The Burning of Moscow Read online

  As the day wore on the rest of the Grande Armée closed up on the advanced guard and the Guard soldiers received orders to put on their parade uniforms for the triumphal entry into Moscow.39 But the officers who had already been in the city were reporting that the city was deserted. The Emperor flatly refused to believe these reports. Drawn on by the movement of his troops, Napoleon mounted his horse and rode towards the city. Korbeletskii, who was in the imperial entourage, described how

  after waiting half-an-hour without any challenge from Moscow, Napoleon gave orders to fire a gun as a signal; then, when five more minutes had elapsed, he and his staff mounted their horses and galloped at full speed towards the city. At the same moment the vanguard and the division which was posted in the rear of the centre advanced with indescribable impetuosity; the cavalry and artillery galloped at full speed, keeping step together, and the infantry charged along as fast as they could double. The thud of horses’ hooves, the creaking of wheels and the rattling of guns, added to the noise of running men, all combined to produce a wild and terrible rumble. The daylight was dimmed by the dense cloud of dust which they raised and the ground seemingly shook and moaned from this movement! Within twelve minutes they had reached the Dorogomilovskaya barrier.40

  There, to incessant shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur’, Napoleon dismounted near the Kamer-Kollezhskii rampart and began ‘calmly’ pacing back and forth just as military bands began playing music. It was clear that the emperor was still clinging to the hope that the rumours of Moscow’s abandonment would prove to be untrue. Returning from his sortie into the city, Soltyk found him ‘standing on the left of the road, with a large-scale map of Moscow laid out on the grass in front of him. He was studying it closely and then questioning the people who were being brought to him from the city.’ The Emperor still hoped that an official delegation of Muscovite notables would appear and formally surrender the city. But none came.

  Shortly after noon François-Joseph Ysarn Villefort and Armand Domergues, Frenchmen residing in Moscow, described ‘a Polish general’41 arriving in Moscow in search of deputations; he met Frederick Villers, the lecturer in French at the University of Moscow, who ‘took him to the municipal administration, the Duma, the police, the governor-general, in short, to any place where at least a few magistrates could be found … After a prolonged and fruitless search, the Polish general returned to report to Bonaparte that there were no officials in Moscow, and that the city was deserted, except for some foreigners who had remained.’42 Domergues noted that several other general officers were then dispatched to Moscow …’43 One of them seems to have brought with him a small deputation of Muscovites. Korbeletskii, who was in Napoleon’s suite, described the arrival of this group, noting that they were largely merchants and professionals who lived in Moscow and were concerned for the safety of their businesses; Domergues agreed that ‘the delegation consisted of foreigners, the wealthiest of the merchants who resided in Moscow’, while Bausset estimated that there were ‘fifty or sixty men of various nationalities who had long resided in Moscow’.44 The delegation included a simple typesetter named Lamour, who admired Napoleon and was eager to meet him. After Napoleon asked when Moscow was abandoned, Lamour, who had spent years living in Russia and was accustomed to using the Julian calendar, stepped forwards and replied that ‘the residents of Moscow were frightened by the news of Your Majesty’s triumphant procession’ and began to leave on ‘31 August’. Napoleon was startled by this date, failing to comprehend that the date was given under the Julian calendar, and naturally found it impossible to believe that the city would have been evacuated before the battle of Borodino was fought on 7 September. ‘What nonsense! Who is this imbecile?!’ he exclaimed. The confused Lamour was quickly removed and he never forgave himself for this slip.45 The remaining foreign notables (including the booksellers Riess and Sessay, and the university professor Villers), meanwhile, explained what was happening in Moscow.46 Soltyk listened as ‘one of these men, a Frenchman by origin, gave the most complete elucidation of the present situation. He assured Napoleon that all the authorities had quit Moscow or at least abandoned their posts.’ But the emperor still found it difficult to believe that no official delegation would be forthcoming. He was growing anxious: ‘he remained plunged in deep reflections,’ wrote Soltyk, while Caulaincourt had never seen Napoleon so visibly upset. Standing nearby, Korbeletskii described the emperor in

  some sort of state of distraction or pensiveness. His tranquil and measured step at once became quick and feverish. He looked all round and about him, recovered himself, stopped in his walk, shivered, fell into a stupor, scratched his nose, pulled off his glove, and pulled it on again; drew out his handkerchief from his pocket, crumpled it between his hands and put it in another pocket as though by mistake, then took it out again and put it back; then he pulled off his glove once more and pulled it on again, repeating this action many times. He continued thus for a whole hour, and during that time the generals surrounding him stood motionless, like lifeless images of men, not one of them daring to stir.47

