<P> While the Russian army retreated into the depth of Russia for almost three months, the Russian nobility pressured Alexander I to relieve the commander of the Russian army, Field Marshal Barclay de Tolly . Alexander I complied and appointed Prince Mikhail Kutuzov to take over command of the army . On 7 September, the French faced the Russian army at a village Borodino, seventy miles west of Moscow . The battle that followed was the largest and bloodiest single - day action of the Napoleonic Wars, involving more than 250,000 soldiers and resulting in 70,000 casualties . The outcome of the battle was inconclusive . The Russian army, undefeated in spite of the heavy losses, was able to withdraw the following day, leaving the French without the decisive victory Napoleon sought . </P> <P> Napoleon entered Moscow a week later . There was no delegation to meet the Emperor . The Russians had evacuated the city, and the city's governor, Count Fyodor Rostopchin, ordered several strategic points in Moscow set ablaze . The loss of Moscow did not compel Alexander I to sue for peace . After staying a month Napoleon moved his army out southwest toward Kaluga, where Kutuzov was encamped with the Russian army . The French advance toward Kaluga was checked by the Russian army, and Napoleon was forced to retreat to the areas already devastated by the invasion . In the weeks that followed the Grande Armée starved and suffered from the onset of the Russian Winter . Lack of food and fodder for the horses and persistent attacks upon isolated troops from Russian peasants and Cossacks led to great losses in men . When the remnants of Napoleon's army crossed the Berezina River in November, only 27,000 effective soldiers remained; the Grand Armée had lost some 380,000 men dead and 100,000 captured . Following the crossing of the Berezina, Napoleon left the army and returned to Paris to protect his position as Emperor and to raise more forces to resist the advancing Russians . The campaign effectively ended on 14 December 1812, with the last French troops leaving Russian soil . </P> <P> The campaign was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars . The reputation of Napoleon was severely shaken, and French hegemony in Europe was dramatically weakened . The Grande Armée, made up of French and allied invasion forces, was reduced to a fraction of its initial strength . These events triggered a major shift in European politics . France's ally Prussia, soon followed by Austria, broke their imposed alliance with France and switched sides . This triggered the War of the Sixth Coalition . </P> <P> With the Russian armies following up victory over Napoleon in the Russian Campaign of 1812, the Sixth Coalition was formed with Russia, Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Sweden, Spain and some other nations . Even though the French were victorious in the initial battles during the campaign in Germany, the Coalition armies eventually defeated them at the decisive Battle of Leipzig in the autumn of 1813 . After the battle, the Pro-French German Confederation of the Rhine collapsed, thereby losing Napoleon's hold on Germany east of the Rhine . The supreme commander of the Coalition forces in the theatre and the paramount monarch among the three main Coalition monarchs, the Russian Tsar Alexander I, then ordered all Coalition forces in Germany to cross the Rhine and invade France . </P>

Why was russias defeat of france the turning point in the napoleonic wars
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