Borodino is a field, and what happened here on the seventh of September 1812 is hard to grasp until you stand on it. Napoleon's army, marching on Moscow, met the Russian army under Kutuzov on this rolling plain west of the capital, and in a single day the two sides lost something like seventy thousand men killed and wounded, one of the bloodiest days of the Napoleonic wars. Neither could claim to have won outright. The Russians withdrew, the French took Moscow a week later, and the war went on to its famous conclusion in the winter snow.
The battlefield has been kept open and largely unbuilt, which is its greatest strength. The land is a gentle patchwork of fields and copses, with the ground rising here and there to the places where the fighting was fiercest: the Raevsky Redoubt, where the Russian guns held the centre, and the flèches, the arrowhead-shaped earthworks that Bagration defended. Monuments in granite and bronze stand on the ridges, many of them raised in 1912 for the centenary, and others added by regiments and families. The Spaso-Borodino Monastery, founded by the widow of one of the fallen generals, stands quietly at one edge. Tolstoy visited the field while writing War and Peace, and the book gives it a place in the imagination that no museum can match.
The riding to Borodino is mostly straightforward. The roads cross open farmland and low forest, with long straights and gentle bends, and on a fine day it is easy riding with a lot of sky. The main routes from Moscow carry heavy freight and a lot of weekend traffic, so use the minor roads where you can, and be wary of potholes, which can be deep after winter. In early September, the battle is re-enacted by hundreds of costumed volunteers in a spectacle that draws huge crowds, and the roads around the field are closed or crowded, so choose your day with care.
Mozhaysk, thirteen kilometres away, is the town for fuel and a meal, with a population of over thirty thousand and a good old centre that includes a kremlin and a cathedral. At the field itself the services are limited to a small museum and a cafe or two. Bring something to drink and be ready to walk, because the monuments are spread over a wide area, and a bike will only take you to some of them. Spring and autumn are the best seasons, when the light is low and the fields are quiet.