The Burning of Moscow

by Alexander Mikaberidze

  At the Danilov Monastery, south of Moscow, the monks first encountered the French on 15 September when ‘an enemy officer and soldiers came to inspect the monastery. Two days later a larger detachment of troops occupied the monastery complex, driving the monks out of their cells but otherwise treating them leniently. ‘[They] walked about the church but did not touch anything, only looking and examining everything,’ the monks later reported. ‘One officer liked a candle that was lit in front of the icon but he did not take it and instead asked us to find a similar one for him.’76 Later on the French officer and two of his soldiers, who were quartered in the monastery, warned the priests that artillery crews would be soon billeted there, and helped them to hide their remaining treasures. Sister Antonina of the Devichii Monastery also noted that the French (and Polish) troops deployed near her monastery acted with great courtesy, although she ascribed it to their commander’s fear of committing sinful acts. ‘This French commander often called our priest and assured him that he would not allow his men to rob or abuse us.’ In fact, when the Russian priest lacked red wine and flour to conduct the liturgy, the commander quickly delivered them to him to ensure that the religious ceremonies continued without interruption.77 Alexey Olenin, one of whose sons died at Borodino, while the other suffered a grievous injury, collected details on the atrocities committed by the Allied soldiers in Russia. In his ‘Notebook’ he recounted several examples of mistreatment of the civilian population and noted that ‘among the peoples comprising Napoleon’s horde the most callous torturers and barbarians were the Poles and Bavarians’.78 Even the German resident of Moscow, who had been born during the Seven Years’ War and had ‘imbibed a hatred for the French with my mother’s breast milk and could not stand even to see them’, had to acknowledge that the French were ‘the least rapacious’ of the Allied troops:

  They took only what they needed to survive but did not plunder for gold, silver or other precious items, not even watches. How different from the Bavarians and the Poles, who usually left nothing behind themselves and pillaged even those items that had no value to them. The Württembergers followed in their footsteps – in fact, the idea of opening and ransacking tombs belongs to them … These soldiers committed acts of vandalism, destroying statues and Chinese bridges in the imperial garden. They were so greedy that they tore away even the upholstery of carriages and furniture, including the cloth from billiard tables. The French, on the other hand, did not commit superfluous pillaging. In fact, they acted with courtesy even in robbing people, which often presented dramatic contrasts. Thus, one French officer had a sofa cut down so he could sleep comfortably but when he departed from the apartment, he brought in a carpenter and had the sofa restored to its original condition. On another occasion some French soldiers entered the house of a professor in the middle of the night; upon learning that his pregnant wife was in labour, they approached her bed on tiptoe, covering their candles with one hand. They quietly emptied the drawers of all possessions but took nothing that belonged to the lady of the house, leaving only with her husband’s possessions.79

  In contrast, some Russians were surprised by the French soldiers’ filthy boorishness, which was particularly shocking to them in light of the cultural influence that France enjoyed over much of Europe in the eighteenth century. The French were perceived as the most civilized nation, the quintessential model of European civilization. And yet, ‘upon taking Moscow, the French acted themselves as a wild and uncivilized nation;’ French officers, for example, were observed unashamedly relieving themselves in the libraries and ballrooms of noble estates in Moscow.80 In his letter to the Dowager Empress, Ivan Tutolmin complained that the French soldiers billeted at the Foundlings Home had ‘fouled everything: they ate and defecated where they slept’. They ruined ‘the floors, doors, windows, stoves and walls’ and their excrement littered the hallways and soaked into the floors.81 One Muscovite observed, ‘Maybe there was something good in the French but I personally saw nothing … One will struggle to find such know-nothing, barbarian and slovenly swine … Their officers were not averse to kneading bread in the washtubs that their soldiers used to wash their underwear, even though we warned them that the tub had been soiled.’82

