The Burning of Moscow

by Alexander Mikaberidze

  The Moscow Municipality

  One of the problems Napoleon was grappling with was the establishment of a new municipal government in Moscow. When it became clear that the city had been abandoned, Napoleon fully intended to restore municipal authority once his army had settled down. Marquis A. Pastoret, the well-informed intendant of Vitebsk province, noted that upon entering the city one of first questions Napoleon addressed to General Dumas was whether municipal government had already been organized. Learning that the city government was non-existent, Napoleon urged Dumas to make appropriate arrangements, and then interrogated a German apothecary to learn whether there were any notables still remaining the city. That same evening Dumas submitted to the emperor a draft decree on establishing the Moscow municipality, but also informed him that he was unable to find any suitable Muscovites for this job. The outbreak of fire that same night naturally pushed the whole plan to the back and Napoleon returned to it only after the fires subsided.125

  Throughout this time Jean-Baptiste Barthelemy de Lesseps, the former French consul-general to St Petersburg and now the civil governor of Moscow, did his best to restore normality in the city.126 He ‘has not forgotten the thirty years of hospitality he had enjoyed in Russia,’ observed Caulaincourt. ‘This excellent man did all he could do to put a stop to many evils … He collected, sheltered, nourished and in fact saved quite a number of unfortunate men, women and children whose houses had burned down and who were straying about like ghosts amidst the ruins.’ In late September de Lesseps received imperial permission to proceed with the establishment of the new municipal authority. He instructed Jacob Dulon, a prominent Muscovite merchant of French descent whom he had known for many years and whose house he occupied,127 and François Xavier Villiers, reader in French at the University of Moscow, to gather together any remaining Muscovite notables. Over the next couple of days more than a dozen of them, including the officials Bestuzhev-Riumin, P. Zagryazhskii and G. Vishnevskii, and the merchants Peter Korobov, Ivan Kozlov, Ivan Isaev, Konyaev and Peter Nakhodkin, were contacted by ‘strangers’ who instructed them to meet at Dulon’s house on 24 September.128 Some of these affluent men could have fled from the city but they chose to stay for a variety of reasons. Merchant Gregorii Kolchugin, for example, stayed because of Rostopchin’s assertion that the city would not voluntarily be evacuated, and on account of family and business matters.129 Other notables certainly shared similar circumstances and some paid dearly for heir beliefs. Another merchant, Ivan Kulman, was robbed repeatedly during the first three days of the Allied occupation of the city and his house burned down in the fires. Previously a wealthy man, he lost everything in those days and survived on handouts he begged from Allied soldiers in the streets. He later recalled, ‘when everything burned down and I had nothing left, I decided to seek any kind of employment in the French service …’130

