The “Battle of the Giants”, the biggest and bloodiest of the Russian campaign, left 35,000 dead and 55,000 wounded in its wake.
The bicentenary of Napoleon’s death is also the occasion to recall that the grand army was forced to abandon men after its withdrawal from Russia in October 1812.
About 2,000 of them wanted to take Russian nationality. Among them, 345 French, but what happened to them at the time?
The historian-researcher at the Borodino museum, Sergey Khomchenko, certifies that a hundred became farmers, as for the others:
“The former French prisoners of war who took Russian nationality worked as craftsmen. They were weavers, shoemakers, carpenters or joiners. Doctors, who were not numerous enough in Russia, were very popular. Among the officers who became Russian, some continued to serve in the Russian army, others worked in civilian professions. “
Two centuries later, it was difficult to find the descendants of these French soldiers who had become Russian. A team of journalists, however, went back to Marya Lyudko who is now a singing teacher at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory:
“I learned from my grandmother, when I was five or six, that we were the descendants of one of Napoleon’s soldiers. My grandmother’s maiden name was Vigorous and she was very proud. of his French blood. “
“Family legend says that our ancestor stayed in Russia when Napoleon’s troops retired. We don’t know if he was injured, if he remained in the care of nice Russian women, or if he simply had no place to return to France. Maybe he lost all his loved ones [là-bas]”.
Of the campaign of Napoleon’s great army in Russia, therefore, there remains not only death and devastation, but the enchanting interbreeding of former enemies of the battlefield …
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