History enthusiasts reconstruct Napoleon's crossing over Nemen River in Kaunas

Wearing 19-century uniforms, enthusiasts crossed the river on Saturday on pontoons and boats from the right bank of the river and were greeted by thousands of cheering onlookers and rounds of fire on the left bank.

Soon afterwards, the battle was reconstructed on the land, and the French army led by cavalry made the Russians to retreat.

"This is my life. I am a historian myself," Oleg Sokolov, a professor of Sorbonne University who led a French unit wearing a blue general's uniform, told BNS on Saturday.

Before the battle reconstruction at Santakos Park, guests from the Russian region of Kaliningrad said such events was a great opportunity to feel history and meet with like-minds.

"Our club unites engineers, teachers, builders. We always meet in such places," historian Svetlana Panchenko, who works at a museum and came to Kaunas with her husband, said.

There were over 100 tents with French or Polish flags set up at the camp. Enthusiasts from Lithuania, France, Russia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Latvia took part in the reconstruction of the 200-year-old events.

"What the 1812 event means to us? On the one hand, it's blood and war. But on the other hand, it was a hope to restore our statehood which had been taken from us," Arvydas Pociūnas, deputy director of Vytautas Magnus University, a historian and participant of the reconstruction, told BNS.

Welcoming participants, Minister of National Defense Rasa Juknevičienė said the Napoleon-led army's arrival gave Lithuanian people hope, tangible hope, that they would defeat the Russian Empire.

"But Kaunas also witnessed the defeat of Napoleon's army as after losing the battle in Russia, the emperor rushed back to France and took Lithuanian people's hopes to restore independence with the help of France with him," the minister said.

The 200th anniversary of the march of Napoleon's army will be commemorated at Antakalnis Cemetery in Vilnius where around 2,000 troops of Napoleon's army are buried on Monday.