NOT unfrequently Russia has been treated by the powers of western Europe with less consideration for justice than they have observed in their dealings with each other, but on no occasion has a civilised country more grossly outraged the sense of right than did France by its memorable campaign of 1812. It is possible that Napoleon still felt piqued because his offer to enter the Russian army had been declined by Zaborovski in 1789—a rejection which the old general had many times keenly regretted long before 1812—and it may be that Napoleon resented his refusal by the Princess Katerina, and was disgusted that the hand of the Princess Anna, which he had subsequently sought in marriage, had been bestowed in preference upon a German princelet. It is idle to suppose that technical breaches of the treaty of Tilsit by Russia—who was unable to stop commercial relations with England—were anything more than a mere pretext for the war. Like the wolf in the fable who had determined to devour the lamb that had disturbed the lower waters of the stream, any excuse served this wickedly ambitious upstart to gratify his lust for further spoils and military glory. Doubtless Napoleon—before whom Latin and Teutonic kings bowed low and their subjects trembled when he but feigned to unsheath his sword—expected that the formidable preparations he made for war would awe Russia into submission, and thus gratify his vanity: but Russia heeded his bluster as little as did England, so, with the eyes of Europe upon him, he had no option but to drink up the liquor he had uncorked. Russia doubted his seriousness, but regarded the inevitable with equanimity. It seemed improbable that France, after centuries of enlightenment and progress, with its professed love of philosophy, art and culture, should raid Russia for pelf—just as Tartars, Kalmucks, and hordes of rough unlettered barbarians out of Asia had done in ages past. If it were so to be, Russia doubted not but she could triumph over the forces of the west even as she had done over those of the east.

On the 10th June 1812 the French army crossed the Niemen unopposed, and five days later occupied Vilna, where Napoleon expected attack, but, unmolested for eighteen days, moved on towards Vitebsk. The Russian army, commanded by Barclay de Tolly, did nothing more than cause the invaders to manoeuvre unceasingly, and advance further into the country. On the banks of the Dvina Napoleon thought to end the campaign of 1812; recuperate his army and march against Moscow the following spring; but as yet no action had been fought, so he again hurried on after the Russians, this time towards Smolensk.

It is held that the withdrawal of the Russians disconcerted Napoleon; but he had already met other armies than the English, so to him this retreat of his enemy was not new. He expected to come up with the Russians at Smolensk, but Barclay de Tolly, although assuring the inhabitants of their safety, sent away the treasure and had determined to abandon the town. It was garrisoned by but one regiment when Neverovski fell back upon it after his engagement with the French at Krasnoe. Raevski, sent to his aid, entrenched his troops and determined to hold the town until the two armies under Tolly and Bagrateon, then encamped on the left bank of the Dnieper, should arrive. But they fell further back instead of advancing, and after one day’s fighting, with terrible loss, the Russians evacuated after setting fire to the town. Napoleon remained there four days, then followed the Russians towards Moscow. Notwithstanding his proclamations of amity towards the peasants, his promises of freedom for the serfs, the people began to realise that the march of the Grande ArmÉe was as disastrous as an incursion of the Tartar Horde. The country was devastated; the houses were pillaged; the owners shot; churches deserted; horses stabled in the sacred places; holy ikons burnt; matrons and maidens ravished by these heroes of the “twenty nations” of the west. Resistance there must be and the villagers took up arms; Kutuzov took chief command of the army, but Barclay de Tolly still gave his advice, and General Sir Robert Wilson remained tactical counsellor. On August 24th (old style) the Russians gave battle on the banks of the Moskva, near Borodino. In this “battle of the generals” about 120,000 men were engaged on each side, and 80,000 were killed, among them 18 generals and 15 other officers of high rank in the French army; and 22 commanding officers on the Russian side. Over 50,000 corpses and 30,000 dead horses were found in the field of battle, and though the Russians retreated, the French halted five days, then they moved forward upon Moscow, being nearly starved and quite tired of the war. Kutuzov had then to decide whether or not to risk another battle in an attempt to save Moscow.

During the first decade of the eighteenth century there were joyous days in Moscow; in 1801 Alexander was crowned; in 1803 he revisited the town when there were public rejoicings for the victories over the Turks; when in 1812, after the outbreak of hostilities Alexander came to Moscow, the patriotic citizens promised to raise 80,000 men in that district and equip them. The Tsar returned to St Petersburg and appointed Count Rostopchin governor; a clever man, courtier, wit, cynic, he proved an able administrator, possessed the gift of inciting and controlling the uneducated masses, so his plan to destroy the city escaped opposition from the inhabitants.