  As the notables arrived,131 Dulon led them to de Lesseps’s office, where the French general informed them of the emperor’s decision to set up a municipal government and offered them positions in the future municipality. Approaching Peter Nakhodkin, de Lesseps showered him with praise before revealing that ‘the emperor has heard that you are a good man and therefore he appoints you as the head of the municipal government’.132 Astonished by this news, Nakhodkin demurred and asked to be replaced. When the others joined his protest, de Lesseps informed them that he could not rescind arrangements made by the emperor, and threatened that those who resisted could face dire consequences. De Lesseps then dismissed them, instructing to come the following day to start working.133 Kolchugin, who arrived the following day, remembered how he ‘was introduced to de Lesseps, who told me that I was chosen to serve in the municipality and asked me to take my place … I asked him to remove me from this position but de Lesseps told me that he could not do it since he did not choose me but rather my compatriots chose me to act on behalf of my fellow Russians …’ When Kolchugin continued to insist on his dismissal, de Lesseps bluntly told him: ‘You are becoming rather verbose. Do you want me to inform the emperor that you are a bullhead, who could order you to be shot as an example to the others?’ De Lesseps then led Kolchugin into a room where he ‘found the municipal head [Nakhodkin] already holding a meeting with other members. [De Lesseps] ordered them to show me my seat and instructed me to take it.’134 Another potential officer for the municipality was Phillip Xavier d’Horrer, a French émigré who had retired from the Russian army. He was pressured by General Dedem to collaborate with the French authorities. ‘Have you visited Lauriston, Lesseps or Marshal Mortier?’ the general inquired, and when D’Horrer gave a negative response, he observed that such behaviour could cause problems for his family. ‘I accepted Russian citizenship and pledged an oath to the Russian Emperor. Therefore I no longer consider myself a Frenchman,’ argued d’Horrer. ‘This will only raise even more suspicion about you,’ replied Dedem. The following day he arranged a meeting between d’Horrer and Napoleon’s Secretary of State Count Pierre Daru, who tried to coerce d’Horrer into supporting the French authorities. Reminding d’Horrer that he and his entire family were émigrés, Daru noted, ‘I assume you are aware of the French laws against émigrés. So go and think about it.’135 Similarly intimidated was Professor Christian Steltzer of the University of Moscow, whose efforts to protect the university brought him into direct contact with senior officials of the Grande Armée. General Dumas offered Steltzer a position in the municipal government, noting that if he refused ‘His Majesty would take certain measures that would be very unfortunate’ for him. Later Steltzer also had a meeting with de Lesseps – ‘that callous and miserable wretch’, as he called him – who ‘told me the same thing but in much coarser language’.136 Merchant Kozlov did not require any ‘coarse language’ to coerce him into joining the municipality since he had already ‘heard from various people that the French were shooting people for even the slightest disobedience’.137 Bestuzhev-Riumin was offered a seat in the municipality by Marshal Mortier. He initially declined it but the marshal assured him that the primary goal of this body was to help his compatriots, and so his refusal to participate in its working seemed to be unwarranted. Mortier then showed Bestuzhev-Riumin some of the documents outlining the municipality’s authority and purpose. Finding nothing ‘contrary to his conscience or requiring the breaking of an oath’, Bestuzhev-Riumin then agreed to participate.138

  Thus most of the men chosen for the municipality had no choice but to submit to de Lesseps’ demands, although they did try to safeguard themselves by declaring that they refused to do anything either against their faith or against the emperor Alexander. To this de Lesseps replied that the differences between the two Emperors were outside their province, and their only duty was to watch over the security and prosperity of the city.139 But there were also some members of the municipal government who had few misgivings about collaborating with the enemy. Some, in fact, welcomed this opportunity and actively tried to shore up French authority in the city. Among these men was Paul Lacrois, a police officer who defied orders to leave the city and stayed behind.140 He quickly rallied to the French side and delivered important intelligence, including details on the secret construction of Leppich’s air balloon. François Villiers was among the first to greet the Grande Armée on the Dorogomilovskaya bridge, and later actively assisted the French military authorities in the city. It was he who helped identify candidates for municipal positions and notified selected individuals to attend the meeting with de Lesseps.141 Villiers occasionally went beyond simple collaboration and seems to have relished his newly acquired authority. Professor Steltzer claims that on one occasion Villiers had eight Russians harnessed to pull his carriage and drove around prodding them with a stick.142

  De Lesseps announced the establishment of the new municipal government through a proclamation issued on 1 October:143 ‘Residents of Moscow! Your miseries are great but His Majesty the emperor and the King wants to end them … [A new] administration, chosen from among you, will
comprise your municipality or city government. It will take care of you, your needs, your benefits.’ The new municipality,144 divided into six bureaux, was situated in the house of Count N.P. Rumyantsev on the Pokrovka. Its members were required to wear a badge of red ribbon,145 and enjoyed a wide range of responsibilities, including quartering troops, administering hospitals, maintaining order in the city, finding employment for the remaining workforce, ensuring regular church services and revitalizing the spirits of the city residents. In addition, the proclamation announced the formation of a general police force (lodged at Prince Dolgorukov’s house not far from the municipal headquarters), comprising twenty police commissariats that were tasked with restoring and maintaining order in the city (with the help of military authorities). Most of the police officials were foreigners who ‘had no other means of surviving’.146

