Qualla: Battle of Klyastitsy

Battle of Klyastitsy: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter von Hess, Public domain. When people remember 1812, they remember Borodino and the burning of Moscow. They remember the long, frozen retreat. What they tend to forget is that Napoleon's plan called for two prongs - one toward the old Russian capital, one toward the new. The northern prong, under Marshal Nicolas Oudinot, was supposed to seize the road to Saint Petersburg. It never did. At a small village called Klyastitsy in what is now northern Belarus, a Russian corps under Peter Wittgenstein, outnumbered and operating on its own initiative, fought Oudinot to a standstill across three days at the end of July. Tsar Alexander I would later call Wittgenstein "the savior of Saint Petersburg." The man who actually broke the French rearguard, the dashing hussar Yakov Kulnev, would be dead within forty-eight hours, both legs taken off by a single cannonball.

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Image: Peter von Hess | Public domain

Battle of Klyastitsy: Two armies on the road from Polotsk

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit «ВЭС». (СПб; 1913 год)., Public domain. Oudinot's corps numbered about 28,000 men, supported by infantry, cuirassiers, and light cavalry. Wittgenstein had 17,000. The math should have decided the battle, and Napoleon thought it had - he sent Oudinot orders to chase Wittgenstein boldly, advising that the Russian corps w...

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Image: «ВЭС». (СПб; 1913 год). | Public domain

Battle of Klyastitsy: The burning bridge

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alex Zelenko, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the next afternoon both armies had concentrated. Wittgenstein deployed his battalions in a long line - jaeger regiments on the right with fourteen guns, the Sevsk and Kaluga regiments in the center, the Perm and Mogilev regiments on the left. Russian counterattacks pushed Oudi...

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Image: Alex Zelenko | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Klyastitsy: The death of Kulnev

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jelle, CC BY-SA 2.0. Yakov Kulnev was forty-eight years old, the most popular cavalry officer in the Russian army, and famous for sleeping on a saddle on bare ground when his men did. The morning after the bridge, he chased Oudinot's retreating corps across the Drissa River with a handful of cavalry ...

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Image: Jelle | CC BY-SA 2.0

Battle of Klyastitsy: What three days bought

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DPG*o0W0o, CC BY-SA 4.0. Klyastitsy is a small battle by the standards of 1812 - perhaps four or five thousand dead between both sides, scattered across a stretch of road and one shallow river. Compared to Borodino it barely registers in popular memory. But it changed the geometry of the campaign. Napole...

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Image: DPG*o0W0o | CC BY-SA 4.0