The Burning of Moscow Read online

  Bennigsen opened the meeting by asking whether it was better to give battle beneath the walls of Moscow or to abandon the city to the enemy. Kutuzov brusquely interrupted him, reprimanding him for such a ‘useless and too broad question’.33 Without preliminary discussion of the general state of affairs such a question was counterproductive, he argued, since what was at stake was not simply the army or the city but rather the preservation of the Russian realm. As Toll observes in his memoirs, this was a subtle move on Kutuzov’s part since by encouraging the council of war to debate, Kutuzov in essence sought ‘to shift the responsibility [for this momentous decision] from himself and to relegate it to the generals assembled here’. By letting everyone express his opinion, he could later claim not to have been the first to propose the abandonment of Moscow.34 Thus, after making a succinct observation of the present state of affairs, Kutuzov inquired whether it was proper to await the enemy’s attack in this disadvantageous position or to abandon Moscow to the enemy. Barclay de Tolly, Osterman-Tolstoy, Rayevskii and Konovnitsyn came out in support of retreating, with Osterman-Tolstoy and Rayevskii observing that ‘Moscow is not the whole of Russia and our goal is not to defend Moscow but rather all of the Fatherland’. Barclay de Tolly also emphasized the need to preserve the army:

  Our current position is very unfavourable and, if we wait for the enemy in it, it will become very dangerous; considering that the French have superior forces, it is more than doubtful that we would be able to defeat them. If, after the battle, we still manage to hold our ground, we would suffer losses similar to those at Borodino and thus would be unable to defend a city as extensive as Moscow. The loss of Moscow might upset the Sovereign, but it would not be unexpected by him, certainly it would not incline him to end the war and would reinforce his resolute will to fight on. By saving Moscow, Russia will not avoid this brutal, ruinous war; but having preserved our army, the hopes of our Fatherland would persevere, and the war, our only means to salvation, would be continued on better terms …35

  But the ‘shrewd and clever’ Bennigsen was not ready ‘to lose the game’ yet.36 He argued that the Russians could not give up their capital following the ‘victory’ at Borodino, where Napoleon had been greatly weakened; such an action would have a shattering effect on the morale of the army and the nation. Instead, he called for an attack, proposing to leave one corps on the right flank and move the rest of the army to the left for a surprise attack against the enemy’s right wing. Some participants understood that Bennigsen’s proposal was not serious and he was aiming at something different – he knew that the old field marshal had already made his decision and Moscow would undoubtedly be abandoned. But ‘it could very well happen that Kutuzov would be removed from command for this decision – and then Bennigsen stood to benefit as one of those who refused until the last moment to consent to leaving the capital to the enemy without a fight’.37 But the ‘simple and honest’ Barclay de Tolly seems to have missed the subtleties of this military intrigue and quickly voiced his opinion against Bennigsen’s proposal, pointing out that it was too late for such a drastic redeployment of troops, especially over difficult terrain and in darkness. Kutuzov supported his critique, reminding Bennigsen what had happened at Friedland.

  In the ensuing discussion, Barclay de Tolly expressed his preference for moving towards Vladimir to maintain communications with St Petersburg, where the imperial family resided, as well as with Kazan, Tula and Kiev, where new foundries and armament factories were established. Always an intriguer, Yermolov sensed what Kutuzov was aiming at but being ‘a relatively unknown officer, I did not dare to give my consent to the surrender of Moscow’. So he spoke against a passive stance and called for an attack along the entire line. Kutuzov criticized him for proposing an attack without taking ‘responsibility for such actions’ and proceeded to listen to the other generals. As Yermolov observed, ‘everyone based their decisions on the Minister of War’s observations, without explaining their reasons or considerations’. Judging from the existing sources, Barclay de Tolly, Osterman-Tolstoy, Rayevskii and Toll recommended avoiding battle and retreating,38 while Platov, Yermolov, Konovnitsyn, Uvarov and Dokhturov supported Bennigsen’s idea of fighting another battle.39 As the debate turned more acrimonious, Kutuzov ended the meeting by announcing, ‘I am aware of the responsibility I am assuming, but I sacrifice myself for the welfare of my country. I hereby order the retreat.’40