  The Moscow municipality proved to be ineffective.147 Tasked with governing a city in ruins, it could hardly cope with the needs of its desperate citizens and the demands of the occupying force. Many of its members were uninterested in performing their responsibilities and tried to do as little as possible. Kolchugin and his colleagues were, for example, tasked with restoring church services in the city but, as he later recalled, it was virtually impossible to do so because ‘the churches were plundered and defiled’. In fact, Kolchugin and his colleagues had no interest in even attempting it, and instead agreed ‘to avoid holding meetings or signing any written proceedings’. The municipality did, however, reopen a number of taverns and bakeries in an effort to bring some sense of normality back to the city. In many districts the newly established police force was preoccupied with the removal of debris – ‘the streets are now clean,’ one police commissioner happily reported148 – and human and animal corpses that presented a serious threat to the human population. Police Commissar Charles Lassan of the 8th (Arbatskii) District noted on 30 September that ‘the presence of enormous numbers of corpses, only slightly covered with soil’, could have a ‘pernicious effect’ on the army.149 The police, however, found it difficult to put an end to the disorder, and reports from police commissioners reveal that pillaging, robbing, theft and other crimes remained widespread in the city.

  The municipal government’s greatest challenge was procuring supplies. During the first week of its existence the municipality could do little but ask the French military authorities for help. As a result, Mortier found himself writing incessantly to the imperial headquarters with requests for assistance, which eventually annoyed the emperor. ‘[Mortier] demands provisions for the police department, also for the foundlings and the Russians who are in the hospitals, for the inhabitants who are sick, &c. All these demands are proper, but it is impossible to comply with them.’ Napoleon instead argued that it was the municipality’s responsibility to provide for such needs: ‘[It] must form a Russian company, which will go by detachments to the villages and take provisions, but will pay for them.’ The French authorities would provide sufficient funds to cover these expenses and furnish a storehouse, which could be appropriated for the city and stocked. ‘This is the only way to supply them all,’ the emperor concluded.150 On 6 October de Lesseps issued a new proclamation addressed to the residents of the city and its environs,151 calling upon the ‘peaceful inhabitants, artisans and labourers of Moscow’ to return to their dwellings, assuring them that ‘peace and order have been restored in the capital. Your countrymen are safely leaving their shelters and are respected and any violence against them or their property is immediately punished.’ The Emperor ‘wants to put an end to your misery and return you to your homes and families.’ De Lesseps assured peasants and inhabitants from nearby towns that they would be able to bring their produce safely to markets in the city and would be paid at mutually agreed rates. Sundays and Wednesdays were designated for major market fairs, on which days ‘sufficient forces will be deployed on all major roads and at predetermined distances from the city, to protect transports delivering supplies to Moscow and returning back home’. One of the proclamations concluded: ‘Inhabitants of towns and countryside, and you, labourers and craftsmen … you are called on to respond to the paternal plans of His Majesty the emperor and King and to contribute with him to the well-being of all.’152 Beauvollier recalled that ‘Napoleon sent commissioners to engage the Russian peasants to bring their goods to Moscow twice a week as before, and assured them that they would be well paid. He also ordered all the church bells that had survived the fire to be rung so as to show to these villages that worship continued interrupted.’153

  But Napoleon’s hopes for peasants delivering supplies came to nothing. They had already removed or destroyed most of their foodstuffs, preferring to die of starvation than profit from supplying the occupying forces. The few who dared to trade with the enemy paid dearly for it. In October the Moscow municipal officials P. Korobov and I. Perepletchikov learned at first-hand how dangerous it was to procure provisions outside Moscow. They were each given cash and proclamations and sent to nearby villages with a military escort (ten French soldiers led by an NCO). Korobov was captured by the Cossacks, while Perepletchikov was beaten and robbed by his own escort.154 Korbeletskii also noted in his journal that, persuaded by de Lesseps’ promises of handsome rewards, some Muscovites travelled to a ‘distant village to buy bread … but one of them never returned, while the other barely escaped from the peasants’.155 Another municipal official, Kolchugin, was not optimistic about the prospect of venturing outside the city: ‘If a foraging convoy encountered Russian forces,’ he mused, ‘there would be a battle and neither bullets nor canisters would distinguish whether the Russian is there by choice or coercion.’156 Indeed, the Russian peasants themselves particularly targeted those suspected of collaborating with the enemy. When Russian merchants appeared at the village of Guslitsy to procure supplies for the Grand Army, they were all slaughtered. Alexey Olenin noted in his memoirs that Russian peasants captured a Russian collaborator and buried him alive.157

