The Burning of Moscow

by Alexander Mikaberidze

  During the night preceding the retreat from Voronovo, Rostopchin, Bennigsen, Yermolov, and various generals and officers, with the English general [Wilson] and Lord Tyrconnel, his aide-de-camp, bivouacked round a fire in front of the palace stabling. Rostopchin had prevented all sleep by his bitter complaints against Kutuzov ‘for his evacuation of Moscow without giving him the “covenanted notice”, and for having thus deprived the authorities and inhabitants of an occasion to display, not Roman, but more than Roman – Russian dignity by a municipal and popular ignition of their city before it had been contaminated by an invader’s presence.

  It was in this state of depression that he decided to set fire with his own hands to the palace that all so much admired. But there is one more factor that we cannot overlook: Rostopchin burnt his estate at Voronovo after it became clear that both his large houses in Moscow had escaped the flames. This would have placed him in a rather awkward position: the fire he helped to bring about had brought hardship and misery to some quarter of a million people, while he personally suffered no harm. He must have felt an urge to do something to remedy this.

  Some Allied participants described finding incriminating evidence in the governor’s palace in Moscow. Bourgoing recalled that when General Delaborde was lodged in Rostopchin’s palace, the French troops found ‘physical evidence’ that seemed to implicate the governor in deliberate preparations for the fire. Bourgoing encountered ‘some poor people’ near the house whom he ‘gradually reassured about our intentions, and some of them even offered us their services. We need these men to learn about local circumstances.’ Their help became particularly valuable when some of them removed from inside the stove ovens and pipes ‘an assortment of small wooden barrels filled with incendiary material’. Bourgoing specified that these were not the usual ‘barrels’, but rather cylindrically shaped, single pieces of pine wood, carved and rounded on both ends; they were 9 inches long and almost 2½ in diameter.46 Paul Berthezène also remembered seeing these weird items that ‘by their shape and size, resembled tobacco rolls [carotte de tabac], about 9 or 10 inches long and 2 inches in diameter; once lit, they burned even in water’.47 Similar testimony comes from Bausset, the prefect of the imperial palace, who was informed about the discovery of ‘the small infernal machines’ at the governor’s palace.48

  In his La Vérité, Rostopchin denied the presence of any special explosives at his palace, arguing that if any were found, they could ‘have been placed there after my departure to provide additional proof to the claim that there had been a plan to burn Moscow’.49 He observed that there was no need for special combustible materials to ignite the city since straw and hay would have been within reach of any would-be incendiary. Assuming the Allied participants were telling the truth, these explosive devices were most probably intended for Leppich’s flying machine, which was supposed to conduct air attacks against the Grande Armée and drop these explosives devices from the air. Throughout the late summer Rostopchin and Obreskov supervised the preparation of munitions for Leppich’s machine and their letters contain numerous references to incendiary and explosive materials. These supplies were largely stored in Moscow and their presence would naturally have surprised the French, many of whom interpreted them as evidence for the deliberate Russian planning for the fire. As early as 15 September the French authorities were informed about the large volume of sulphuric acid that Muscovite merchant Auguste Prêtre was contracted to deliver. The French agent suspected that it could have been used in ‘secret operations conducted by civilian and military authorities of Moscow’.50 In reality, it was one of the many acquisitions that Rostopchin had made for Leppich’s project.

  Incendiary Criminals

  The letters and memoirs of French, German, Polish and other soldiers and officers offer contrasting insights into the Moscow fire, but they do agree on one thing: there were hundreds, even thousands, of people running around the city and igniting buildings. ‘The Russian governor Rostopchin wished to ruin this fine city when he saw it abandoned by the Russian army,’ the 19th Bulletin proclaimed on 16 September. ‘He had armed 3,000 malefactors, whom he had taken from the prisons. He also summoned together 6,000 men and distributed arms among them from the arsenal.’ A day later the 20th Bulletin repeated: ‘The Russians set fire to the money market, the bazaar and the hospital. On the 16th, a violent wind started blowing; 3,000 to 4,000 brigands set fires in the city in 500 places at once, by orders of Governor Rostopchin … The majority of the houses are made of wood; the fire spread with prodigious rapidity, it was an ocean of flames … This is the crime of Rostopchin, carried out by felons liberated from the prisons.’51