  ‘Of all the nations who followed Napoleon’s banners,’ observed one Polish officer, ‘the Poles were the most hated by the Russians.’83 And one can understand the deep-seated hostility between the two nations. In the seventeenth century the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was the greatest of Russia’s foes, occupying vast tracts of Russian lands, including Moscow itself. The roles were reversed a century later when the expanding Russian Empire partitioned and destroyed the Polish state. The memories of the Russian invasions of 1792 and 1794 were still fresh in the memory, and many Poles were burning with a desire for vengeance. A German officer noted that ‘for the Poles, one of the attractions of joining in the pillaging was the desire to settle old scores. I saw a lancer urging on a poor Russian, laden with the lancer’s booty, with a whip. When I reproached him for this brutality, he grew angry with me and hissed, “My father and mother were both massacred at Praga [in 1794].”’84 But not all Poles were so cold-blooded, and some actively sought to lessen the hardships of Moscow’s populace. At the Presnenskii Lakes Kicheyev’s family and dozens of their neighbours and other refugees had their scant possessions plundered by the Allied soldiers, among whom was a tall Pole ‘who appeared to be 40 years old, with long blond moustaches, dressed in military uniform and fully armed’. He did not participate in the plunder but ‘seemed to be observing the other soldiers to make sure that they did not kill anyone’. At one point Kicheyev’s grandfather was accosted by a tall but pale and skinny Polish soldier, who wore tattered uniform and was bare-footed. The Pole forced the old man to give up his boots but, upon seeing him crying, he offered to give them back.85

  Of all the various disasters in Moscow, perhaps the most horrible sights were to be found in the aftermath of the fires in the Russian hospitals, which were caring for many of those grievously injured at Borodino. One of the first things that the Grande Armée’s Intendant-Général Mathieu Dumas did upon reaching Moscow was to visit the hospitals, which he found

  already crowded with the sick and wounded of the Russian army. The most considerable of these establishments, situated at the extremity of the city near the summer-palace, appeared to me to be in a dreadful state of neglect; everything was wanting, and death made horrible ravages; the dead bodies cast into the street lay round the wall, objects of horror and compassion. Other hospitals were in a better condition; several Russian officers had been received into them, and room was reserved for ours.86

  These hospitals, however, soon turned into deathtraps. As the flames reached each hospital, wounded soldiers were seen dragging themselves down the stairs or jumping through the windows, screaming and howling before succumbing at the end of their fall. ‘When the flames took hold of the buildings in which the wounded were crammed,’ wrote Chambray, ‘they could be seen dragging themselves along corridors or throwing themselves out of windows, yelling with pain.’87

  There are no precise figures for the Russian wounded who perished in the fires. On 16 September Napoleon’s 19th Bulletin proclaimed that ‘thirty thousand wounded or sick Russian [soldiers] are abandoned in the hospitals, without succour and nourishment’.88 Just a day later the 20th Bulletin mentioned in passing that all of these men had perished in the conflagration,89 and this number of some 30,000 Russian dead appeared in subsequent writings on the Russian campaign. However, writing just two days after his entry into Moscow, Napoleon could not have known the precise number of the Russian wounded, and later demanded reports detailing this information.90 In this case, the 19th Bulletin simply twisted the truth (as bulletins usually did), and the subsequent issues further underscore this point. The 20th Bulletin claimed that all the wounded had perished in the fires, but the 23rd Bulletin noted that ‘we succeeded with great difficulty in withdrawing from the hospitals and houses on
fire some Russian [soldiers]. There were about 4,000 of these wretched men.’91 So Napoleon was incorrect in his earlier claim of all Russian wounded perishing. In fact Napoleon himself does not seem to have believed the claim of 30,000 Russian wounded perishing in the fires, as in a private conversation with Ivan Tutolmin on 19 September he accused the Russians of ‘callousness for abandoning 10,000 wounded soldiers without food and care’.92 Russian documents also point to a smaller number of the wounded perishing in the flames. In the wake of the battle of Borodino between 22,000 and 26,000 wounded had been brought to Moscow: Governor Rostopchin referred to 22,000, while Jacob Wyllie spoke of 22,500.93 On 11 September Rostopchin gave orders to evacuate all but the most seriously wounded soldiers and from the following day those soldiers who could walk were directed towards Kolomna. General Yermolov, who as the Chief of Staff of the 1st Army did his best to organize the evacuation of the wounded, spoke of some 26,000 wounded brought to Moscow, more than half of whom had been removed from the city.94 Lightly wounded men simply followed in the wake of the army, while the more grievously injured were transported on carts.95 Thus by 14 September more than half of the Russian wounded had been removed from the city; most Russian historians agree that some 10,000 wounded were left in the city, largely for the lack of transportation.96 Of these, some had indeed perished in the fires, but most had got out of the burning buildings and were later seen either starving to death in the streets of Moscow or engaged in the plundering of fellow Russians. Thus, Nikolai Miritskii, the supervisor of the Widows’ Home, noted that there were about 1,500 wounded at his institution. Almost half of them perished when the fires came but ‘some 800, despite being weak, managed to survive the conflagration. They escaped into the yard and garden and scattered in various directions over the next few days because of lack of provisions.’97 They could have been among those Kicheyev saw ‘crawling around in garbage heaps and picking at potato peelings and other remnants’.98