To the last Rostopchin nursed the illusion of the citizens; he told them men were at work upon some wonderful military engine—a fire balloon—which would destroy the French army instantaneously. Meanwhile the Archbishop Augustine, who had ordered the procession through the town of the ikons of the Iberian Mother of God, the Virgin of Smolensk, was instructed to take the sacred treasures to Vladimir. Rostopchin had but one serious complaint against Kutuzov; he had asked for three days’ notice if the town was to be abandoned, he got but twenty-four hours. Everything of value that could be removed was packed and sent away; there was a general exodus on the night of the 1st September (old style) and Rostopchin left with the Russian army, the rear-guard of which was quitting the city by the Preobrajenski suburb at the same time that the advance-guard of the French army entered it by the Dragomilov Zastava. Before he left Rostopchin opened the prisons, gave the lowest class the entry to the arsenal, and ordered the stores to be fired; also, he put to death one Vereshchagin, accused of publishing Napoleon’s proclamation, a deed that was no less criminal because needless. And here Rostopchin’s work ended; if he had received longer notice of Kutuzov’s decision to abandon the town he would doubtless have saved more of the valuable portable property of state and church, and might have destroyed the town. With reference to all the correspondence that ensued as to the party responsible for the firing of Moscow, it can be said only that Rostopchin and the Russians would like to have had the credit for making a so magnificent sacrifice, but it was of political expedience that the Russians should believe the destruction of the holy places and their revered city directly due to the invader.

The apologists of Napoleon attribute his misconduct of the campaign to ill-health; as likely as not the thwarting of his plans by the enemy, his defeats and doubtful victories caused his illness. Whether his genius failed him or not, there can be no doubt of the magnitude of the conception and the utter ineptitude exhibited in its execution. After Borodino his generals lost faith in him; they remained taciturn and morose, until at two o’clock on the afternoon of September the 2nd, the staff obtained their first view of Moscow from the summit of the Poklonnaya Hill, the “salutation” point of the Sparrow Hills. In the bright sunlight of the early autumn, the city, resplendent with gold domes and glittering crosses, seemed the fitting goal for their long deferred hopes and they of one accord raised a joyful shout, “Moscou! À Moscou!”

Even Napoleon expressed his admiration and delight, and received the warm congratulations of his now enthusiastic generals. It was rumoured that an officer had arrived from the town to discuss terms of surrender: Napoleon halted, but grew uneasy when the expected messenger could not be found and there were no signs of an approaching delegate or of that deputation of gorgeously robed boyards he had fondly hoped would attend his coming to surrender the keys of the Kremlin and sue for his clemency towards the citizens. An hour before he had commanded Count Duronelle to hurry on to Moscow and arrange for the ostentatious performance of the customary ceremony. He was now told that the town had been abandoned by the officials, that the citizens had forsaken it, but Moscow, empty it is true, was at his feet. Murat had found a few stragglers, amongst them a French type-setter, and these wretched fugitives were ordered before the staff, and by their spokesman begged for protection. “Imbecile” was the only word Napoleon trusted himself to answer. His chagrin, his wounded self-love, his mortification at the unexpected turn of affairs unnerved him. One of the Russian prisoners describes the effect of the news thus:—

Various accounts are given respecting the first entry of the troops into Moscow. Some of the inhabitants who remained, having faith in the assurances of Rostopchin, welcomed the invaders believing them to be some of the foreign allies of the Russian army. An official who had not been able to escape states that he saw some serfs carrying arms from the arsenal, one, who was intoxicated had a musket in one hand and in the other a carbine, for remarking upon the folly of such an armament, the man threw first the musket then the carbine at him, and a crowd of rioters rushed from the arsenal all armed, as the advance-guard of the French approached. The captain begged an interpreter to advise the crowd to throw down their arms and not engage in an unequal struggle, but the ignorant people, excited if not intoxicated, fired a few rounds accidentally, or by design, and the French thereupon made use of their artillery, and a wild fight ensued. After some ten or a dozen had been sabred, the others asked for quarter, and received it. Another story is to the effect that some of the armed citizens mistaking a general for Napoleon, fired at him as he approached the Kremlin and were then charged by his guard and put to flight. When later, Napoleon rode up to the Borovitski Gate, a decrepid soldier, a tottering veteran, too stubborn to forsake his post, resolutely blocked the way and was mercilessly struck down by the advance-guard.

