention of not retreating another inch.

He had them in a position where it was so desperately urgent for them to conquer that conquer they must at any cost. The rashness of that position was evident; but he knew that of all faults, rashness was the one the French condoned most willingly. At bottom he had no fear for them, for himself, or for the final outcome, no matter what individual misfortunes they might suffer.

--Philippe-Paul de Segur

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The Russian army under Kutusov drew up at a site south of the village of Borodino, on a ridge intersected with ravines and behind the Kolotcha, a tributary of the Moskowa, the river which flowed through Moscow seventy-two miles to the east. Napoleon's Grand Army arrived on the hills facing the Russians on 5 September with 130,000 men to face 115,000 Russians. This was the battle Napoleon had wanted, but the battlefield was not one he would have chosen. The country was wooded and therefore unsuitable to the cavalry and the flanking movements by which Napoleon was accustomed to defeating the enemy. The Russians had also been afforded the time to dig in on sloping ground; their main batteries were protected by turf redoubts and would be difficult to capture.

The Russian lines stretched north and south for two and a half miles from Borodino to the village of Utitza, on the Old Smolensk-Moscow road. On the Russian right Barclay with 75,000 men held high ground protected by giant earthworks known as the Great or Raevsky Redoubt, then came a dip in the land; beyond the dip three more redoubts--the Bagration Fleches--and finally the wooded ground above Utitza.

Napoleon's strategy was a simple one. His stepson Eugene would attack the village of Borodino, as though the main French thrust was to come on the Russian right. In fact, it would come at the Russian center and the left, where the Russian lines were weakest. There Marshal Davout would attack Bagration, while the Polish Prince Poniatowski's cavalry, using the Old Smolensk-Moscow road, would try to maneuver behind the left flank of the Russians, driving the whole army to the right and into the ravine of the Kolotcha.

On the evening before the battle, Napoleon asked his aide-de-camp Rapp if he expected a victory. "Without any doubt," Rapp replied. "But a bloody one."

Napoleon in Russia