  ‘Moscow is deserted!’ Napoleon grumbled to Intendant-Général Pierre Antoine Noël Bruno, comte Daru. ‘What an improbable story! We must know the truth of it. Go and bring me the boyars.’48 Moments later he ordered General Durosnel to proceed into the city and ‘set up an administration and bring me the keys’, while Denniée was to visit government buildings and report on available resources.49

  As the Allied troops crossed the river, many of them were struck by the ominous silence of the abandoned city. Muralt was amazed to see that ‘all the streets we rode through were empty, the houses barred and bolted. Not a person appeared at any window, and all shops were closed. This deathly silence and desolation struck me as rather worrying, as it certainly did many others.’50 Heinrich Ulrich Ludwig von Roos, a cavalry surgeon serving in the 3rd Württemberg Chasseurs à Cheval, wrote:

  each of us was feeling more or less deeply the pride of a conqueror; and for anyone who was not, there was no lack of officers and veterans to point out, with grave words, the importance of what was happening. It was forbidden, on pain of death, to get off one’s horse or leave the ranks under any pretext … We followed the road as far as the Moskwa river without encountering a single inhabitant. The bridge had been destroyed so we forded the river. The water came up to the axles of the guns and our horses’ knees. On the far side we saw a few individuals behind their doors and windows but they did not seem very curious … There were some gentlemen and ladies on the balconies of pretty stone and wooden houses and our officers saluted them amiably, and they replied in the same fashion. However, we saw very few inhabitants, only occasionally encountering some exhausted Russian soldiers and stragglers on foot and on horseback, as well as abandoned transports, grey oxen, etc. We bypassed all of it and slowly proceeded along the streets with numerous bends.

  The Allied troops admired ‘the profusion of churches, whose architecture was so alien to us, with their numerous towers and elaborate external ornaments, as well as some beautiful palaces surrounded by gardens’.51

  Sitting on the porch of his house near the Nikitskie Gates, young F. Becker was thrilled that he did not have to go to school that day and was enjoying the beautiful weather, even though ‘deathly silence and emptiness’ reigned in the streets.52 Suddenly he heard the sound of music coming from the western suburbs and soon saw ‘men in blue uniforms’ marching in the streets. ‘There were very many of them. I was not initially impressed by the infantrymen since there was nothing unusual about them. But when the cavalry appeared, I was simply awestruck. I have never seen troops like them: on tall bay-coloured horses sat enormous cavalrymen in glistering yellow metal armour and helmets with long horse-hair. They rode calmly, holding no weapons.’53

  Between 2 and 4pm54 the Allied advanced guard55 entered Moscow from the west just as the last of the main body of Russian troops were leaving it in the east.56 Ivan Tutolmin, head of the Foundlings Home, could see that the last
Russian troops were still marching on the quai near his Home when the enemy troops entered the Kremlin.57 Although the Allied troops entered the city from several directions,58 the main thrust seems to have been made through the Dorogomilovskaya barrier and along Arbat Street. After navigating their way through the maze of streets, these troops soon saw the famed crenellated red-brick walls of the Kremlin, at the gates of which there was a brief skirmish with the few remaining Muscovites. While most of Moscow’s population had already departed, the city was in fact anything but empty and thousands of its residents, along with stragglers and wounded soldiers, had stayed behind. The news that the enemy had entered the city caused panic and consternation among those Muscovites who still believed that the city would be defended. The young Kicheyev could see his neighbours ‘running wherever they could. Their preparations were so sudden and hasty that they did not even take all the necessary possessions but, in panic and confusion, grabbed completely useless things.’59 But some residents chose to arm themselves with weapons from the Kremlin Arsenal in an attempt to defend the city against the arriving enemy soldiers.