The fires commenced the same evening that the French entered the town; there were no engines available and the soldiers, hungry and joyful, disregarded the danger and attended to their more immediate needs. Rostopchin had ordered that the contents of the “cellars” should be burned, but there was no lack of liquor, and the conquerors were not to be denied. As the “Warriors” sing in Zhukovski’s epic:—

So whilst rank and file caroused, the small beginnings of the great conflagration were neglected and men were powerless to cope with the later developments, though some worked like Trojans. The stores of oil, of spirits, the inflammable wares in the Gostinnoi Dvor were ignited, and although Marshal Mortier worked well to extinguish the fires near the Kremlin, the lack of engines and the continuous outbursts of fresh fires, made complete success impossible. The looting of the town commenced at once; soon the greedy soldiers left their partly cooked rations to search for valuables, even the sentinels forsook their posts and they fought with the rabble from the prisons for such goods as seemed most easily removed. In time, not content with such as had been abandoned, they commenced to rob from the person; women were spoiled of head-dresses and gowns, the men fought with each other for the temporary possession of pelf. The only lights for this unholy work were the torches all carried and the fires the looters set ablaze in order that they might see. When Napoleon thought the conflagration was the result of a preconcerted scheme he ordered all incendiaries to be shot, and then none durst carry a light by night without risk of being there and then shot by some predatory soldier on his own initiative, or, not less surely executed in due form after a mock court-martial at dawn of day.

Discipline was lax; among the soldiery of the army of occupation, many bold souls did just as they wished, and of their enormities, their cruelties and shameful orgies, nothing need be written. Others had leave of absence—a licence to pilfer. They not only ransacked the occupied houses, but dragged people from their hiding places, harnessed them to carts, with bayonet and worse urged them on, heavily laden, through burning streets, and saving themselves from the crumbling walls and roofs, saw their miserable captives crushed, buried, or struggling among the burning debris, and abandoned to their fate. In the immediate neighbourhood of the Kremlin the pilfering was official; in the Cathedral of the Assumption, great scales and steelyards were set up, and outside two furnaces, one for gold the other for silver, were kept ever burning to melt down the settings torn from the sacred pictures, the church vessels, the gilt ornaments, aye, even the decorations on the priests’ robes. Horses were stabled in the cathedrals and churches; Marshal Davoust slept in the sanctuary with sentinels on both sides of the “royal doors” of the ikonostas. “Destroy that mosque,” was Napoleon’s peremptory order to one of his generals with reference to the Church of the Protection of the Virgin, but he delayed executing the order finding this cathedral convenient as a stable and storehouse. At first the fire was most severe in the warehouses flanking the Grand Square and along the quays. It spread most rapidly amidst the great stores on the south side of the river. The Balchoog was a sea of flame and the whole of the Zamoskvoretski quarter was practically destroyed. On the other side the burning Gostinnoi Dvor ignited neighbouring stores in the Nikolskaya, Ilyinka and elsewhere on the Kitai Gorod. The gleeds carried by a north wind threatened the palaces in the Kremlin—where, under a cloud of sparks, the buildings glowed red and seemed to many to be also burning. The ammunition had already been brought there and caused the French great anxiety. Napoleon, after a peaceful night in the royal palace, was unwilling to believe that the tires were other than accidental, but as the day waned and the fires increased in number as well as size, he grew agitated and exclaimed, “They are true to themselves these Scythians! It is the work of incendiaries; what men then are they, these Scythians!”

He passed the next night in the Kremlin, but not at rest. It was with the greatest difficulty that the soldiers on the roof of the palace disposed of the burning fragments that at times fell upon the metal like a shower of hail. The heat was intense; the stores of spirits exploded, and blue flames hid the yellow and orange of the burning timbers and darted with lightning rapidity in all directions, a snake-like progress through the denser parts of the town, firing even the logs of wood with which the streets were at that time paved. When the fire reached the hospitals, where 20,000 unfortunate wounded lay almost helpless, scenes of unmitigated horror were witnessed by the invaders unable to succour, and chiefly intent on their own safety. The famous Imperial Guard stationed in the Kremlin was divided into two sections; one was occupied in struggling against the fire, the other held all in readiness for instant flight. At last the Church of the Trinity caught fire, and whilst the Guard at once set about its destruction, Napoleon, with the King of Naples, Murat, Beauharnais, Berthier and his staff, left the Kremlin hurriedly for the Petrovski Palace. The Tverskaya was ablaze, passage by that way impossible; the party crossed for the Nikitskaya but in the neighbourhood of the Arbat lost their way, and after many adventures and near escapes found the suburbs, and by a roundabout route reached the Palace at nightfall. In many places the fire had burned out by September the 5th, and that night a heavy rain, luckily continued during the next day, stopped the spread of the fire, and on Sunday the 8th, Napoleon returned over the still smouldering embers to his old quarters in the Kremlin. Amidst or near by the cinders of the capital, Napoleon remained for more than a month. The remaining inhabitants suffered great hardships; some fraternised with the French soldiers and helped in quenching fires, but parties accused of incendiarism were still led out almost daily to execution. The French residents were in a most pitiable condition; Napoleon could not or would not do anything for them; they, and the rest of the citizens, with many of the soldiers were soon threatened with starvation.

