This was something of an hommage to one of the most epic encounters in military history - the battle of Borodino on 7th September 1812. In what became a gruesome slaughter fest, Napoleon obtained what could, at best, best be described as a Pyrrhic victory for his Grande Armee.
The battle and 1812 campaign have remained in the public memory like few others, in part because of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Tolstoy's War and Peace, the 1967 Soviet film that utilised 12,000 Red Army soldiers as extras, the huge masterpiece Panorama of the battle; not to mention the occupation and burning of Moscow and Napoleon's catastrophic retreat in the winter of 1812.
In this refight of the actions in the South-Central part of the battle, around the Bagration Fleches and the village of Semyonovskaya, the French were making slow progress on their right flank, but were having difficulties on their left. Nevertheless the French juggernaut in the centre was probably about to overwhelm the Russians defending the fleches. That said, this game was grossly overly ambitious for an evening's game and we never had the chance to play it out to a conclusion.
