Battle of Maloyaroslavets

On 24 October 1812 at Maloyaroslavets southwest of Moscow, Eugène de Beauharnais and Davout faced Kutuzov in bloody battle for control of the Kaluga road. The town changed hands eight times. Napoleon finally chose retreat via the devastated Smolensk road rather than the intact southern route — controversial decision that sealed the Grande Armée's fate.

Having left Moscow on 23 October, Napoleon sought to reach Kaluga and withdraw through an untouched region still able to feed the army. The plan leaked: Colonel Seslavin's partisans intercepted French officers and revealed it to Kutuzov, who saw in it an answer from heaven. By the morning of the 24th, Dokhturov's 20,000 men already held Maloyaroslavets.

The little wooden town changed hands seven times in the day. Delzons's corps, then Eugène de Beauharnais's, wore themselves out house by house; when Eugène asked for instructions, Napoleon answered curtly that, having begun to drink the cup, he must finish it. Fire took hold of the buildings and the soldiers advanced over heaps of corpses.

Each side lost five to six thousand men. Kutuzov's caution, preferring a defensive position to pursuit, nevertheless left the road briefly open. But Napoleon, judging that he could not force the passage towards Kaluga without risking catastrophe, chose to fall back along the already devastated Moscow-Smolensk road. That decision turned a retreat into a disaster: it was on that ruined route that the Grande Armée would come apart.