This campaign more than any other undertaking of his life, reveals the despicable character of Napoleon as a man; even as a commander he seemed to have lost grip of the serious situation of his troops: he, who at one time could never make a mistake now only happened on the right thing by accident, and that rarely. In an impoverished province, amidst a famished population, he could not possibly winter his army, but acted as though he intended to do so. He made stupid speeches respecting the career of Peter the Great; read up the proclamations of Pugatchev, hoping to find in them something which would enable him to incite the people to rebel; tried even to make allies of the Tartars, and failed; at the same time he sent again and again to Alexander professing warm personal friendship and readiness to conclude peace. Alexander heard his overtures with silent contempt. The Russian generals were mercilessly harassing the divisions of the Great Army in the provinces, and armed bands of peasants sought revenge on those invaders who had violated women and children, and desecrated the churches.

On October the 6th, Napoleon decided to begin his retreat on the morrow, and that same evening drew up a scheme for the visit of a Parisian theatrical company to Moscow and its installation there. Of precious metal from the churches of the Kremlin, nearly five tons of silver and four and a half hundredweights of gold had been melted into ingots. The great wooden cross, thirty feet in length, which surmounted Ivan Veliki, had been regilt at great cost but the year before, and the French, thinking it solid gold, threw it down. Like all the crosses, it was of worthless material, but contained a small cross of pure gold, which these disgusted pillagers failed to find.

When the time came for Napoleon to leave Moscow he was unwilling that any should know his intention. “Perhaps I shall return to Moscow,” he said to one of his company, but as he had already given orders to Lariboisiere, the chief of artillery, to destroy the Kremlin, he doubtless, better than anyone else, knew that this could not be. Napoleon thought to destroy everything of value left standing in the town; walls, towers, palaces, churches, convents, monasteries—all were ruined. “The defeat of Murat at Tarutin forced Napoleon to hurry away earlier than he intended, and to Marshal Mortier was left the task of destruction. He having made the requisite preparations left during the night of the 11-12th October, and, not far from Fili, gave the signal by cannon for the firing of the mines. It was a terrible explosion in the darkness and stillness of night; it killed some and wounded many, and was followed quickly by minor explosions at different points.”

Napoleon failed even in this attempt; the damage done was trifling—the tower over the Nikolski Gate fell, so did one at the corner of the Kremlin wall. There were breaches here and there, but churches and other buildings remained intact. It is said that the heavy rain destroyed the trains of gunpowder to the mines, from which subsequently sixty tons of the explosive were taken. Fesanzac states Mortier intentionally used powder of bad quality, not wishing to destroy the buildings; it is more probable that he used the best he could get and that the director of artillery was unwilling to waste serviceable munitions of war he might require later.

The story of the retreat of the Grande ArmÉe is well known and need not be recapitulated here. If the French and their allies suffered, the peasants also endured terrible hardships. Shot down for defending the honour of their wives and daughters; for protecting their property; for refusing to honour the false hundred rouble notes Napoleon had ordered to be printed in order to reward his soldiers; on any and every other pretence whatever, they yet accomplished a terrible revenge, harassing the invaders to the last. The French slew and destroyed; wrecked old walls, desecrated churches, and in sheer spite threw the spoil they could not carry further into the rivers and lakes. Wilson urged Kutuzov to engage the refugees, whom he termed ghosts roaming too far from their graves, but Kutuzov trusted to the cold and the distance to wear out the remnant of the great army. He underestimated the powers of human endurance, some 70,000 escaped of the half million or more that had invaded Russia. Napoleon, that “incomparable military genius,” does not appear on this occasion to have possessed the astuteness even of the mediÆval Tartar Khans, who on their invasions withdrew “without ostensible cause” at the end of the season. More selfish than they, he saved himself by deserting his men. They died like flies on the approach of winter; some were burned during their sleep by outraged peasants; more were slipped through holes in the ice; many reached Vilna only to be entrapped by the Russian soldiers, or, if still more unfortunate, tossed from the upper windows of the Ghetto and kicked to death by old polish Jewesses in the streets. Piteous? Yes, but it is the pity one feels for the burglarious murderer who falls on the spikes of the area railings. The invasion of the twenty nations had even such inglorious ending; its effect upon the Muscovites was similar to that which followed a great Tartar raid; it was unexpected—disastrous, and, as long as remembered, engendered in the Russ that same distrust of the west it had previously entertained of the east.

