#Borodino

[galakteon]

Back on tumblr to celebrate austerlitz day with prince Bagration! <3 (with yermolov and his pun)

[dreamconsumer]

Tsar Alexander I. Unknown artist.

[bantarleton]

Rediscovered this absolute banger on the shelf.

[count-lero]

Some more Borodino photos (and a video) I managed to sort out. ❤️💙

[historicminiaturesnorthernva]

Voltigier Company of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, General Zajaczek’s 16th Infantry Division, General Poniatowski’s V Corps. Polish soldiers in Napoleon’s Army.

#napoleon #poland #history #napoleonicwars #polish

[miffy-junot]

Felix Yusupov on the Borodino Centenary

I was dining with the Grand Duchess Vladimir [Maria Pavlovna of Mecklenburg-Schwerin] one evening at Tsarskoe Selo when someone mentioned the festivities in connection with the centenary of the battle of Borodino. Everyone criticized the Tsarina for having forbidden the Grand Duchesses to be present at this ceremony. I urged the Grand Duchess Elena and the Grand Duchess Victoria, the daughter and daughter-in-law of my hostess, to disregard this arbitrary veto and go to Borodino incognito.. I offered to take them there myself and invited them to spend a few days at Arkhangelskoe on the way. My proposal was greeted with enthusiasm. The Grand Duchess Maria [Pavlovna] approved but refused to join us. When I told my mother she also gave her approval, but warned me that we would probably get into trouble. [...]

On our way we were to spend the night in a village with a tradesman who had placed two rooms in his house at our disposal. The larger room was given to the ladies, and the men had to make the best of the other and bed down on the floor on mattresses. As I did not feel sleepy, I went for a walk in the warm, starlit night. When I returned, I found the house in darkness and my companions busy table-turning*. The Grand Duchess Elena told me that a spirit had materialised who claimed to have commanded, in 1812, the regiment of which she herself was the honorary colonel. Mortally wounded during the battle in a village some four miles from Borodino, he had been carried to a house with a red roof, the fourth on the right on entering the village; this he described in detail. He asked the Grand Duchess to pray for the peace of his soul beside the bed in which he had died. We passed through this very village the next day on our way to Borodino. There was the red-roofed house exactly as he had described it. The Grand Duchess asked the kindly old peasant woman who opened the door to allow her to rest for a while. We could see into a room in the corner of which stood a bed. While I talked to the old woman, the Grand Duchess went into the room and, kneeling by the bed, offered up a short prayer. Then, feeling very much impressed, we got into the car and drove away under the astonished eyes of the peasant-woman.

The review had just begun when we reached Borodino. Police officials, on recognizing the Grand Duchesses, wished to lead them to the Imperial box; to their astonishment, the Grand Duchesses asked for seats in the public stand. This, as we discovered to our dismay, was next to the Imperial box. The Tsarina saw us and cast very cold glances in our direction. It was a magnificent review, and ended with the blessing of the troops. We were all very much moved when the miraculous icon of the Blessed Virgin of Smolensk was held aloft for the Benediction.

*table turning was a form of séance popular in 19th century Europe

source: Lost Splendour by Felix Yusupov, chapter 16

[pinturasdeguerra]

1812 09 07 Borodino, El combate por las flechas de Bagration - Aleksandr Averyanov

[twiginthewind-7]

Романс

Не пробуждай, не пробуждай Моих безумств и исступлений, И мимолетных сновидений Не возвращай, не возвращай!

Не повторяй мне имя той, Которой память — мука жизни, Как на чужбине песнь отчизны Изгнаннику земли родной.

Не воскрешай, не воскрешай Меня забывшие напасти, Дай отдохнуть тревогам страсти И ран живых не раздражай.

Иль нет! Сорви покров долой!.. Мне легче горя своеволье, Чем ложное холоднокровье, Чем мой обманчивый покой.

