center at Borodino at the confluence of
the rivers Kolocha and Voyna.

To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of how
the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the river
Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was to
prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.

Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as the
history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utitsa
to Borodino (he could not have seen that position because it did not
exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while
pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the
Russian position--at the Shevardino Redoubt--and unexpectedly for the
Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And the Russians, not having
time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left wing from the
position they had intended to occupy and took up a new position which
had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By crossing to the other
side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad, Napoleon shifted the
whole forthcoming battle from right to left (looking from the Russian
side) and transferred it to the plain between Utitsa, Semenovsk, and
Borodino--a plain no more advantageous as a position than any other
plain in Russia--and there the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of
August took place.

Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to the
Kolocha, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the redoubt
but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have doubted that
the Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our position, and the
battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case
we should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubt--our left
flank--still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the
center or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on the
twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But as the
attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the retreat of
our rear guard (that is, immediately after the fight at Gridneva), and
as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not in time, to begin a
general engagement then on the evening of the twenty-fourth, the first
and chief action of the battle of Borodino was already lost on the
twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss of the one fought on the
twen