Citizen Emperor (84 page)

About 100,000 men entered Moscow with Napoleon. Many tens of thousands of others were to be found with corps commanders, or had been placed in strategic centres along the way to keep open the lines of communication with central Europe.
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After months on the road, some since January,
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the troops would have been incredibly dirty. Lieutenant Ducque recalled that in the first well-built house he entered he saw his reflection in a mirror, covered in dust and growing a one-month-old beard.
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It is likely that some had not washed since first setting foot on Russian soil. The filthy, hungry mob that invaded the city was in stark contrast to the traditional image of France held by the educated Russian.
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When Frédéric List entered Moscow and found a bivouac, it was the first time he had slept under a roof in four months, or sat down at a table on a chair to eat off plates.
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Letters sent home give an indication of the state of French morale. Captain Richard wrote on 22 September, well before the cold set in, that it was ‘one of the most arduous wars we have fought to date’.
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General Baraguay d’Hilliers wrote to his wife that there was not ‘a soldier in the army who does not sigh for the end of the war. The officers sigh even more.’
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Jean-François Boulart, talking of a fellow officer who had had part of his upper thigh carried away by cannon shot, wrote: ‘I wish that I had as much, so that I could consecrate the rest of my days to you and my children . . . The devil take me if the wish I make is not sincere. This profession is too hard for anyone to be able to do it long.’
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‘The Irresponsible Act of a Deranged Asiatic’

Mme de Staël met with the military governor of Moscow, Count Rostopchin, as she passed through the city around the middle of August. In typical French style, she asserted that no other civilized nation resembled savages as much as the Russian people.
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Rostopchin had assured the people of Moscow that the French would not enter the city, and he had done as much as he possibly could to arouse the ire of the Russian people against the French before and during the invasion, whipping up xenophobic passions while trying to prevent foreigners from being lynched by enraged mobs.
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Anyone suspected of pro-French sympathies was publicly punished, and foreigners – there were probably about 3,000 working in Moscow at the time – were often abused.
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On the whole, there were no strong anti-French feelings among the people of Moscow before the invasion.
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When they learnt, on 22 June, that Napoleon had entered Russian territory they were ‘stupefied’, or at least those educated enough to care.
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Throughout the weeks during the invasion and before the entry of the Grande Armée into Moscow, Rostopchin had assailed the population with inflammatory declarations. At his behest, all sorts of patriotic gestures were made: French snuff was emptied out ostentatiously in the salons of the elite; French pamphlets were burnt; many Muscovites refused to drink French wine; anti-Napoleonic posters were displayed; and the upper classes renounced speaking French. The talk was of a ‘national war’. In some respects, this was a way for the authorities to deflect anger that might otherwise be directed against them for failing to defend the country.
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In one instance in early August, Rostopchin’s Belgian cook was denounced for having claimed that Napoleon was coming to liberate the people of Russia: Rostopchin had him publicly flogged and deported to Siberia.
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The governor also publicly ridiculed French residents before deporting them from Moscow. Fyodor Nikolaevich Glinka had his French books burnt and drove around Moscow in his carriage appealing to Muscovites to give up French wines and drink the national drink, vodka.
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The atmosphere in Moscow in 1812 was similar, in some respects, to the patriotic fervour whipped up by the revolutionaries in Paris in 1793–4, which led to horrific acts of violence as well as acts of patriotic altruism.
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Rostopchin had evacuated the treasures of the Kremlin well before the battle of Borodino and had spoken as early as May about setting the town alight if it fell into the hands of the French; he reiterated the threat many times after that. When Kutuzov decided to abandon the city, it was natural that some Muscovites should seek to revenge themselves on Rostopchin. They surrounded his palace and would have lynched him had he not callously handed over a young man accused of being a French spy.
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While the mob butchered the unfortunate young man, Rostopchin slipped away.
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There does not appear to have been any premeditated plan to abandon Moscow; it was simply a reaction to the circumstances.
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Indeed, it would appear that no one believed the French would actually get to Moscow, and certainly not without the army doing battle before its walls. It is one of the reasons why the population appears to have been so nonchalant, and why news of the arrival of the French exploded like a bombshell.

This was also the case at Petersburg. ‘One can hardly depict the general surprise, and especially that of the sovereign, when it was declared . . . that the French were in Moscow, and that nothing had been done to defend it. The sovereign had received no news directly either from Kutuzov or from Rostopchin.’
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The last time Kutuzov saw Alexander, he had promised that he would rather die than abandon Moscow.
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Kutuzov had, moreover, claimed to have held Napoleon in check at Borodino, stating that ‘despite their superior forces, nowhere had the enemy gained a single yard of land’.
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The shock of the defeat and the abandonment of Moscow was then all the greater; the atmosphere in Petersburg was tense. Rumours started flying of peasant riots; Alexander’s life was feared for. Some observers believed that they were about to witness the fall of another dynasty. ‘One can kill the sovereign,’ wrote Joseph de Maistre, ‘but one cannot contradict him.’
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On 27 September, the anniversary of Alexander’s coronation, the imperial entourage travelled to Kazan cathedral to mark the occasion, although the Tsar was persuaded not to ride on horseback, but to shelter in the carriage of the Empress. It was probably a good decision; people in his entourage were struck by the deathly silence that greeted them as they rode through the city.
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Immediately after the ceremony, Alexander left for the island of Kamennyi Ostrov in one of the branches of the River Neva, where he now spent most of his time. It would appear that it was after this event that he discovered religion.

