Smolensk was the only big Russian city that Napoleon had to take in fighting. In the middle of August 1812, after a long retreat from the borders, Russian 1st and 2nd Western Armies joined forces near Smolensk. Napoleon had expected that finally a general battlefield engagement would take place at Smolensk. He had no intention to be the first to start an assault, waiting for the enemy to deploy.

Napoleon’s Grande Armée vanguard approached Smolensk on 15 August. The fighting started on the next day when the 7th Infantry Corps under General Nikolay Raevsky was holding defense. They were replaced by the 6th Infantry Corps under Infantry General Dmitry Dokhturov on 17 August. By that time, the Russian Army had started retreating towards Moscow.

Realizing that the Russians were taking evasive actions rather that engage in a decisive combat, Napoleon ordered to start a general attack.The French numbered 45,000 men supported by massive artillery while the Smolensk harrison poorly fortified consisted of 20,000 at the beginning of the battle and was about 35,000 men with reinforcement which arrived later.

After the assault at the Molokhov Gate, a few more French attacks were repulsed by the Russians. Napoleon’s troops did not manage to break into the city and at about 11 pm the roar of guns subsided. However, at 1 am Dokhturov left the city on the order of the Commander-in- Chief of the 1st Army Michael Barclay de Tolly. By dawn, the city had been abandoned and the Russian Army continued retreating.

Early on 18 August, the French troops entered Smolensk. The casualties suffered by the Grande Armée in the battle of Smolensk which was called by the contemporaries ‘actually general’, amounted to 10,000-12,000 men. The Russians lost nearly 9,000 soldiers. As historians put it, Napoleon just ‘took up the city but did not capture it’.