  It was already dark when the first orders to retreat were sent to local commanders. Kutuzov initially made the decision to retreat towards Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, and inquired from Intendant-Général Lanskoi about the availability of supplies. Lanskoi informed him that there were no major supply depots in this area but there were plentiful magazines at Kaluga and Tula, southwest of Moscow. But marching there would require them to make a flanking march in front of the Grande Armée and might expose the army to a dreaded flanking attack. So, while agreeing to move to Kaluga, Kutuzov decided to pretend to head for Ryazan since this would prompt Napoleon to follow him into Moscow, which would allow the Russian army a better chance of manoeuvring towards the southwest. By taking this circuitous route, the Russian army would not be exposed to a flanking attack but would be able to easily manoeuvre northwards or southwards should the occasion arise. Once on the Kaluga route, the commissariat would be well provided, since the army would have at its back the fertile provinces of the southeast and it would be in communication with the manufactories of arms at Tula and elsewhere. Consequently, Kutuzov decided to ‘march to the Ryazan road but then [make a turn] and proceed to the Tula Road and further to the Kaluga Road at Podolsk’.41

  Starting late in the evening of 13 September the Russian army proceeded in two columns through Moscow, which was hastily being evacuated. ‘Goods of various kinds were piled up in all streets and it was very difficult to find one’s way through them,’ remembered a soldier of the Life Guard Finlyandskii Regiment. ‘But this was nothing compared to the challenge of crossing the Moscow river, which all troops had to cross on a single bridge. Barclay de Tolly was there to maintain order.’42 After slowly navigating through the city’s street, the army departed via the Ryazan and Vladimir roads. ‘At eleven o’clock that evening,’ Bennigsen recalled, ‘our artillery began to move though the city, and at three in the morning the infantry columns set off. Outside the town there was still a crowd of vehicles of all kinds, and first the guns and then the infantry prevented these from passing. Imagine the difficulties attending this march across a town about 6 miles wide, with many narrow streets and with nearly all the inhabitants departing … The least damage to a team of horses stopped the entire column in the street!’43 Barclay de Tolly, assisted by Jacob de Sanglen and his military police,44 supervised the passage of the army through the city and did his best to anticipate possible disorders. His disposition of 14 September demanded the maintenance of strict discipline, prohibiting ‘even a single officer or soldier from leaving the ranks, and whoever is found away from their units, should be executed [velet’ zakolot’]’.45 Barclay de Tolly asked Rostopchin to deploy the remaining police officials on the streets that the army would pass along in order to ensure that ‘no army officials, and especially the rank-and-file, enter any houses or break their ranks under whatever reason’.46 Baron Waldemar von Löwenstern was among those stationed ‘in the various districts of Moscow to see that order was maintained. We each had a Cossack escort to turn soldiers out of the cabarets and prevent them entering houses. Anyone who in contravention of these orders was found with bottles of brandy or liqueurs was arrested on the spot and the bottles broken.’47 Such precautions, however, did not have the desired effect and the Russian troops looted houses and taverns at the first opportunity.

  The news of the abandonment of Moscow was received with a mixture of consternation and bewilderment. Governor Rostopchin, who had spent the previous weeks convincing the people of Moscow that the Russians were winning the war, expressed his distress in a letter to his wife: ‘The b
lood is boiling in my veins. I think that I shall die of the pain.’ The Russian troops, in the deepest dejection, tramped through the streets with furled standards and silent bands. Nikolai Golitsyn, who joined Kutuzov’s suite at the outskirts of the city, recalled that ‘we rode across Moscow in a melancholy silence, nobody expressing what was in his thoughts, and each apparently absorbed in sombre reflections. The solemnity of this silent march, of which no one except [Kutuzov] knew either the destination or the duration, had something sinister about it.’48 Many expressed their protest publicly, some even tearing their uniforms since they felt they could not long serve in such disgrace. ‘The march of the army, while being executed with admirable order considering the circumstances, resembled a funeral procession more than a military progress …’, noted Buturlin, adding that ‘officers and soldiers sobbed with rage and despair.’ In contrast, General Yermolov commented that the ‘soldiers were not disheartened and no grumbles were uttered’ although ‘their commanders were astonished by the loss of our ancient capital’.49 Indeed, senior officer were greatly affected by Moscow’s abandonment. General Dokhturov wrote on 15 September:

  What a horror! We are already beyond the capital. I did my best to convince our leaders to advance against the enemy … But this bold proposal had no effect on these cowardly people – as a result we retreated through the city. What a shame to abandon one’s cradle without a single shot and without a fight! I am in a fury but what can I do? I cannot do anything but obey because it seems God’s punishment is upon us. I cannot think otherwise. Without losing a battle, we kept retreating without slightest resistance to this point. What a disgrace! Now I am convinced that everything is lost and, in this case, nothing will keep me in [military] service. After all the unpleasantness, exertion, abuses and disorders committed through the weakness of our leaders – after all this, nothing would induce me to continue to serve. I am utterly dismayed by what is going on!50

  A wide range of reactions was noted by Baron von Löwenstern, who initially found it difficult to describe the reactions to the abandonment and loss of Moscow because points of view differed so sharply:

  Whereas one man grieved over the loss of his house, another regretted the loss of homes belonging to his parents or friends, while others – and they were the majority – were preoccupied with the humiliation at seeing this ancient capital occupied by foreigners. But quite spontaneously everyone forgot his personal concerns and thought only of the affront the enemy had just inflicted on us and, far from being disheartened, we felt more passionately determined than ever to continue the war and to make every conceivable sacrifice… . After the capture of Moscow we had the Empire to save, not just a town. And from this moment everybody said, ‘The war is only just beginning!’51

  The decision to abandon Moscow was not an easy one and Kutuzov passed a sleepless night; witnesses even reported seeing more than once tears rolling down his cheeks.52 Whether this was a calculated act or not, Kutuzov certainly understood the burden of the decision he had made; when one officer inquired whether the Russian retreat would ever end, he snapped at him, ‘That is my business to know. But I am going to see to it as I did last year with the Turks that the French end up eating horseflesh!’53 The old field marshal also hinted that the loss of Moscow might be the beginning of the end for the enemy, commenting that Napoleon’s Grande Armée was akin to ‘a stormy torrent’ and describing Moscow as ‘the sponge that will absorb it’.54 He believed that the fall of Moscow would halt the Grande Armée’s further advance as Napoleon would seek a political resolution to the war. Kutuzov needed this precious time to regroup.

  And so the retreat continued and the army grudgingly obeyed its leaders. As artillery officer Ilya Radozhitskii aptly commented, ‘Only Kutuzov, the genuine son of Russia who suckled on her breasts [vskormlennyi eye sostsami], could surrender the ancient capital of the empire without a fight. Public opinion would have condemned any other commander as an apparent traitor. So, a great sacrifice for the salvation of the whole nation was acceptable if it was offered by the chosen and foremost defender of the Fatherland.’55 Sergei Glinka watched Kutuzov passing through Moscow, sitting in a droshki56 and buried in deep thought. ‘Colonel Toll drove up to the Russian general and reported that the French had entered Moscow. “God be praised,” answered Kutuzov. “That is their last triumph.”’57

  Chapter 2

  The City

  On the eve of the French invasion Moscow was the largest and wealthiest of the Russian cities. Only St Petersburg, the official capital of the empire, could rival Moscow’s political, economic or cultural status. ‘Moscow, how much there is in this sound, that flows together for the heart of the Russian,’ announced the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin a decade after the invasion. Another poet, K. Batyushkov, who first visited Moscow in 1810, was so overjoyed by what he saw that he proudly declared that the city ‘presents a sight that is worthy of the greatest capital in the world, built by the greatest nation and on a most pleasant location’.1 Visitors to Moscow all marvelled at the spectacular views that opened to them on approaching the city, especially from the west, where the Vorobyevo Hills offered a fine vantage point to contemplate the city views at ease. ‘Its immense extent, the incalculable number of steeples and churches, their domes surmounted with gilded crosses … the neatness of the roofs of the houses which are covered with tiles of all colours, and very skilfully painted, altogether formed a charming spectacle,’ observed one foreign traveller, and similar descriptions can be found in the accounts of almost all visitors to Moscow.2 In September 1806 the Irish traveller Catherine Wilmot was charmed by the sight that was presented to her from the Vorobyevo Hills: ‘The number of Churches all cover’d over in Cupolas with Metal & many with pure Dutch gold give the chief beauty to the coup d’oeil – 600 of these blaze like so many Suns & are contrasted to the green of the Public Gardens which everywhere abound.’3 Looking from the bell tower of Ivan the Great, Robert Ker Porter, an Englishman who visited Moscow in April 1806, was spellbound by the ‘variegated colours on the tops of innumerable buildings, the sparkling particles of snow on the earth and palaces, the fanes and crescents of the churches flashing their blazing gold, and the busy world beneath, passing and repassing in their superb dresses and decorated sledges’.4