Денис Давыдов. 1834 г. /Denis Davydov. 1834

[rwpohl]

panorama siege of sevastopol, franc alekseevic rubo 1904

[wezg]

Review: War and Peace - by Leo Tolstoy

‘War and Peace’ needs no introduction. It holds its place in the minds of contemporary society as a literary classic. One cannot pick up a newspaper article on great books without a passing mention of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece. Like other classical works such as the Bible, I think that their obvious fame means and their influence on society and heir survival into modern times means that at the…

[etsu-silly]

Name me one good thing that came out of the Russian campaign. Like seriously just one

[galakteon]

bahhh

kutaisov sketch + brush & coloring test

[vorbarrsultana]

i finished rereading the first four vorkosigan books (+ "the flowers of vashnoi" because ekaterin!!!), and you really have to feel for piotr vorkosigan because what a nightmare life, truly.

imagine you are born just in time for your world to be unified by dorca vorbarra and rediscovered by people from wider galaxy. things are finally looking good, for the first time in 600 years of isolation there is no more feudal infighting, and the promise of galactic medicine and technologies being available lightens everyone's perspectives. sure, your grandpa is called count pierre "le sanguinaire", but who doesn't have terrible relatives?

then you are 15, and suddenly your planet is attacked by the aggressive eugenecist space empire hell-bent on subjugating your people and turning them into disposable material for unethical genetic experiments. you flee into the mountains, away from your family, and create guerrilla forces from locals sworn to your dad, and it's really terrible for a very long time. you have no high-tech weapons and no food, you sleep in a cave in the dead of winter, and the cetagandans try everything (from carpet bombing to chemical weapons) to murder you.

but hey, at least you now have your bff ezar vorbarra, and (from the bff's words on his deathbed) it sounds like you two had so much fun between unimaginable horrors and despair, and it's not surprising, since no one really believes in death after life at 20. then the emperor makes you a general at the tender age of 22. fortunately for him, you & bff make a frighteningly competent dream-team, and the joke's on cetagandans.

then, several years later, you ask the emperor for weapons, because you still sleep on the bare cave floor, there are little resources, and every ghem on the planet is trying to murder you. he offers you the hand of his granddaughter instead, like it's some sort of twisted fairytale, but you grow to love your olivia more than anything, and the tide of war is finally turning, and you allow yourself to entertain the idea of peaceful life, and then...

the space eugenecist empire nukes your hometown, killing your mom, dad, surviving brothers, and two hundred thousand of your people. plus your bff (ezar) gets a radiation doze large enough for it to cause severe cancer thirty years later. great.

but you win! your district is in shambles, your capital is an irradiated crater, your castle is in ruins, but you win! the old dorca dies, and yuri ascends the throne, but politicking is secondary to the fact that you are alive.

yes, you are probably not entirely sane, and you've long forgotten what the peaceful times look like, but you are alive, just under 35, and your entire life is ahead of you. olivia is alive too, and ezar, and you now have three wonderful children, and the extended vorpatril-vorbarra family that hosts regular get-togethers. sure, your mom-in-law is a betan with all sorts of crazy ideas in her head, but she is not pierre vorrutyer. small mercies.

but then the new emperor goes mad, and decides to murder your entire family overnight. your brothers-in-law are gone, one of your sisters-in-law too, and all your nephews and nieces except little padma. but all of this pales in comparison to the facts that olivia is murdered, and that your heir and daughter lay dead beside her.

all you have left of her, of your house, of the family you've lost in vashnoi not a ten years ago, is aral, whom you keep by your side throughout the bloody civil war to put your bff on the throne.

but you win again. you are 43, and ezar vorbarra is now the emperor. you are responsible for the imperium's entire ground forces. you are also responsible for a severely traumatized boy of 13, and the only children you've interacted with without olivia's genle guidance were little messengers of guerilla companies.

what a mess.

[ciderbird]

every time

[count-lero]

Annual visit to the Borodino field was quite pleasant this year because of extremely mild weather - with the sole exception of a day, when it was raining cats and dogs…

However, unfortunate circumstances sometimes have a bright side too. In this case the rain in the afternoon caused thick fog to appear at dusk which turned the whole landscape into a majestic dream. 🌅

[wulfhalls]

queen i just finished the brothers karamazov and im DEVASTATED i need another book to consume me like this has for the last 2 months......what would u recommend to read after that

DUNE SERIES‼️‼️‼️‼️ WOLF HALL TRILOGY ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ monte cristo, war and peace, the sunne in splendour, I claudius + claudius the god,