  Napoleon’s bulletins played an important role in shaping the public memory of the Moscow fire. The letters of French soldiers writing home from Moscow often repeated the information contained in the bulletins, although their estimates of the numbers of incendiaries involved in the fire varied wildly. One intendancy official informed his father that the conflagration was the handiwork of ‘2,000 convicts’,52 while on 28 September Sous-Lieutenant Jean Dauve of the 12th line (1st Corps) wrote to his father that the fire was spread by a ‘vast number of Russian soldiers and convicts’.53 Likewise, Lieutenant Pierre-Laurent Paradis of the 25th Line (1st Corps) thought as many as ‘10,000’ convicts had set fires in various parts of the city,54 while the wife of another intendancy official learned from her husband that it was in fact ‘20,000 convicts, as well as [Russian] soldiers and officers’, who carried out this action.55

  The belief in the widespread involvement of convicts in the burning of Moscow was repeated and buttressed in dozens of memoirs of French, German, Polish and other participants, who recounted their experiences years after the event. In a passage typical of other Allied memoirs, Montesquiou-Fezensac described how Rostopchin ‘collected about 3,000 or 4,000 men from the dregs of the people, amongst them were several criminals who had been set at liberty for the occasion. Combustible materials were distributed to them, and the agents of police were ordered to conduct them into every part of the city.’56 These memoirists varied in their estimates of the numbers of convicts involved in igniting the fires, with some referring to as few as 1,000 (Fantin des Odoards) and others to as many as ‘10,000 criminals unleashed to burn down the city’ (General François Roguet).57 Similar claims can be found in the memoirs of French residents of Moscow. Chevalier d’Ysarn, for example, recounted one of the stories he had heard after the fire:

  A few days before the Grande Armée’s arrival, a tramp in prison outfit and with his head half shaved appeared at the doors of a German locksmith, Gourny, who lived in the Nemetskaya Sloboda. The mistress of the house took pity on the wretch and gave him some food and money. Before leaving, the convict then told her, ‘Madame, in gratitude for your kindness to me, I will give you a piece of advice – leave the city as soon as possible.’ ‘But why?’ inquired the woman. The convict initially refused to explain but, pressed with questions, he finally declared that ‘all convicts had been released without exception and compelled to swear an oath to burn the city; to reinforce their oath, they had been pledged in front of the icons of the saints.58

  It was even said that, upon their release, Rostopchin gave a short speech instructing the convicts what to do. F. Vaudoncourt put the following words in Rostopchin’s mouth: ‘You have, of course, committed crimes but can now atone for them by doing a great service to the state.’59

  Such claims, frequently cited in later studies, are almost entirely fictional and documents in the Russian archives reveal a very different reality. There could not have been ‘thousands’ of convicts roaming the streets of Moscow, since the total number of detainees held in the city’s prisons was far short of the numbers claimed in the bulletins and memoirs. There were just 63160 convicts (including more than 90 women and 110 military detainees) in the Prison Castle and another 173 (including 26 women)61 in the Temporary (Debt) Prison.62 The majority of these convicts were evacuated before the city was abandoned. L
ate on 13 September Rostopchin instructed the civilian governor of Moscow and the city’s chief of police to make arrangements for their transportation to Ryazan and Nizhnii Novgorod.63 The detainees of the Prison Castle were removed under escort (Major Nittelhorst and a squad of soldiers from the newly established 10th Infantry Regiment) to Nizhnii Novgorod.64 Although the Russian historian A. Popov argues that this order was not carried out and the convicts were simply released, Alexander Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii cites good evidence to the contrary: in mid-October the governor of Nizhnii Novgorod acknowledged the arrival of 540 convicts.65 The eighty-seven ‘missing’ convicts probably included the ‘eighty sick men’ mentioned in an official report,66 and it is possible that they were left somewhere along the route to convalesce.

