The Burning of Moscow
Page 29
As well as trying to persuade the country people to bring their goods to market, Napoleon sought to induce the inhabitants to return to the city. While some residents did return, the majority were naturally out of reach of his proclamations and, even if they could read them, what incentive would they have had to return to a devastated city that was occupied by enemy forces? Some inhabitants of Moscow who had fled the city on the eve of the occupation did return because they ‘wanted to visit their churches and kneel down before the altars,’ observed one German officer:
But they found to their horror that the [churches] had been desecrated and turned into stables. Others searched for their homes and found ashes instead. The public walks in the city presented a terrible spectacle. Every step trod on dead and charred bodies, and the corpses of incendiaries hung from many half-burnt trees. Amid these horrors one could see the wretched inhabitants, who had come back and had no roof over their heads, collecting the iron or lead that had once covered the roofs of palaces. They did this so as to build huts in the numerous gardens, and they stilled their pangs of hunger with raw vegetables which our soldiers had overlooked.167
Among the poorest class of Moscow’s inhabitants there were a large number of women, who, as one German officer put it, ‘believed they could derive benefit from the downfall and plundering of the city. Many of us took up these creatures who then became housekeepers in houses which had been spared by the flames. Among them were girls who deserved respect and sympathy on account of their upbringing and, in particular, their misfortune. Hunger and want drove them to offer themselves.’168 Vionnet de Maringone adds that among the fallen women there were
some honest women who were nearly dying of hunger and were obliged to surrender themselves at their discretion to the first comers. As a result, one saw nobody except these creatures in every house that was still standing. They had installed themselves as if they owned the houses; they took possession of the ladies’ adornments and they accepted as presents, in payment for their favours, often very bitter ones, rich dresses which the army had pillaged and silver bullion. This contrasted sharply with their figures, their manners and their clothes. On my walks I often came across old men who were in tears at seeing this appalling disorder.169
For the Muscovites, the best guarantee of safety against marauders was to have a high-ranking officer in residence. Neighbours sent messengers to alert these senior officers whenever soldiers or a gang tried to loot their houses, and more often than not an armed patrol was dispatched to put an end to any such criminal enterprise. There are also numerous accounts of Allied troops coming to the rescue of families in hardship or individuals in distress.170 But not all crimes involved the soldiers of the Grande Armée and there are plenty of examples of Russian commoners and stragglers robbing and stealing from their own brethren. Even before the fall of Moscow Rostopchin complained in a letter to his wife: ‘Our soldiers go pillaging under the very noses of their generals. I saw them break down the door of a house and remove all the contents … I believe the inhabitants are less afraid of the enemy than of their own protectors.’171 In fact, so many Russian stragglers roamed about the streets in the days after the abandonment of Moscow that, according to Montesquiou-Fezensac, he alone had detained about fifty of them and sent them to headquarters. ‘The general to whom I reported this expressed his regret that I had not shot them all,’ Montesquiou-Fezensac observed, ‘and instructed me to dispose of them in this way in future.’172 Another eyewitness described Allied troops encountering ‘straggler Russian soldiers for whom the lure of plunder and liquor proved to be greater than the fear of the enemy. As the result the two sides would exchange fire but their fighting quickly ended as neither was there to fight.’173 In some instances French and Russian troops could be seen drunk or passed out next to each other in wine cellars.174 Maxim Sakov was ‘horrified’ when he discovered that a group of Russian stragglers and wounded soldiers lived clandestinely near the Khovanskii Hill on the bank of the Yauza river. ‘They were marauders,’ he specified, ‘and lived by robbing the passers-by.’175 Sakov witnessed how these ‘wounded and run-away Russian soldiers robbed an unfortunate [Russian] passer-by, broke his hands and legs and then tried to beat him to death’. Outraged by such brutality, Sakov and his comrades decided to intervene. With clubs in hand, they went in search of the soldiers and found ‘twelve men lying in the grass and bushes with hands and heads bandaged [to look injured]. My men were so enraged that they charged at them … and punished them without mercy. Afterwards we found numerous articles of clothing and other items that these wounded soldiers had plundered; in fact there were two wagons full of loot …’176
