Vasilisa Kozhina is known as a partisan and heroine of the Patriotic War of 1812. It was this simple peasant woman who organized a partisan detachment from women and adolescents, which contributed to the fight against French soldiers.
Biography
Little is known about the biography of Vasilisa. She was born into an ordinary peasant family around the 1780s. At that time it was not customary to write about the life of the "lower" estates.
The woman married the head of the Gorshkovo farm, which was located in the Sychevsky district of the Smolensk province. Under the nickname "Elder Vasilisa" she entered Russian history.
According to some records, Vasilisa had five children; more accurate data about her personal life has not been preserved.
Guerrilla movement
During the war of 1812, it was the Smolensk province that found itself in the way of Napoleon, who was advancing on Moscow. The French burned many Russian villages they came across along the way.
Inhabitants of the villages that were behind the front line went to the partisans. They voluntarily joined partisan detachments in order to avenge their fellow countrymen and cleanse their land of aggressors.
Among such volunteers was Vasilisa Kozhina. Her detachment consisted mainly of women and adolescents, since almost all men had already been drafted into the army.
Ordinary residents of local villages were involved in organizing partisan detachments. Vasilisa Kozhina was just such a leader.
At the very beginning of the French intervention, Vasilisa's husband was killed. Personal grief, strong character and determination helped the woman to rally like-minded people around herself.
After Napoleon's repeated defeats in Russia, discontent began to ripen in the ranks of his army. The soldiers were furious over the lost battles, the harsh living conditions and the bad climate. They took out all their anger on the Russian peasants.
The partisans could not calmly look at the atrocities of the invaders and organized sabotage. And after the Battle of Borodino, they mercilessly dealt with all the French soldiers who fell into their hands.
According to the recollections of the French themselves, practically nowhere in Europe did the common peasantry offer them such active and fierce resistance as in Russia.
Heroic women
Kozhina created her own partisan detachment, most of which were ordinary Russian women, and began to fight the French. She conducted partisan activities very skillfully. During the camps, day and night guards were posted, and peasant women were trained in tactics and combat skills.
The women in her squad were very brave. There are records of Praskovya, who defended herself with a pitchfork from six Frenchmen. She stabbed three opponents, and the rest fled in horror.
Vasilisa's people destroyed teams of foragers of the French army, who traveled to all the villages of the Smolensk province and took away food from civilians. The partisans also attacked small units of French soldiers.
After the expulsion of the French army, Kozhina was awarded a medal and a solid monetary prize for her heroic actions. Her portrait, painted in 1813 by the famous artist Alexander Smirnov, has survived.
Little is known about Vasilisa's later life; it is believed that after the war she returned to her province and lived there until almost sixty years. The famous partisan died in 1840.