  There were also instances when peasants from nearby villages came to sell their wares in Moscow and deeply regretted it. Thus the peasants of Ostankino came to Moscow with thirty cart-loads of oats and flour, which were duly bought and paid for. Having received their money they left, with instructions to come again as soon as possible. But scarcely had they left Moscow than they were assaulted by Allied soldiers, who first robbed them and then compelled them to return to the city, where they were put to forced labour.158 Beauvollier saw how many peasants went to Moscow with carts loaded with hay, straw and provisions, only to have their horses and carts seized. ‘These good people, indignant at such unfair conduct, returned to their villages and came no more. Instead, they turned other inhabitants against the French by spreading stories of the mistreatment they had experienced and, especially, by portraying the French as wicked men who had no fear of desecrating churches.’159 The famous engraver François Vendramini, who stayed in Moscow and befriended some French officers, was visiting a French colonel when a group of French soldiers brought in a Russian peasant. Pale and in tears, the peasant held in his hand a printed paper stained with blood. He told the French colonel that he had read the proclamation encouraging peasants to bring their produce to sell in Moscow; believing in the promise of safety, and hoping to turn a quick profit, he and his brother loaded three carts with food. Just as they approached the city, however, they were attacked by soldiers who robbed them of everything and killed his brother when he tried to defend his property. The peasant then held out the proclamation stained with his brother’s blood and demanded justice. ‘The French colonel was infuriated by this crime and assured the peasant that he would investigate and severely punish the perpetrators if they belonged to his regiment. He also promised to compensate him fully for his losses, but admitted that he could not bring back his brother.’160 As the reports of such mistreatment spread, hardly anyone had any desire to deal with the French authorities and, in spite of all their efforts, de Lesseps and the municipal government of
Moscow could not succeed in establishing an open and well-supplied market; the members of the municipal government themselves were horrified at ‘the thought of participating in provisioning the enemy, which was against the oath to the emperor and against our Fatherland and conscience’.161

  As the days passed, foraging expeditions had to range ever further afield and required ever heavier escorts. On 30 September Laugier recorded in his diary that ‘yesterday about 1,000 soldiers, 200 cavalrymen and two cannon’ were dispatched on a foraging expedition along the road to Tver. ‘The greater part of the villages we passed through were totally deserted and had been searched from top to bottom by earlier reconnaissances.’162 These foraging parties travelled as far as 20–30 miles from Moscow before encountering any still intact settlements. By mid-October ‘our purveyors were no longer able to bring back anything either for the men or for the horses,’ lamented Louis François Lejeune, a staff officer in Davout’s headquarters. ‘The accounts they gave of the dangers they had faced were appalling, and, according to them, we were hemmed in by a perfect network of Cossacks and armed peasants, who would kill any isolated parties of French, and from whom we ourselves might find it difficult to escape.’163

  Life in the Devastated City

  As the golden autumn days succeeded one another, life in Moscow was full of misery and hardship. ‘Although the city has become a bit more peaceful,’ wrote Tutolmin to the Dowager Empress, ‘one cannot fully convey how destitute the city residents are: they are suffering the utmost deprivation in food, clothing and shelter.’164 Priest Bozhanov recalled that everyone was ‘deprived of the very staff of life – bread – which was the very last resort of prolonging one’s life. Desperate to find any kind of food, we tried everything. We gathered, ground up and boiled the few burned kernels of grain but even the healthiest among us found it difficult to consume it.’165 The Russian seminarian was astonished to see the Allied soldiers’ slaughter-house at the Petrovskii Monastery. Animal intestines, bones and other by-products lay in heaps and produced an unbearable stench. Noticing him ‘holding his nose and staring wildly’, one of the men in the crowd told me sarcastically, ‘You, brother, seem to be well fed and judging from your reaction, you might be of noble pedigree. But we are already used to this stench and come here every day with the hope of laying hands on some of these entrails to feed our orphan souls.’166