  Contemporary maps of Moscow5 show that the city was a sprawling settlement in the shape of an uneven parallelogram, with most of the urban development located north of the Moscow river. The city was almost 12km wide along the southwest–northeast axis (from the Kaluzhskaya to the Preobrazhenskii barriers), and 8km wide along the northwest–southeast axis (from the Tverskaya to the Spasskaya barriers). ‘Moscow is considerably larger in circumference than Paris, although the number of its inhabitants is much smaller,’ opined a German visitor in 1805,6 while an English traveller described a year later that ‘on viewing it from an eminence, you see a vast plain, as far as the eye can reach, covered with houses, even to the very horizon, where the lofty towers of gorgeous palaces and the glittering steeples of churches sparkle in the sky’.7

  Moscow was located on the rolling plains that stretched for miles along the banks of the Moscow and other rivers, which nowadays flow through tunnels beneath the Russian capital. The largest of these waterways was the Moscow river, which entered the city from the west and flowed in a southeasterly direction. The river’s right (western) bank was rather low, only gradually rising towards the Vorobyevo Hills in the southwestern part of the city, where the river made a major turn towards the northeast. Here the riverbank was a largely uncluttered swathe of grassland. The left (eastern) bank, on the contrary, was both steeper and more forested (largely orchards), and intersected by numerous rivulets. Beneath the Kremlin the Moscow river was at once bucolic and commercial, though commerce and industry were clearly ascendant by 1812. On the right bank the streets were unpaved and the dirt embankment of Zamoskvorechye, across from the Kremlin, offered little protection from flooding. Contemporary prints show Muscovites str
olling along the banks or, in winter time, skating and sleighing on the river. The left bank consisted of the Kremlin Embankment, which ran beneath the Kremlin citadel walls, and the Moskvoretskii Embankment, which extended further eastwards.

  Of the many tributaries of the Moscow river, the Presnya (in the west), the Neglinnaya (in the centre of the town) and the Yauza (in the east) were the largest. The Neglinnaya river, which approached the city from the north, snaking along the Kitai-gorod and the Kremlin to the Moscow river, used to be an important feature in the city. At its estuary with the Moscow river, it enclosed a tall hill upon which the Russian princes built the Kremlin. However, in the eighteenth century the Neglinnaya had been re-routed to make space for the bastions surrounding the Kremlin. By 1812 the old river bed was dry and filling up with rubbish, while three bridges (see below) near the Kremlin still reminded the Muscovites of the river’s earlier importance.

  The various rivers and rivulets were bridged by seventeen stone and twenty-one wooden bridges connecting various parts of the city.8 The stone-built Voskresenskii bridge on the Neglinnaya river, opposite Okhotnyi Ryad (Hunter’s Row) and Moscow University and leading to Red Square, was one of the busiest intersections in the city, where one could find gentlemen and officers mingling with beggars, tradesmen, priests and craftsmen; beneath the bridge women often washed their laundry. The city’s other stone bridges were the Great Stone Bridge over the Moscow river, the Kuznetskii and Troitskii bridges over the Neglinnaya, the Gorbatyi and Presnenskii bridges over the Presnya river, and the Yauzskii and Dvorstovyi bridges over the Yauza river. Among the wooden bridges the most important were the Dorogomilovskii, Krymskii and Moskvoretskii bridges over the Moscow river. The Dorogomilovskii bridge, located in the western part of the city, was maintained on a combination of rafts and pontoons, and was 185 metres long and 8.5 metres wide. At the southern end of Red Square Moskvoretskaya Street led from St Basil’s Cathedral to the Moskvoretskii bridge, which connected the city’s central districts with the Zamoskvorechye suburbs across the river.