It soon became evident that we were standing quite close to where the fighting was fiercest. Cannonballs smashed into the ground before us or passed over our heads. The wind, which was blowing quite strongly into our faces, carried the French shouts of en avant intermingled with the Russian hourrah! But we could see nothing of the struggle itself.

After a while the wounded began to trickle back from the fighting and they told us that the redoubt closest to us had just been taken.

At around nine o'clock our division advanced, in two columns, about a thousand yards in the direction of Schwardino and came to a halt in a slight depression. Cannonballs were striking the lip of the depression and ricocheting over our heads. Chlopicki, as impassive as he had always been in Spain, moved as far forward as possible to get a view of the enemy's position. Claparede came over to us and gathered the officers of the 2nd Regiment of the Vistula around him in a circle and impressed upon them the need to uphold the good reputation of the regiment.

Meanwhile the struggle raged fiercely, especially in the woods on our right, and it seemed as if the battle might reach us and sweep us away. We could hear the relentless whistle of Cannonballs and yet not one man was hit, as the general had deliberately chosen this position to shield his men from needless casualties.

At about ten o'clock one of the Emperor's orderly officers, given the task of guiding us forward, appeared. We moved forward obliquely, heading to the left, and, marching over meadows, crossed a considerable part of the battlefield. On our right a terrible struggle was in progress, to our left we caught sight of long lines of French cavalry in whose ranks the enemy artillery blasted bloody lanes at every moment. We too began to lose men now we were no longer under cover.

We halted again, this time in the shallow valley of the Semenowka. From here we could see nothing of the battle but heard the crackle of muskets and dull thuds of the cannon.

We had walked right over numerous dead men and dead horses for we were approaching that point at which the battle raged most fiercely. Wounded men dragged themselves past us, leaving bloody trails in their wake. We were still sheltered by the lie of the land and we could only see the green dome of Borodino's church, glistening in the sun.

We saw Ouvarov's superbly executed charge skirting around Borodino, an excellent move which might have led to a complete disaster had they not come up against infantry as solid as those of Delzons.

Just then Captain Desaix appeared and paused briefly before us, saying, 'I have just come from the right and your Prince Poniatowski isn't making any progress. The Emperor isn't very pleased with him. Our losses are enormous; the Russians are fighting like madmen.'

At two o'clock we received the order to continue our advance. We crossed a stream, evidently the Semenowka, at a point where the ground had been churned up by the passage of cavalry. But just as we reached the top of the slope on the far side of the valley we were suddenly shrouded in a thick cloud of smoke. At the same time a terrible roar, coming from the mouths of thousands of men, drowned out the noise of the artillery which was now raking our columns. When the smoke cleared, we saw that the Great Redoubt had been taken and that the French cavalry were issuing from it to charge the retreating, but still uncowed, Russians.

We were drawn up behind the redoubt and had evidently been destined to support the main attack or make a supporting one had this one failed. The attack had succeeded, but at what cost! The redoubt and its environs presented a ghastly sight more horrible than anything one could possibly imagine. The earthworks, the ditches and the inside of the redoubt had all disappeared under a mass of the dead and dying piled seven or eight men deep one on top of the other. I shall never forget the sight of a middle-aged staff officer, with a massive head wound, slumped against a Russian howitzer. I saw General Auguste de Caulaincourt, mortally wounded, being carried away in a white cuirassier cloak, stained deep red by his blood. There, in the redoubt, the bodies of infantrymen were scattered amongst French, Saxon, Westphalian and Polish cuirassiers uniformed in blue and in white. I recognised Captain Jablonski amongst the latter; handsome Jablonski they had called him at Warsaw!

This was a crucial moment in the battle and the firing abated a little as if both sides wondered what to do next. After unsuccessfully pursuing the Russians, the French cavalry fell back and the Russian infantry began to advance towards us. They paused or hesitated, perhaps overawed by the sheer scale of the fighting.

It was then that the terrible artillery duel, of which all historians speak, began. The redoubt, which to some extent sheltered us, was torn up by shot and shell. Shots soon began to fall amongst our ranks and our losses began to mount. The soldiers received the order to lie down whilst the officers 'awaited death standing', as Rechowictz put it. He had just finished speaking when we were both splashed by the blood and brains of a sergeant who had had his head blown off by a cannonball just as he had stood up to go and talk to a friend. The horrible stains on my uniform proved impossible to remove and I had them in my sight for the remainder of the campaign as a memento mori.

The French batteries, which have always been wrongly marked on all maps I have seen, extended from the Great Redoubt, where we were ourselves positioned, as far as the eye could see. A foot artillery battery close by us had lost every one of its senior officers and was now under the command of a very young-looking junior officer. He seemed to be adapting very well to his new role in the midst of this all too dreadful and horrific carnage which heralded rapid promotion for hundreds of such men.