In Moscow there are now few traces of the French invasion, for its effect was general rather than particular. The palace occupied by Napoleon has been destroyed; in its place the Tsar Nicholas built his new Imperial residence, from the windows of which may still be seen the old Borovitski Gate, by which Napoleon first entered and last left the Kremlin. Beyond that gate there is now an immense and stately pile, the magnificent new Cathedral of Our Saviour, built by the people in gratitude for their deliverance from the invaders. A monument that furnishes conclusive evidence that the spirit of earnestness which actuated the old cathedral builders is not yet extinct in Russia.

One other memorial of the times will attract the attention of visitors to the Kremlin: arranged along the front of the arsenal, opposite the Senate House, are ranged the cannon captured from, or abandoned by, the Grande ArmÉe. The inscriptions, one in French the other in Russian, on the plates to the

BOROVITSKI GATE AND ST SAVIOUR’S CATHEDRAL
BOROVITSKI GATE AND ST SAVIOUR’S CATHEDRAL

right and left of the principal entrance set forth the origin of these trophies. Most of the weapons have the Napoleonic initial boldly engraved upon the breech; actually only 365 are French; there are 189 Austrian, 123 Prussian, 40 Neapolitan, 36 Bavarian, 1 Westphalian, 12 Saxon, 1 Hanoverian, 70 Italian, 3 Wurtemburgian, 8 Spanish, 22 Dutch, 5 Polish—in all 875.

Before the great fire there were over 2500 brick or stone buildings in Moscow, and about 6600 of wood; the fire destroyed over 2000 of the brick buildings and some 4500 of the wooden dwellings. It may seem strange that so many of the old buildings escaped. Of course the old convents, monasteries and churches in the suburbs, like the Novo Devichi, Simonov, Petrovski Palace, etc., were beyond the limit of the fire; the remainder, many of them, stood in their own grounds or were isolated from other buildings, much as the Strastnoi Monastyr is now. At that time, although the town limits were practically the same as at present—the line of the Kammer College rampart—the houses were fewer and, outside the Kitai Gorod, few streets consisted of continuous rows of houses. If the visitor wishes to have a clear comprehension of the sort of town, in detail, the great village of Moscow was at the beginning of this century, a drive along the Sadovia or through the side streets between that thoroughfare and the boundary will help its acquisition. More, it will bring him face to face with the best of the buildings of “Skorodom” that sprang from among the cinders of the great conflagration. A pleasant, bungalow-like, garden-town; spacious houses, with pretentious faÇades in the pseudo-classic style of the first empire; mostly squat and inconvenient, irregular, bright with native carpentry, stucco, painted metal roofs, and clean washed walls. It is this Moscow that is so picturesque and so rapidly disappearing before the march of industrialism, sanitation, and an increasing population. When Alexander I. visited the town in 1816, great haste was made to present a fair show of dwellings in the vast open spaces; some, painted and distempered, were without windows, roofs, staircases, or even floors; these walls, then little more than the semblances of buildings, just such as now put on the stage, were later utilised by fitting dwellings, of a sort, to them. Some have long served their purpose; others, curious, quaint and singular, still remain—but he who would see them must not long delay.

With reference to the historic and sacred buildings, those answerable for their keeping sought only to restore, enrich, and preserve. At no time has Moscow possessed more or better memorials of the past than she does at present. The risk of destruction by fire has greatly lessened; of further demolition by ruthless invaders there is, happily, no longer a possibility, and the slower but not less certain destruction from the inroad of industrialism may be stayed by the timely awakening of the Moscow citizens to the value of the relics they possess, and the desire not only to preserve them for their own sake, but also as ornaments to the old town of which all are so fond and now anxious to beautify.