  The Allied advanced guard approached the Kremlin along several streets. Murat and his suite ended up near the Troitskaya tower-gates, while Sebastiani’s men, preceded by the Polish hussars, appeared at the Nikolskaya and Borovitskaya Towers, where they encountered a large crowd of armed Russians. The French émigrés François-Joseph Ysarn Villefort and Armand Domergues describe some 200–300 armed men gathered near the Nikolskaya Tower, and similar crowds were probably present at the other gates as well.60 Many of these men were motivated by patriotic sentiments, while alcohol plundered from nearby taverns further emboldened them. One eyewitness was Vasilii Yermolaevich, a serf belonging to Alexander Soimonov, who had stayed behind to protect his master’s property; he commented that ‘as the French approached Moscow, orders were issued to destroy the barrels of wine in the taverns. But the people rushed at them and got completely drunk. Wine flowed on the streets and some people even lay down on the pavements and licked the alcohol off the stones. One could see fistfights and brawling[everywhere]!’61 Similarly, Ivan Tutolmin, the head of the Foundlings Home, described how the rabble ransacked numerous taverns and ‘carried off alcohol in buckets, pitchers and pots, getting drunk in the process’. In the wake of Governor Rostopchin’s orders to distribute the weaponry stored at the Kremlin Arsenal, people ‘freely took muskets, sabres and backswords [tesak], with even women grabbing and carrying away weapons like firewood’.62 Vasilii Polyanskii, the son of a priest, had been present at the opening of the arsenal, where he saw some people ‘taking as many sabres and muskets as they could hold, but most of the muskets lacked cocks and the sabres were rusty’.63 Similarly, Alexander Ryazanov saw that many muskets had ‘wooden flints while sabres and backswords [tesak] had no sword belts’.64

  The appearance of Murat’s troops in front of the Kremlin had a powerful effect on the crowd and some Russians fled at once. ‘We were thunderstruck by fear and ran immediately through the Spasskii Gates of the Kremlin towards the Moskvoretskii Bridge,’ recalled one of them.65 But there were also those who decided to resist the invaders. Many of them were already roaring drunk. Muralt described encountering a ‘mob of drunken soldiers and peasants who came rushing out from [the Kremlin] entrance and from a church opposite, and some shots were fired at us’. One of these drunkards, ‘holding a drawn sabre in one hand and a bottle in the other’, charged at Muralt, who dealt him a powerful blow that felled him.66 Other Russians, however, offered a more determined resistance, closing the gates and opening fire at the Allied troops. The recently promoted Lieutenant Jean-Roche Coignet of the Imperial Guard recalled that, upon approaching the Kremlin, ‘we were assailed by a perfect hail of shot, fired from the windows of the arsenal’.67 The Allied troops responded by moving their cannon forwards and opening fire at the gates. ‘We were deafened by the sound of an artillery salvo which almost felled us to the ground,’ remembered one of the Russians.68 With the gates shattered,69 the Allied troops poured inside the Kremlin. Coignet and his comrades found buildings ‘filled with drunken soldiers and peasants. A carnage ensued …’70 According to Roos, ‘men of all kinds, above all men who seemed to be peasants, were coming out of [the arsenal] with weapons. Inside, others were swarming and jostling. The street and the square were littered with various weapons, most of them new. Underneath the Arsenal Gateway some sharp words were exchanged between [Murat’s] aides-de-camp and the men who were carrying off the weapons. Some even pushed their way into the arsenal on horseback and the quarrelling became very loud and venomous. Meanwhile, an impatient and noisy mob had massed in the square …’71 Murat again ordered his cannon forwards and Colonel Theodore-Jean-Joseph Séruzier, commanding a light artillery company, was almost killed by bullets fired from the Arsenal’s windows:

  Hearing this fusillade, I moved my cannon at gallop, surrounded the Arsenal and sent forwards a trumpeter with an officer to parley with these sharpshooters, whom I took to be inhabitants of the town who were reduced to despair. My trumpet sounded a truce but received only a discharge of musketry in reply. One of my captains, who had accompanied the trumpeter, one of my adjutants and the trumpeter himself were seriously wounded. I immediately gave the order to fire, placing my two guns under each of the vaultings serving as an entrance to the arsenal, and pitilessly rained canister on these men, who came out and fell on their knees in front of my guns, begging for mercy.