Much of the plundering was perpetrated by commoners, who exploited the chaos and disorder to enrich themselves. As families desperately struggled to hide their remaining property behind fake walls or in the ground, their neighbours, acquaintances and, in the case of affluent families, servants naturally observed everything and later raided these locations. Anisya Poluyaroslavtseva complained that her family fretted about leaving their house because ‘our renters were not trustworthy people – they had seen where we had hidden our property and my parents feared that they would take advantage of this’.177 A serf woman of the wealthy Soimonov family recounted how, on the eve of the enemy occupation of Moscow, she and the other servants concealed the family’s possessions behind a specially built fake wall in the cellar. Just as they were finishing the wall, an ‘acquaintance from the neighbouring estate’ came in and begged them to store his possessions in this safe place. After the Grande Armée departed, the family returned home only to discover that their safe place had been discovered and plundered, not by the enemy but rather by that very ‘acquaintance’ who had begged them for help.178 One French guard officer, billeted in a nobleman’s house, was pleased to find a steward who spoke a little French, but was disappointed to hear that ‘his masters had had everything taken away’. Yet the officer could not but feel that ‘the steward had helped himself to whatever was left and would tell his masters, upon their return, that the French had taken it’. His suspicions only increased as the days went by. ‘One day I asked him for a glass of wine,’ the officer recalled, ‘but he told me there were only twenty-eight bottles remaining in the cellar. The very next morning my sentry told me that during the night he had seen the servant loading some wine and other items on to a cart and making off.’179
Contemporary Russian reports indicate that among those ransacking the Orthodox churches were the Old Believers, a dissenting Orthodox sect formed in the wake of the church reforms initiated by the Russian Patriarch Nikon in 1652–1666. Their history from the Nikonian revolution to the reign of Catherine the Great is one of persecution, flight, dispersal and factionalism. They considered Nikon’s reforms a heresy and a sign that the Devil had taken control of the Russian church and state. Clinging to the old liturgy and traditions, the Old Believers suffered from government persecution that involved extremes of torture and incarceration. They felt alienated from the Russian community and hundreds of thousands of them had fled to the far-flung provinces of the empire, where they had set up self-sufficient communities. Through perseverance and hard work, they prospered in trade, commerce and industry, causing the Russian government, so rigorous in matters of political submission and ideological conformity, to soften its stance towards the sect, which was successfully expanding a Russian presence into the hinterland of the empire. The Old Believers became exempt from many of the commercial, military and labour obligations levied on Orthodox peasants and merchants, while Empress Catherine the Great invited them to return from the wild frontier lands to the heartland of Russia. In the early 1770s the first Old Believer community was set up at the Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery; true to her ‘enlightened despotism’, the Empress legalized this community, which was soon followed by another Old Believer settlement in the suburban village of Rogozhsk. Both communities grew and prospered over the next three decades. Early in his reign Emperor Alexander co
ntinued his grandmother’s policies and extended the Old Believers’ privileges, permitting the expansion of their commercial activities. By 1812 many of Moscow’s manufacturing enterprises had been founded and were managed by the Old Believers.
