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What the title says. IOTL, Napoleon won a hard-fought (arguably Pyrrhic) victory, the Russian army withdrew to preserve itself, and he entered Moscow only to have to retreat as the winter set in, with infamous results.

However, what if the positions had reversed, with the Russians halting and/or crushing the French-Allied attack either at the first defence lines (Utitza village, the Bagration fleches and the Kolocha River) or the second (the Utitza mound, Semeonovskoe and/or the Great Redoubt)? The POD could be one or more of several different things:

-Kutuzov realizes/finds out that Napoleon is going to attack only on his left and centre and doesn't start the battle with much of his army in the wrong place, or manages to redeploy them early enough.
-Napoleon is even more ill and either makes even more bad decisions or fails to show up, messing up the chain of command.
-Kutaisov, the Russian artillery commander, doesn't die early in the battle, and ensures that the artillery reserves that sat around doing nothing all day IOTL get deployed forward and smash the French advance.
-The weather reduces visibility to the point where the French artillery has nothing to shoot at whereas the Russian is still able to fire at attacking units at point-blank range.

My interest in this battle as a POD stem from having played it out several times in Battleground:Napoleon in Russia. The AI in that game is rather poor, so a human player can win the Borodino scenarios quite easily as either side, but fighting defensively as the Russians is easier to the point of being dull (bring up all the reserve artillery to one part of the battlefield, concentrate fire to wipe out units and make the French rout, repeat). I tend to get bored and make a glorious charge into the French that would never have worked in real life. :D

Anyway, a search for 'Borodino' turned up several 'Napoleon wins big at Borodino' type scenarios, but none where the Russians win. I don't know if that's because it's considered ASB or just because no-one has brought it up. Arguably the outcome of the campaign would have been almost identical, with the French retreating back towards Smolensk a few weeks earlier - which might actually work to their advantage, with winter not having set in yet. On the other hand, if the Russian win was decisive enough, the Grande Armee might disintegrate more comprehensively, maybe resulting in Napoleon losing more allied nations' support afterwards or even being captured and/or deposed.
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