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200-year-old battle re-enacted in Russia
Source: AFP |
September 3, 2012, Monday
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THOUSANDS of mounted French and Russian actors yesterday recreated a 200-year-old battle at the gates of Moscow that led to the fall of Napoleon and the rise of Russian patriotic fervor.
President Vladimir Putin arrived to oversee the festivities after seeing his government spend US$1.1 million to mark not only Russian history but also its military and resolve.
France is represented at the sleepy Borodino field 120 kilometers west of Moscow by former president Giscard d'Estaing and 1,550 actors who began crossing swords with 1,450 Russians before nearly 100,000 history buffs.
The elaborate reenactment - replete with cannons and feather-capped blue uniforms for the French - crowns weeks of celebrations that kicked off when 23 Cossacks on horseback began a two-month march on Paris on August 12.
The Russians' advance on France brought words like "bistro" to Western culture and the writings of Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac to tsarist courts and - after many more decades - most basic schools.
The September 7 clash of the giants at Borodino represented the definitive example of a general winning the battle but losing the war.
Napoleon watched his smaller army of 20,000 soldiers overcome 45,000 foes after a day of carnage and then decided to take time to recover before pushing on to Moscow. He apparently had no idea that the tsar's great Field Marshal Kutuzov decided to retreat the day after battle after learning that half his soldiers had been lost.
It was a fatal mistake for Napoleon and one that possible altered the course of history for much of Eastern Europe.
The Russians had time to regroup and then plot strategy as Napoleon's stunned generals entered the ashes of a Moscow that still smouldered from the day the natives had burned down the city and left. They then drove out Napoleon's demoralized soldiers before marching on to Paris and helping make French into the second language of all Russian aristocrats.
President Vladimir Putin arrived to oversee the festivities after seeing his government spend US$1.1 million to mark not only Russian history but also its military and resolve.
France is represented at the sleepy Borodino field 120 kilometers west of Moscow by former president Giscard d'Estaing and 1,550 actors who began crossing swords with 1,450 Russians before nearly 100,000 history buffs.
The elaborate reenactment - replete with cannons and feather-capped blue uniforms for the French - crowns weeks of celebrations that kicked off when 23 Cossacks on horseback began a two-month march on Paris on August 12.
The Russians' advance on France brought words like "bistro" to Western culture and the writings of Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac to tsarist courts and - after many more decades - most basic schools.
The September 7 clash of the giants at Borodino represented the definitive example of a general winning the battle but losing the war.
Napoleon watched his smaller army of 20,000 soldiers overcome 45,000 foes after a day of carnage and then decided to take time to recover before pushing on to Moscow. He apparently had no idea that the tsar's great Field Marshal Kutuzov decided to retreat the day after battle after learning that half his soldiers had been lost.
It was a fatal mistake for Napoleon and one that possible altered the course of history for much of Eastern Europe.
The Russians had time to regroup and then plot strategy as Napoleon's stunned generals entered the ashes of a Moscow that still smouldered from the day the natives had burned down the city and left. They then drove out Napoleon's demoralized soldiers before marching on to Paris and helping make French into the second language of all Russian aristocrats.
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