Book Eleven: 1812 - Chapter V

by Leo Tolstoy

　　At that very time, in circumstances even more important thanretreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning ofMoscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the instigatorof that event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov.

　　After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscowwas as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow withoutfighting.

　　Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by thefeeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.

　　The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all thetowns and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, withoutthe participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. Thepeople awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excitedor tear anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it thestrength to find what it should do at that most difficult moment.And as soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy classes went awayabandoning their property, while the poorer remained and burned anddestroyed what was left.

　　The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so wasand is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness ofthis, and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present inRussian Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow alreadyin July and at the beginning of August showed that they expected this.Those who went away, taking what they could and abandoning theirhouses and half their belongings, did so from the latent patriotismwhich expresses itself not by phrases or by giving one's children tosave the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively,simply, organically, and therefore in the way that always produces themost powerful results.

　　"It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are runningaway from Moscow," they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchinimpressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamedto be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowingit had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose thatRostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon hadcommitted in conquered countries. The first people to go away were therich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin hadremained intact and that during Napoleon's occupation theinhabitants had spent their time pleasantly in the company of thecharming Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russianladies, then liked so much.

　　They went away because for Russians there could be no question as towhether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. Itwas out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worstthing that could happen. They went away even before the battle ofBorodino and still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin's callsto defend Moscow or the announcement of his intention to take thewonder-working icon of the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, orof the balloons that were to destroy the French, and despite all thenonsense Rostopchin wrote in his broadsheets. They knew that it wasfor the army to fight, and that if it could not succeed it would notdo to take young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarterof Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as theywere to abandon their property to destruction. They went awaywithout thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense andwealthy city being given over to destruction, for a great city withwooden buildings was certain when abandoned by its inhabitants to beburned. They went away each on his own account, and yet it was only inconsequence of their going away that the momentous event wasaccomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russianpeople. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count Rostopchin'sorders, had already in June moved with her Negroes and her womenjesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a vagueconsciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was really,simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia.But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and nowhad the government offices removed; now distributed quite uselessweapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying theicons, and now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relicsof saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow and on onehundred and thirty-six of them removed the balloon that was beingconstructed by Leppich; now hinted that he would burn Moscow andrelated how he had set fire to his own house; now wrote a proclamationto the French solemnly upbraiding them for having destroyed hisOrphanage; now claimed the glory of having hinted that he would burnMoscow and now repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catchall spies and bring them to him, and now reproached them for doing so;now expelled all the French residents from Moscow, and now allowedMadame Aubert-Chalme (the center of the whole French colony in Moscow)to remain, but ordered the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to bearrested and exiled for no particular offense; now assembled thepeople at the Three Hills to fight the French and now, to get rid ofthem, handed over to them a man to be killed and himself drove away bya back gate; now declared that he would not survive the fall ofMoscow, and now wrote French verses in albums concerning his sharein the affair- this man did not understand the meaning of what washappening but merely wanted to do something himself that wouldastonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like achild he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event- theabandonment and burning of Moscow- and tried with his puny hand now tospeed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him alongwith it.