France and Russia Draw Old Swords at 1812 Battle
Thousands of mounted French and Russian actors Sunday recreated a 200-year-old battle at the gates of Moscow that led to the fall of Napoleon and the rise of Russian patriotic fervor.
President Vladimir Putin arrived to oversee the grandiose festivities after seeing his government spend $1.1 million (900 million euros) on a celebration of not only Russian history but also its military and resolve.
France is represented at the sleepy Borodino field 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Moscow by former president Giscard d'Estaing and 1,550 actors who began crossing swords with 1,450 Russians before nearly 100,000 history buffs.
"The entire people rose against the invaders. Its unprecedented heroism, spiritual strength and heartfelt love for the land filled our country with an tremendous force that had never been seen before," Putin said in a keynote address.
The people's heroic resolve "was futile to resist and impossible to defeat," the Russian leader added as a heavy mist rolled over the lush greens of the immaculately trimmed grass around the memorial.
World War II and the Battle of Borodino "were proof of the unparalleled patriotism of our people, who defended our country and guaranteed it the role of a great world power," he concluded in a firm voice.
Putin's chief of staff had earlier urged Russian authorities to use the occasion to expand "the patriotic education of youth".
The elaborate reenactment -- replete with cannons and feather-capped blue uniforms for the French -- crowns weeks of celebrations that kicked off when 23 Cossacks on horseback began a two-month march on Paris on August 12.
Putin is also making the increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church an instrumental part of the occasion as he seeks to cement its place in society.
Putin's strategic use of nationalism has served the ex-KGB spy well since he rose to power in 1999, a period in which he has remained Russia's most popular and dominant politician.
But it has also hampered his relations with the United States and divided parts of Europe over how to handle a big neighbor that makes periodic threatening noises.
France itself has remained one Putin's closest partners under a policy that survived the Soviet era and stretches back to the days when Napoleon's exploits inextricably linked the histories of the two states.
The Russians' advance on France brought words like "bistro" to Western culture and the writings of Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac to tsarist courts and -- after many more decades -- most basic schools.
The September 7 clash of the giants at Borodino represented the definitive example of a general winning the battle but losing the war.
Napoleon watched his smaller army of 20,000 soldiers overcome 45,000 foes after a day of carnage and then decided to take time to recover before pushing on to Moscow.
He apparently had no idea that the tsar's great Field Marshal Kutuzov decided to retreat the day after battle after learning that half his soldiers had been lost.
It was a fatal mistake for Napoleon and one that possible altered the course of history for much of Eastern Europe.
The Russians had time to regroup in nearby villages and then plot strategy as Napoleon's stunned generals entered the ashes of a Moscow that still smoldered from the day the natives had burned down the city and left.
They then drove out Napoleon's demoralized soldiers before marching on to Paris and helping make French into the second language of all Russian aristocrats.
Source: Agence France Presse
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