The French invasion of Russia had started with the crossing of the Neman on 24 June 1812. Napoleon made his attempt to occupy Russia with a 600,000 strong army, but Barclay pulled back his Russian army eastwards. The French army pursued Barclay and discovered a poor land with few inhabitants, as the Russian army had destroyed all food they could not take with them and anything else that might be useful to the French as required by the scorched earth policy. On 7 September 1812, Napoleon with 115,000 men found Kutuzov in Borodino in a bad defensive position blocking the only path to Moscow from the west. Napoleon defeated him and occupied a burning Moscow. But Napoleon was forced to retreat, starting on the 19 October 1812, and tried to find southwards an area that had not been subjected to the scorched earth policy. Kutuzov blocked this way at the Battle of Maloyaroslavets successfully. The French retreated westwards the same way they had come but starvation, frostbites (Russia suffered a cold winter in November and December) and diseases really set in and Napoleon lost 500,000 men in total in Russia.