  Wounded Russian officers were a little more fortunate. Avraam Norov, who lost a leg at Borodino, was recuperating at Golitsyn’s Hospital; given the nature of his injury, he was not considered for evacuation. In fact, he was largely forgotten amidst the confusion of the retreating army and the abandonment of the city, and received no medical attention for days. On 15 September, as the fires ravaged the city, Norov was lying alone in his hospital room when a marauder burst in, brusquely searched him for any loot and left without finding anything. Preparing for the worst, Norov was surprised when, a few hours later, an elderly French soldier approached his bed and shared a few biscuits and some water with him. The following day Norov was visited by Dominique Larrey himself, who gave him medical treatment for the first time since his surgery over a week earlier. Larrey’s intervention probably saved Norov’s life as the wound, left untreated for so long, was already showing signs of putrefaction. ‘I was profoundly touched by this generous man,’ Norov recalled. ‘It was not for nothing that Napoleon called him “le vertueux Larrey”!’99 Over the next few days Norov saw his room filled up with both Russian and French wounded officers, who received equal attention from the great French surgeon.

  Many of the wounded were also cared for by Jean-Baptiste Turiot, an intelligent and experienced French surgeon who had long urged Napoleon to reform the French medical system and create a permanent army medical corps. However, Turiot’s letters – seventeen since 1796 – remained largely ignored so that the French physicians and surgeons lacked many basic essentials in Russia, including proper field hospitals. After the bloody battle at Smolensk, Turiot wrote, ‘the building of the city’s archives was transformed into a hospital, the documents found there were rolled up to serve as splints, cannon plugs and gun cotton replaced bandages and linen, while government files were used as bedding for those operations’.100 Sadly almost all the amputees died due to the unsanitary conditions. The situation was slightly better in Moscow, where the French surgeons took over existing hospital buildings but they still could not properly treat the tens of thousands of wounded and sick. Turiot appealed to Napoleon once more, arguing that the soldiers’ misery and suffering was exacerbated by the lack of a proper medical system. But he also accused the ‘army administrators’ of not taking measures to prevent ‘pillage and the waste of immense provisions that would have amply allowed us to bring much physical comfort to the troops’. These military officials, Turiot raged, ‘thought only of themselves and of lining their own pockets’, remarking that ‘the taste for good life and blatant venality have transformed those whose job it is to devote themselves entirely to the wounded and the troops into veritable parasites’.101 His criticism is echoed in the memoirs of Dutch officer Aart Kool, who bemoaned that ‘there should have been care taken to ensure that all soldiers were well supplied with winter clothing, which would have occurred under a good administration, but the French organisation was the worst ever. The blankets stayed in storage and nothing was allocated to the officers and the soldiers.’102