Despite this toleration and the economic concessions they were granted, suspicion of the state remained deeply rooted in the Old Believers’ philosophy. They retained vivid memories of past persecution and were well aware that the state could always reverse its policy and launch a new wave of harassment, not least because the Russian authorities still perceived the sect’s social and political teachings – which included beliefs in the democratic role of the people, spiritual equality and self-government – as a real threat. In 1809–1810 Alexander became convinced that tolerating the Preobrazhenskoe community only led to ‘heretical discussions’. The Old Believers, for example, rejected the government’s attempts to portray Napoleon as the Antichrist – in fact, they believed that Emperor Alexander himself was the Antichrist, and a police search of the Preobrazhenskoe community produced a portrait of the Russian Emperor with horns and a tail. Consequently, the Old Believers found it hard to believe in the Russian Orthodox Church’s efforts to convince the populace that Napoleon was the Antichrist. Despite the official propaganda, some Old Believers viewed Napoleon as ‘the lion in the valley of Jehosaphat who was destined to overthrow the false emperor’. It was no surprise, then, that at least some Old Believers welcomed the arrival of the French army. Soon after the fall of Moscow Rostopchin was already receiving reports that ‘the [Old Believers’] church and community are intact because they welcomed the French with traditional bread and salt and appealed to them for protection’.180 In later years an Old Believer tradition claimed that Napoleon personally visited the Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery and promised to take care of their community.181
The Old Believers seem to have exploited the occupation of Moscow to settle old scores with their Orthodox opponents. Many of them raided nearby Russian Orthodox churches and stole icons and other relics. At the same time some leaders of the Old Believers community collaborated with the enemy and joined the Administration that Napoleon established upon his return to Moscow. ‘The Raskolniki are playing a major role in all affairs,’ grumbled Alexander Bulgakov, while Rostopchin informed Emperor Alexander that the sect enjoyed Napoleon’s protection and eagerly supported him in return.182
The members of Moscow’s French community, who had hoped to experience some leniency at the hands of their compatriots, were to be bitterly disappointed as they were robbed as mercilessly as the rest of the city populace. ‘No distinction was made between the French and the Russians, foreigners and compatriots,’ wailed one French resident of Moscow. ‘Everyone was looted equally in the most despicable manner.’183 Ysarn had been riding in his carriage when some French cavalry troopers forced him to climb out. Already robbed once before, Ysarn tried to avoid a repeat by telling the troopers that he was a Frenchman like them. But they laughed in his face: ‘Why should we care that you are a Frenchman? What are you doing here? Only some [expletive] Frenchmen who are against us would be here. You are probably an émigré!’184 Lacointe de Laveau recounted the story of a French soldier who robbed a French family of everything; noticing a pretty ring on the young woman’s hand, he threatened to cut off her finger if she refused to give it up immediately.185 During the first few days after the fires subsided, Surrugues reported, people hoped that peace and order would finally return to the city but they were to be sadly disappointed. ‘In the first week [of the French occupation] no one could leave the house without being publicly abused and robbed. The unfortunate survivors had learned this quite well. The second week did not inspire any confidence either. Anything that survived the fires now became the target of a new wave of plundering … Soldiers respected neither the decency of women nor the innocence of children in the cradle, nor the grey hairs of old age.’186 Similar sentiments are echoed by Labaume, who witnessed how ‘excesses of avarice were joined by the worst depravations of debauchery. Neither the nobility of rank nor the candour of youth nor the tears of beauty were respected in the rush of cruel licentiousness.’187 Encountering some French Muscovites on his tour of the city, Napoleon did his best to alleviate their suffering. He instructed Berthier ‘to provide all French residents of Moscow – men, women and children – with housing near the Kremlin’. Three trustees were selected to represent and direct the French community.188