  This still leaves the 170 convicts held in the Temporary Prison. The word ‘convict’ might conjure up visions of hardened and ruthless criminals, but the detainees at the Temporary Prison hardly fitted this stereotype. They came mostly from Moscow’s servitor class and peasantry,67 but they also included a merchant’s son, six officials, one retired officer, etc. All had been convicted for minor offences, such as failing to repay a debt. Given the nature of their crimes, Rostopchin and N.V. Obreskov, the civilian governor of Moscow, chose simply to release them ‘under written assurance to appear [before the authorities] upon request’.68 In the morning of 14 September V.A. Obreskov, Rostopchin’s aide-de-camp, conveyed the order to the Temporary Prison and the prisoners were released.69 It was probably these people that Alexander Bulgakov saw ‘running away from the prison’ late in the afternoon, prompting him to wonder ‘whether they were released or simply escaped’.70

  Rostopchin himself was not present when the prisoners were released, and therefore could not have made any speeches, as some memoirists claimed. Many, if not all, of these convicts had undoubtedly stayed in the city and some might have participated in the pillaging. But there is no tangible evidence – aside from the French court proceedings that will be discussed shortly – that these convicts were instructed or compelled to perform any actions intended to destroy the city. Aside from the memoirs of the Allied participants, who could not in any case have witnessed such an event, there is no evidence to back up the suggestion made by one modern historian that ‘some eight hundred common-law prisoners’ were given ‘Congreve fuses’ and instructed to set fire to buildings occupied by the French invaders.71 Confessions made by ‘incendiaries’, and cited in the memoirs of Allied participants, must be treated cautiously. They were made under duress, and some detainees, in an effort to secure more lenient treatment, might simply have claimed that they were following orders from above, especially since they had already been exposed to the governor’s inflammatory broadsheets. Discussing this issue, Rostopchin correctly wondered how ‘can one really believe that I would have given freedom to criminals and convicts provided that they burned the city, and that these malefactors would then actually execute my orders in my absence and in front of the entire enemy army?’72 As one Russian historian astutely pointed out, ‘Why would people detained at [the Temporary Prison] for debt default and other minor transgressions suddenly turn into the most disreputable criminals, eager to burn, murder and plunder?’73

  It is difficult to agree with scholars who find it suspicious and sinister that Rostopchin, beset as he was with numerous problems, found time to consider the convicts’ fate and order their release. What else was he supposed to do? In the evening of 13 September he finally received a clear indication that the city would not be defended and immediately began a flurry of preparations to evacuate the city. The issue of the convicts was just one of the myriad concerns he faced in the few hours remaining before the enemy’s arrival, and the decision to release them seems to have been something of an after-thought; as Zemtsov aptly observed, ‘hardly anyone [in the governor’s circle] even remembered them until then’.74 Evacuating convicts would have required additional resources – a military escort, daily allowances for food and transportation75 – and releasing them was clearly the most convenient way of dealing with a group that did not present any threat to society but could not simply be left incarcerated in the soon-to-be-occupied city.

  In the first two weeks after the Allied occupation of Moscow hundreds of Muscovites were shot or hanged in extrajudicial killings all across the city. Allied participants later claimed that all those executed were involved in incendiary activities, but Russian eyewitnesses paint a more sinister picture. ‘The French sought scapegoats and kept finding them among the Russians, who were then shot without further investigation or hanged on posts … Many innocent lives were thus lost,’ lamented one Muscovite.76 This is hardly surprising considering the chaotic nature of those days. There is a Russian proverb, ‘Fear has magnifying eyes’,77 and this was particularly true for the Allied soldiers caught in the fiery inferno, where any local was perceived as a suspect. There are numerous accounts by Allied soldiers and officers describing the swift justice brought upon ‘convicts’, ‘incendiaries’ and ‘criminals’, but the liberal use of these terms reveals that the Allied soldiers made no distinction between actual offenders and civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ever-curious Anisya Poluyaroslavetseva was among the Russians who witnessed public hangings at one of the city squares:

  There I stood and watched as these villainous [French] dragged our men to the gallows. They claimed these were incendiaries who had been caught. But these were no incendiaries. One of them, for example, was a half-blind old serf from the Korsakov’s estate. What was there for him to burn when he already had one foot in the grave? The [French] simply grabbed the first people they encountered and denounced them as incendiaries. As the ropes were placed around their necks, our poor men began to pray and many even cried. But the villains did not even blink – they hanged some, shot others and left their bodies on the ground as a warning. I witnessed everything and was so frightened that I could not move or breathe.78

