Book Eleven: 1812 - Chapter XXVI

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were enteringMoscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behindthem rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.

　　About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of theMiraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from theadvanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found thecitadel, le Kremlin.

　　Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow.They all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-hairedcommander dressed up in feathers and gold.

　　"Is that their Tsar himself? He's not bad!" low voices could beheard saying.

　　An interpreter rode up to the group.

　　"Take off your cap... your caps!" These words went from one toanother in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter andasked if it was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening inperplexity to the unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing thatthe interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what wasbeing said to him and slipped behind the others.

　　Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where theRussian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked andseveral voices at once began answering the interpreter. A Frenchofficer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Muratand reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded andthat there was probably an ambuscade there.

　　"Good!" said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in hissuite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at thegates.

　　The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat andadvanced up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the VozdvizhenkaStreet they halted and drew in the Square. Several French officerssuperintended the placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlinthrough field glasses.

　　The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this soundtroubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A fewinfantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens hadbeen put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate assoon as an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who wasstanding by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, andthe latter ran back again with his men.

　　The sound of three more shots came from the gate.

　　One shot struck a French soldier's foot, and from behind the screenscame the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at aword of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces ofthe French general, officers, and men changed to one of determinedconcentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them fromthe marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka,Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiarin Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably provesanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from thegates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ashoff their linstocks, and an officer gave the word "Fire!" This wasfollowed by two whistling sounds of canister shot, one afteranother. The shot rattled against the stone of the gate and upon thewooden beams and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose overthe Square.

　　A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over thestone-built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange soundabove their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls andcircled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings.Together with that sound came a solitary human cry from the gatewayand amid the smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in apeasant's coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the French."Fire!" repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musketand of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously. The gate againhidden by smoke.

　　Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantrysoldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay threewounded and four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the footof the wall, toward the Znamenka.

　　"Clear that away!" said the officer, pointing to the beams and thecorpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threwthe corpses over the parapet.

　　Who these men were nobody knew. "Clear that away!" was all thatwas said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removedlater on that they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a feweloquent lines to their memory: "These wretches had occupied thesacred citadel, having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal,and fired" (the wretches) "at the French. Some of them were saberedand the Kremlin was purged of their presence."

　　Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French enteredthe gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out ofthe windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into theSquare for fuel and kindled fires there.

　　Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped alongthe Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quarteredthemselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the TverskoyStreets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the Frenchwere not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived init as in a camp.

　　Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of theiroriginal number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order.It was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army.But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed intotheir different lodgings. As soon as the men of the variousregiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, thearmy was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript,neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. Whenfive weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formedan army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity ofarticles which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each manwhen he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, butmerely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts itspaw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nutswill not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and thereforeperishes, the French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perishbecause they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what theyhad stolen was as impossible for them as it is for the monkey toopen its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regimenthad entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was left.Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through thewindows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In cellars andstorerooms similar men were busy among the provisions, and in theyards unlocking or breaking open coach house and stable doors,lighting fires in kitchens and kneading and baking bread withrolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, orcaressing women and children. There were many such men both in theshops and houses- but there was no army.

　　Order after order was issued by the French commanders that dayforbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbiddingany violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing aroll call for that very evening. But despite all these measures themen, who had till then constituted an army, flowed all over thewealthy, deserted city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. Asa hungry herd of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barrenfield, but gets out of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably assoon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army disperse all overthe wealthy city.

　　No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers- like waterpercolating through sand- spread irresistibly through the city inall directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. Thecavalry, on entering a merchant's house that had been abandoned andfinding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on,all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many ofthem appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, andquarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before theyhad had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into thestreets to see the city and, hearing that everything had beenabandoned, rushed to places where valuables were to be had for thetaking. The officers followed to check the soldiers and wereinvoluntarily drawn into doing the same. In Carriage Row carriages hadbeen left in the shops, and generals flocked there to selectcaleches and coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who hadremained invited commanding officers to their houses, hoping therebyto secure themselves from being plundered. There were masses of wealthand there seemed no end to it. All around the quarters occupied by theFrench were other regions still unexplored and unoccupied where,they thought, yet greater riches might be found. And Moscow engulfedthe army ever deeper and deeper. When water is spilled on dry groundboth the dry ground and the water disappear and mud results; and inthe same way the entry of the famished army into the rich and desertedcity resulted in fires and looting and the destruction of both thearmy and the wealthy city.

　　The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce deRostopchine,* the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burningof Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people,responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in aposition in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, quiteapart from whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferiorfire engines. Deserted Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap ofshavings has to burn on which sparks continually fall for severaldays. A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes withoutconflagrations when the house owners are in residence and a policeforce is present, cannot help burning when its inhabitants have leftit and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires ofthe Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves mealstwice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to billet troops in thevillages of any district and the number of fires in that districtimmediately increases. How much then must the probability of fire beincreased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops arequartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity ofthe French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fireby the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by thecarelessness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Evenif there was any arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had anyreason to burn the houses- in any case a troublesome and dangerousthing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the cause, for the samething would have happened without any incendiarism.

　　*To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism.

　　However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin'sferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or lateron to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it isimpossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause ofthe fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or housemust burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers areallowed to live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by itsinhabitants, it is true, but by those who had abandoned it and notby those who remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did notremain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because itsinhabitants abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread andsalt, nor bring them the keys of the city.