It will probably be gathered from this description that the general position afforded no great advantages to the weaker side. Clausewitz, indeed, says that in places it was difficult to tell which had the advantage of the ground. The northern plateau was fairly advantageous for defence, but the Kolotza ravine in its front prevented the troops posted on it from making counter-attacks. The old road afforded opportunities to an enterprising foe of a turning movement. It was therefore necessary to hold it strongly, but the wood south of Semenovskoï almost cut the troops about Utitza from the main line farther north. Bennigsen criticises the whole position most bitterly, as far too extended, but represents it as being 2 miles longer than it really was. He was himself an advocate of very narrow positions, and French critics declared that his line at Eylau was far too close and heavy. He says in his memoirs that he perfectly understood that Napoleon’s concentrated attacks could only be repulsed by a concentration of defence. In principle he was no doubt right, but the defensive concentration, as Wellington had been teaching an unappreciative Europe for years, should have been one of effective muskets, not of crowded columns. Bennigsen was too self-satisfied to see this; but it is perhaps fair to add that probably the British army was the only one in Europe sufficiently highly trained to execute linear tactics. The Russian soldiers were extremely steady and accurate in manoeuvre, but not rapid, and scarcely highly trained; French observers criticise their clumsiness. Clausewitz thinks that the reserves were too near the front. The bulk of the army was massed on a front of four miles; both flanks were covered by Cossacks. The Kolotza entered the Moskva amid marshy ground; the right was accordingly supported on a wood a mile and a half further south. In front of this and on its left towards Gorki were various field works. In front of Gorki was a parapet with redans, and on the knoll south of Borodino a large earthwork, called by the French the “Great Redoubt.” Semenovskoï had been destroyed, the houses being mere shell traps. At its western end a parapet had been marked out, and to the south three _flèches_ or redans. The Gorki work, the Great Redoubt and the Semenovskoï redans were the only entrenchments at all complete, and they were very hastily finished and of poor profile. Engineers and sappers were few in the Russian army, and tools seem to have been lacking. The strength of the army gathered to defend this very mediocre position cannot be exactly estimated. Russian figures vary, and none seem to be accurate in details. Bogdanovich, for example, reckons 14,500 artillery and sappers present, which, allowing for 1000 of the latter, gives an average of 250 per battery--more than in June!