  It was then that the colonel realized that these were ‘not the inhabitants of Moscow nor soldiers trying to defend [their city], but rather it was the dregs of society, criminals let out of prison; they had been promised a pardon and their freedom on condition they revolted against these ‘dogs’ [chiens] of Frenchmen. I seized part of this scum … and handed them over to our infantry.’72 These infantrymen probably belonged to General Antoine Baudouin Gisbert de Dedem de Gelder’s 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Division, since the general later recalled that ‘the local residents and some sort of national guard retreated and locked themselves inside the Arsenal, firing at us. A canister shot dispersed them and, according to the order of the King [Murat], I rounded up anyone wearing a uniform at the imperial palace and left a company of light infantry to guard the prisoners.’73 Dedem then led the rest of his brigade in the footsteps of Murat’s cavalry, moving through Moscow’s eastern suburbs.

  Meanwhile, Sebastiani, unwilling to spill blood unnecessarily, tried to reason with the Russians at the Nikolskaya Tower. He saw a young man standing nearby and, on inquiring if he spoke French, discovered the man was in fact a Frenchman residing in Moscow. The young man was asked to convince the Russians to give up their arms but he was answered with musket fire, which prompted Sebastiani to order his men to charge; about a dozen Russians were sabred, while the rest fell to the ground and surrendered.74 A letter written by an anonymous Russian provides gruesome details of how the encounter turned into a massacre: ‘As the [Allies] entered the Kremlin, they found Russians holding weapons at the Arsenal, and shouted at them to drop the weapons at once; many Russians, not comprehending what they were asked to do, thought that the enemy wanted to take their weapons, and reached out their hands to give them the arms. These evil men [Allies], however, slaughtered them at once, which caused a terrible commotion as residents fled in horror in all directions, shouting that the French had entered Moscow.’75 Likewise Andrei Karfachevskii, a postal official, noted that the Allied troops ‘ordered the running populace to throw away their weapons and say “pardon”. Anyone who resisted or who did not understand their language was stabbed and cut down mercilessly.’76 But the fighting was not completely one-sided and some Russians did fight back to some effect. Vasilii Perovskii later met a French officer, his face and right leg bandaged, who recounted a frenzied attack he endured at the Kremlin. ‘There was a crowd of armed residents, who fired a few shots and wounded several men in [Murat’s] suite. The French had barely had time to recover from this surprise when these wild men
charged with shouts of “hurrah!” … A large and strong Russian man [muzhik] rushed towards [the French officer], stabbed him with a bayonet in the leg, dragged him by the foot from his horse, sat on top of him and began to gnaw on his face. [The Frenchman’s comrades] tried to drag him away but it proved to be impossible so he was sabred instead … The furious Frenchman assured me that the man reeked of alcohol.’77

  With the gates opened and their path cleared, the Allied forces also entered the Kremlin through the Troitskaya and Borovitskaya Towers with ‘music blaring’;78 moving across the fortress, they then emerged through the Spasskaya Tower into Kitai-gorod.79 Sebastiani made the young Frenchman, whom he had encountered in the street, lead his troops in the footsteps of the retreating Russian army to the Rogozhskaya barrier.80 Along the way the Allied troops passed by many wooden market stalls that were already wrecked, their merchandize scattered in disorder and thrown on the ground. It seems the Russian perpetrators of this pillage had over-indulged on their alcoholic booty, and they lay drunk and unconscious in the streets. Some of the Allied troopers realized that these men had brandy in their canteens; not allowed to dismount, they ‘got the ingenious idea of using the points of their sabres to cut the cords [of the canteens] and snatch them up’.81 On the outskirts of Moscow Sebastiani’s men encountered

  several regiments of Russian dragoons, some in line, others riding slowly onwards. We approached them with the friendliest intentions, which they responded to. Officers and men went up to each other, shook hands, lent each other their water-bottles filled with brandy and chatted as best they could. This, however, did not last long, for a Russian officer of high rank, accompanied by his aides, appeared and very severely put an end to these conversations. So we remained in place while the Russians slowly withdrew. But at least we had time to notice that peace would be as welcome to them as to ourselves.82