  Chapter 7

  In the Ruins of the Great City

  Napoleon remained at the Petrovskii Palace from the evening of 16 September to the morning of 18 September.1 Unlike the Kremlin’s oriental exotic architecture, the Petrovskii Palace divided opinions among the Allied officers. Roman Soltyk saw a ‘palace of red bricks, which were not plastered with lime; the building is of Gothic architecture and resembled the palace of Hampton Court in London’. Castellane also found it ‘very beautiful, surrounded by brick walls and flanked by towers of a Greek style, overall, a truly romantic place’. Less impressed was Colonel Griois, who described the palace as a ‘vast building of very antique construction, surrounded by high brick walls; its heavy and stern appearance made it seem more like a state prison than a sovereign’s palace’.2 The palace, however, was large enough to accommodate the imperial and general headquarters and the Administration. Thus, General La Riboisière’s entire staff – almost a dozen men – was crammed into one small room.3

  Throughout the two days he spent at the Petrovskii Palace Napoleon remained glum and taciturn. After going to bed early on the 16th, he woke up early the next morning and came out to watch the burning Russian city in the distance. ‘Absorbed by this melancholy contemplation,’ observed Segur, ‘he preserved a long and gloomy silence, which he broke only by the exclamation, “This forebodes great misfortunes to us!”’ Returning to the palace, he dictated the 19th Bulletin, announcing both the occupation and the destruction of Moscow. ‘The city of Moscow is as large as Paris, and it is an extremely rich city, full of palaces of all the nobles of the empire. Yet the Russian governor Rostopchin wished to ruin this fine city when he saw it abandoned by the Russian army … The most complete anarchy reigned in the city; some drunken madmen ran through its different quarters and everywhere set fire to them.’4 Early in the morning of the 17th Napoleon went frequently outside to observe the city on which he had placed so many hopes smouldering in the distance. ‘He beheld the fire raging with the utmost violence,’ described Ségur. ‘The whole city appeared like a vast spout of fire rising in whirling eddies to the sky, which it deeply coloured.’ Napoleon remained ‘very pensive and did not talk to anyone’ for a long time.5

  But his apathy did not last long. Pressing matters demanded his attention and the emperor was soon back to the usual routine of reviewing the continuous stream of reports and updates on troop movements, redeployments and supplies. The situation was serious, and Napoleon believed that he would need eight days to rally his remaining forces. He dictated the 20th Bulletin, informing the army (and the public back in France) of the devastating consequences of the fires, which he referred to as ‘Rostopchin’s crime’. To reassure the families back at home,6 the bulletin proclaimed that the army was ‘recovering from its fatigues, and has abundance of bread, potatoes, cabbages and other vegetables, meat, salted provisions, wine, brandy, sugar, coffee – in short, provisions of all sorts’. In conclusion, the emperor noted that ‘the temperature is still that of autumn. The soldiers
have found, and continued to find, a number of fur-trimmed coats and furs for the winter. Moscow was the depot of those articles.’7 That same day (the 17th) Napoleon also dispatched his aide-de-camp General Narbonne to protect the beautiful Sloboda Palace (also known as the Yellow Palace) in the eastern Lefortovo suburbs of Moscow. The young Boniface Castellane, who accompanied Narbonne on this mission, remembered that they were able to reach the Lefortovo only by ‘ten o’clock at night, after being forced to make long detours because flames frequently blocked our way. We saw many armed Russian soldiers walking freely in the streets, while others, being wounded, sought to escape from the flames. We encountered many people on carts carrying their most precious effects and being robbed by our soldiers. We escorted them to safety and a large number of these unfortunates settled in groups around the city.’ Yet it was too late to save the Sloboda Palace, except for ‘numerous paintings’ that Narbonne’s men removed before returning to the Petrovskii Palace.8