  Among the papers of Alexander Bulgakov, who directed the Moscow Post Office, there is a report from late September claiming that the Allied authorities promised monetary compensation to any incendiary who willingly appeared before them. Coveting what seemed to be easy money, eight Muscovite ‘drunkards’ came to claim the reward but were quickly arrested, charged with incendiary activity and hanged.79 The Russian officer Perovskii, who had been detained during the armistice negotiations on 14 September, was initially locked up inside a church in the Kremlin complex. In the turmoil of the first few days he was completely forgotten about by the French authorities, only to be accidentally ‘rediscovered’ by a patrol. Without inquiring into the details, a French captain ordered Perovskii placed with other detainees suspected of incendiary activity, effectively sentencing him to death. Fortunately for Perovskii, his fluency in French saved him and he was able to explain what had happened to him. But hundreds of Muscovites were less fortunate. Anyone suspected of incendiary activity – whatever that might constitute – or merely looking suspicious (for example, having a bushy beard, a common feature among Russian peasants) was treated mercilessly. Such violence was further buttressed by an order of 16 September that provided a legal sanction for the execution of suspects in incendiary activity. Bourgogne remembered that such orders were ‘carried out at once and a little open space near the Place du Gouvernement was called by us the Place des Pendus, as here a number of incendiaries were shot and hanged on the trees’.80 Another officer saw a dozen or so Russians hanged in the square where his unit was deployed, and noted that many more were summarily court-martialled and hanged from the gates of nearby houses.81 In some cases simply looking like a convict was enough to bring arrest or death. Bourgogne admitted that some Russians were arrested even though ‘nothing about their actions showed that they were incendiaries’. Years after the event one participant still remembered how, upon encountering a crowd of suspicious-looking Muscovites, ‘our Lieutenant Serraris … charged into the courtyard of a palace and thrust his sabre
between the shoulderblades of one such wretch. The sabre broke and our Russian took a dozen more steps with the best part of a Guardsman’s sword stuck in him. The others scattered in order to try to save their lives, but we brought them crashing down with our muskets.’

  The hapless Muscovites found themselves caught between two extremes. To survive in the ruins of the city, they had to make fires to cook meals and stay warm at night. Yet such an act could easily see them branded as incendiaries and might cost them their lives. ‘We execute anyone we find igniting fires,’ wrote an officer of the 1st Tirailleurs of the Imperial Guard. ‘They are then left in public squares with inscriptions indicating their crimes … I cannot give any further details since they are horrible.’82 Ysarn was stunned by ‘a change that had taken place in Moscow’ within days of the enemy army’s arrival. ‘Everywhere the streets and yards were strewn with corpses, mostly of bearded men. Dead horses, cows and dogs littered the streets, mingled with the corpses of hanged men: these were incendiaries who had been shot and then hanged. We walked past all this with inconceivable indifference.’83

  In late September the French authorities organized well publicized court proceedings against the incendiaries. On 20 September Napoleon announced the arrest of hundreds of incendiaries who ‘were armed with fuses 6 inches long, which they had between two pieces of wood. They also had explosives, which they threw upon the roofs of the houses.’84 A special Military Commission85 was organized after Napoleon’s return from the Petrovskii Palace and it convened on 23–24 September in the house of Prince Dolgorukii.86 Of the numerous individuals suspected of incendiary activity, the Military Commission tried only twenty-six suspects,87 whose cases were presented by Chef-d’escadron François Weber of the Gendarmerie d’élite. The commission heard testimonies from eyewitnesses and examined the evidence, which included ‘fuses, rockets, phosphoric pellets,88 sulphur and other combustible materials found partly on the accused and partly already placed in numerous houses’.89 The accused were given a chance to address the Military Commission, which conducted its proceedings in both French and Russian.90 Afterwards, members of the commission deliberated behind closed doors before reaching verdicts on all twenty-six cases. They condemned ten individuals to death, while the remaining sixteen individuals, whose crimes were not ‘sufficiently proven’, were sent to prison. On 25 September the condemned men were all taken to the Novodevichii Monastery, lined up against the walls and shot by firing squad. Their corpses were then tied to posts under inscriptions reading ‘Incendiares de Moscou’.91