But we should not imagine Moscow’s civilian populace as peaceful men and women who tacitly bore the brunt of the violence. Far from it: many Muscovites chose to fight back against abuse and mistreatment. In some instances this took the form of passive resistance, such as concealing information or refusing to reveal the whereabouts of food and water. Roman Soltyk tried using his knowledge of the Russian language to gain a better understanding of what was happening in town. But as soon as ‘our Polish uniform revealed us as enemies’, the Russians would respond ‘laconically or else evasively’. He was particularly impressed by the women at the college for young ladies, where the Poles came in search of provisions. The college principal pretended that she could not understand any foreign languages, even though, as Soltyk noted, ‘teaching her aristocratic charges French, the second language of the elite, must have been one of her primary duties’. As the Poles complained about the lack of food, ‘a 12-year-old girl who had been looking out of the window but following our conversation, turned around quickly and said vehemently, “Food for the French! The putty of these windows is good enough to nourish them!”’ Soltyk was impressed by the girl’s fortitude: ‘One could hardly hope to subdue a population when children of twelve were so agitated,’ he observed later.189
But Russian opposition went beyond moral resistance. Many Allied soldiers who went foraging or pillaging on their own were attacked and killed by the embittered townsfolk. Curious to see what was happening outside, Anisya Poluyaroslavtseva frequently left her shelter to peek at the street. On one occasion she watched as a Frenchman walking in the street was suddenly approached by a Russian, who struck him with a large stone. As the Frenchman fell to the ground, blood gushing from his head, his attacker jumped on him and strangled him.190 Anna Grigorievna, a shopkeeper, described how her family was hiding in the cellar in those dreadful days when, as ill luck would have it, an enemy soldier found the cellar and forced the door. ‘Over his shoulder he carried a huge cudgel,’ Anna later recalled. ‘He brandished it in his left hand and with his right seized my father by the throat. I rushed at the brigand, snatched his cudgel and struck him on the nape of the neck. He dropped, whereupon everyone fell on him, killing him in an instant and dragging his body off to the pond.’ Over the next few days her family dispatched quite a few ‘uninvited guests’ into this pond and two wells, sometimes as many as four or five at once.191 One day an acquaintance of her father’s came for help: he had enemy soldiers billeted in his house and they were inquiring whether there was any means of procuring some fresh fish. ‘The merchant knew that our pond, which belonged to General Kiselev’s wife, had some carp in it. He asked my father, “Is there any way of casting my net into your pond?” “No need to ask permission,” my father replied. “The pond does not belong to us. But the question is, what are you going to catch in your net, Gregor Nikitich? A carp – or a trooper?”’192
Years later Apollon Sysoev remembered vividly how his family fled from the fires into a large garden, where they found many people sitting with their possessions piled up. The garden was a large one and the people were seated in small groups of fifteen to twenty, close to one another. From time to time a group of Allied soldiers would appear, go round everybody and take anything they came across. ‘They had muskets and swords and we had our bare hands,’ Sysoev lamented. However, things changed when isolated Allied soldiers attempted to rob them. ‘We received them in our own way,’ Sysoev described:
I recall seeing one dashing young lad going along in search of gain. He did not touch us, but went on a
nd started to take someone else’s things. All at once several men set on him and then the fun began: our people shouted [demanding to kill him] and he shouted begging for mercy. But how could he expect mercy when the people themselves were homeless and starving, and were now, on top of everything else, being robbed. I saw them drag the wretched man off somewhere, and afterwards return without him. ‘We finished him off,’ they said, ‘We strangled him and put him down a well.’193
While searching for provisions amidst the burned-out ruins, Andrei Alekseyev saw a Russian man dressed in commoner’s clothing approaching the gates to a wealthy merchant’s estate, and calling to a French soldier, who was walking nearby, to follow him inside. Alekseyev decided to take a look at what they were doing and was startled to see how the Russian gesticulated to the Frenchman that there was some treasure hidden inside a well; when the latter tried to peer inside the well, the Russian pushed him into the deep shaft. Alekseyev ‘confronted the man. “Why did you kill him? He did not even threaten you?” He looked at me: “It seems you have not lost your wife and none of your family members suffered from their bullets. And nor have you seen their horses inside our temples.”’194 G. Kozlovskii described groups of peasants, ‘each carrying an iron [bar] over his shoulder’, walking around the city and attacking anyone who looked foreign or behaved in a foreign manner. As he encountered one such group, he overheard ‘one peasant say to the other, “Hey, look, isn’t that a Frenchman?” At that moment I came up to a church and started to pray, so the other answered him, “No, he is from here, one of ours.” And so the prayer saved me.’ Less fortunate was the ‘sick Frenchman’, who was walking along a street when a couple of peasants came towards him. Approaching them, the Frenchman ‘asked “Where is the hospital?” One of the peasants glanced at him, muttered “How long do we have to put up with this!” and hit him over the head with an iron bar. And that was the end of him.’195