Battle of Tarutino The Battle of Tarutino ( ) was a part of Napoleon ' s invasion of Russia . The battle is sometimes called the Battle of Vinkovo or the Battle of Chernishnya after the local river . Many historians claim that the latter name is more fitting because the village of Tarutino was 8 km from the described events . In the battle Russia n troops under the command of Bennigsen defeated French troops under the command of Joachim Murat . Preceding events . After the battle of Borodino , Kutuzov realized that the Russian army would not survive one more large engagement and ordered the army to leave Moscow and retreat . At first it retreated in the south - east direction along the Ryazanskaya road . When the army reached the Moskva it crossed it and turned to the west to the Old Kaluzhskaya road . The army pitched camp in a village of Tarutino near Kaluga . At the same time small units of Cossacks continued moving along the Ryazanskaya road misleading French troops under the command of Murat . When he discovered his error he did not retreat but made camp not far from Tarutino in order to keep his eye on the Russian camp . The battle . On 18 October 1812 Kutuzov ordered Bennigsen and Miloradovich to attack Murat ' s corps ( 26 , 000 men ) with two columns stealthily crossing the forest in the dead of night . Bennigsen ' s main column included three columns led by Vasily Orlov - Denisov , Karl Gustav von Baggehufwudt and Alexander Osterman - Tolstoy respectively . The other column was supposed to play an auxiliary role . In the darkness most of the troops got lost . By the morning only Cossack troops under the command of general Orlov - Denisov reached the original destination , suddenly attacked the French troops and captured the French camp with transports and cannons . Since other Russian units came late the French were able to recover . When the Russians emerged from the forest they came under French fire and suffered casualties ( among others the commander of the 2nd Corps , General Baggehufwudt , was killed ) . Murat was forced to retreat to escape being surrounded . The French forces suffered 2 , 500 dead and 2 , 000 prisoners , the Russians lost 1 , 200 dead . The defeat infuriated Napoleon , who felt to retreat following the loss would appear to the world as though he had been defeated . As a result , he moved the army south in a final attempt to engage and defeat the Russian main army , but the clash at the Battle of Maloyaroslavets ended with the Russians withdrawing again , and the forces under his command no longer had the horses to overtake Kutuzov and force the issue . The total number of cannon captured by the Russians at Tarutino — 38 pieces in all — was noteworthy because until this point in the war , neither side had lost nearly as many guns in a single encounter . This was regarded by the Russian rank - and - file as a sign that the tide of the war was finally turning in their favor . The battle of Tarutino is depicted in Leo Tolstoy ' s " War and Peace " . Tolstoy , who frequently argued throughout the novel that an individual cannot change history or manage historical processes , described the battle as nothing but a chain of accidents and coincidences .