Rostopchin left behind the police chief, Voronenko, with orders to set fire to everything he could. By the evening of 15 September, large parts of Petersburg were ablaze. Voronenko was aided by criminal elements (the prisons had been emptied) who went about looting (as did numbers of lower-class Russians) and setting fire to houses. Careless troops belonging to the Grande Armée also looted and sometimes accidentally set fire to houses, and a strong wind fanned the flames.
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At first, Napoleon refused to believe that the fire could have been started deliberately, until two Russians, caught red-handed, were brought to him; the interrogation took place in his presence.
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Napoleon contemplated the fire from the Ivan Tower in the Kremlin, where he had set up residence, then slowly descended the steps, followed by a few officers. Colonel Boulart speaks of the uncertainty that seemed to possess him about whether he should stay or go.
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In the end, the fire got so bad that Napoleon was forced to evacuate. He took up residence in an imperial palace in the country a few kilometres outside Moscow before the fire died down enough for him to re-enter the city.
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The park of Peterskoi, frequented by Moscow high society, became the bivouac of the Guard. From there, the light thrown by the fire in Moscow was so bright they could easily read at night.
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Napoleon, watching the city burn, is supposed to have said, ‘What a horrible sight! To do it themselves! All those palaces! What extraordinary resolution! Why, they are Scythians!’
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It was of course typical of the ‘barbaric’ behaviour of the Russian people.

There is no doubt that the Russians were to blame for this needless destruction of their city, despite their attempts to rewrite history and Rostopchin’s blatant denial of the order he had given in an account he wrote years afterwards.
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Rostopchin had already set the example by putting his own estate to the torch at Vornovo, south-west of Moscow, a gesture that had a profound impact on the French. After he had learnt that Kutuzov was prepared to abandon Moscow without a fight he had a group of men place inflammable materials in a number of houses in the city, men who were probably directed by officers of the police force.
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We know too that Cossack detachments, in keeping with the scorched-earth policy that had been practised, set fire to the stores that were left behind.
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Napoleon blamed Rostopchin, dismissing the fire as ‘the irresponsible act of a deranged Asiatic’. In a letter to Alexander he made it clear who had started the fire, but what he failed to understand is that the rest of Russia, and indeed the rest of the world, would not see things that way.

If there was some division of opinion, among educated Russians at least, about who was to blame, this was not the case for the Russian peasants. Their attitude to the fire may have been dominated by a certain fatalism – ‘The inhabitants saw their homes burn with an equanimity that only belief in fatalism can give . . . God wanted it that way’
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– but they blamed the French for the disaster and this greatly increased the discontent among the general population towards Napoleon.
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The burning city acted as a bright symbol that united Russia around its Tsar. If there was hesitation about what to do with Napoleon before he entered Moscow, the struggle, already evolving towards a brutal drawn-out conflict, had now been transformed into a fight to the death.
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Alexander learnt of the abandonment and burning of the city from his sister according to some, from one of Kutuzov’s aides-de-camp according to others. In any event, he was said to have broken down in tears.
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For him, there was no question of peace now; ‘Only a rogue could now pronounce the word peace.’
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The fires began to wane after three days and Napoleon moved back into the city on 18 September, although it does not look as though it was entirely under control until three days after that.
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An enormous change had come over the city: the streets were no longer recognizable, burnt cadavers, mostly of peasants and wounded soldiers, were intermingled with the remains of horses, dogs, cows. Now and then one would come across men, incendiaries, who had been shot by firing squad and their bodies strung up. The survivors took all that in their stride, indifferent to the devastation and loss of life.
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The conflagration destroyed about two-thirds of the city, but even though it might have been demoralizing for the occupying army, it was far from being a strategic disaster. Accounts vary, but it is possible that given the supplies left behind in the city Napoleon could have stayed quartered in Moscow for the coming winter if he had so chosen,
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but his communication lines with Smolensk and then Paris would inevitably have been cut by ‘partisans’ and Cossack raiding parties.
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It is erroneous to think, as did some contemporaries, that the Russians, by burning the city, were forcing Napoleon into a precipitate retreat.
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On the contrary, there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that those who were billeted in Moscow, despite the fire, lived reasonably well, and enjoyed an abundance of food, at least for a while.
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While they may not have been lolling about on precious furs, smoking opulent pipes with tobacco perfumed with roses from India and drinking punch made of Jamaican rum as they were entertained by exotic women –
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Sergeant Bourgogne’s idyllic reminiscences of their life in Moscow – they at least had shelter and food.
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The fire may have destroyed most of the city, but there were still enough buildings made of stone that survived.
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