As the Grande Armée’s marching columns reached the top of the Poklonnaia hill on the afternoon of 14 September, the men saw Moscow laid out at their feet. ‘Those who had reached the highest point were making signs to those who were still behind, shouting: “Moscow! Moscow!”’ remembered Sergeant Adrien Bourgogne of the Vélites of the Guard, and the columns quickened their pace, the men jostling each other to catch a glimpse of the goal of their seemingly endless trek. ‘At that moment,’ he recalled, ‘all the suffering, the dangers, the hardships, the privations, everything was forgotten and swept from our minds by thoughts of the pleasure of entering Moscow, of taking up comfortable winter quarters in it and of making conquests of another kind, for that is the character of the French soldier: from the fight to lovemaking, and from lovemaking to battle.’1
Before them lay one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and one which immediately struck them by its exoticism. ‘This capital looked to us like some fantastical creation, a vision from the thousand and one nights,’ remembered Captain Fantin des Odoards. According to statistics drawn up in January that year, it covered 34,337,304 square metres with its 2567 stone houses and 6584 wooden ones, 464 factories and workshops, its gardens, churches and monasteries, and had a population of 270,184. ‘This magnificent spectacle surpassed by far everything that our imagination had been able to conjure in terms of Asiatic splendour,’ wrote Lieutenant Julien Combe. ‘An incredible quantity of bell towers and domes painted in bright colours, topped with gilded crosses and linked to each other with chains which were also gilded, stood out even at a distance in the reddish tinge of the declining sun. The vast Kremlin, and its bell tower ending in a great cross which everyone claimed was of solid gold, but which was certainly of sparkling silver-gilt, dominated this magnificent picture.’2
Napoleon was surprised to find no delegation waiting to greet him. ‘It is customary, at the approach of a victorious general, for the civil authorities to present themselves at the gates of the city with the keys, in the interests of safeguarding the inhabitants and their property,’ wrote a French officer in Russian service. ‘The conqueror can then make known his intentions concerning the governance of the city, and order the authorities to continue to police it and exercise their pacific functions.’3 As nobody came out to meet him, Napoleon sent some of his aides into the city to seek out some officials with whom he could make arrangements for its occupation.
French troops had already entered the city. The first in, at about two o’clock in the afternoon, were a squadron of the 1st Polish Hussars, followed by other units of the 2nd Cavalry Corps. They picked their way through the streets, which were still full of Russian soldiers, some armed, some not, and reached the Kremlin, which they found occupied by a rabble which had raided the city arsenal. The defenders fired a few shots at the French, but were soon dispersed by a salvo from Colonel Seruzier’s artillery, and the French rode into the Kremlin.
While he waited, Napoleon surveyed the city through his telescope, asking Caulaincourt about various buildings. At length, one of Berthier’s aides appeared accompanied by a French merchant established in Moscow, and they conversed for a while. Other officers returned with whomever they had been able to find, but none of this satisfied Napoleon, who wanted someone official. In the end, it became plain that the Russians were simply leaving the city to him unconditionally. ‘The barbarians, they really mean to abandon all this?’ he exclaimed. ‘It is not possible. Caulaincourt, what do you think?’ ‘Your Majesty knows very well what I think,’ replied the Master of the Horse.4
Napoleon did not make his entry into Moscow that day, and spent the night in a wooden house just inside the city limits. At six o’clock on the following morning he rode into the Kremlin and took up his quarters there, while his Imperial Guard in full parade dress made a triumphant entry behind its regimental bands.
About two-thirds of the inhabitants had left, and the remainder, including many foreign tradesmen, servants and artisans, were cowering in their homes. Even members of the several-hundred-strong French colony kept out of the way. The shops were closed and there was little traffic in the streets, although there were still numbers of Russian soldiers wandering about.5
Sergeant Bourgogne, whose regiment marched in behind its band, was disappointed. ‘We were surprised not to see anyone, not even one lady, come to listen to our band, which was playing La Victoire est à Nous!,’ he recalled. ‘The solitude and the silence which greeted us there calmed down in a disagreeable way the frenzy of happiness which had made our blood race a few moments before, and caused it to be succeeded by a vague sense of anxiety,’ according to Lieutenant Fantin des Odoards. There was certainly something sinister about the inhabitants’ apparent refusal to acknowledge, let alone greet, the arrival of the French, and it made many of them uneasy. ‘This means we will soon be defending Paris,’ General Haxo remarked gloomily to Colonel Louis Lejeune as they rode through the silent streets.6
In a normal surrender, the city authorities would have been obliged to find all the men billets and make arrangements for feeding them, but in the present circumstances there was a free-for-all to find lodgings and obtain the necessities of life. Generals and groups of officers selected aristocrats’ palaces and noblemen’s town houses, while their men settled in as best they could in the surrounding houses, stables and gardens. Some did well. Roman Soltyk and a group of officers on Berthier’s staff found a fine-looking town house which turned out to be the property of Countess Musin-Pushkin, whose servants met them at the door. ‘At their head was a butler or intendant, dressed with elegance in silk stockings, who asked me in quite good French what I desired, adding that the Countess had before leaving given instructions that we should be suitably received, and had left behind a sufficient number of servants to wait on us,’ he recalled. She had also left behind her French dame de compagnie and a French governess, who entertained the officers at dinner.7
Napoleon had appointed Marshal Mortier Governor of Moscow with the stern injunction that there was to be no looting, and according to most sources, the French occupation began in a relatively civilised manner. As all the shops were closed and shuttered, the famished soldiers went from house to house looking for people from whom they could buy or beg victuals and clothing. Some were polite, and most were willing to pay. But as many of the owners had left, the men began to break into shops and private houses and help themselves. While not averse to taking money if they found it, they were at this stage preoccupied almost exclusively with filling their bellies and acquiring shirts, socks, boots and other essentials. ‘When soldiers enter a city that has been abandoned by its inhabitants, where everything is at their disposal, and take for themselves victuals and items of clothing, can one say that this is looting?’ wrote the Saxon Sub-Lieutenant Leissnig. ‘There was nobody there to give to the men that to which they had a right, so what could the French soldiers do?’8
But there were many instances of bad behaviour. I.S. Bozhanov, a priest attached to the Uspensky cathedral, was set upon by a group of soldiers and forced to take them to his house, where he had to feed them before they set about ransacking it. The monks of the Donskoi monastery were visited by a couple of hundred soldiers who rifled through the whole place, stealing anything of value they could find and beating up the monks. This kind of thing was soon to become the norm, thanks in large measure to the exalted nature of the city’s Russian Governor.
Rostopchin had several times let slip that if he did have to abandon Moscow, he would make sure the French found nothing but a pile of ashes. Even before he had been informed by Kutuzov that the army would not defend the city, he had made preparations for anything that might be useful to the French – food stores, granaries, warehouses containing cloth and leather – to be torched. He had also ordered all the fire pumps to be evacuated along with the men who manned them. Before leaving the city himself, he gave orders to Police Superintendent Voronenko to set fire not only to the supplies, but to everything he could.
Voronenko and his men went to work, and fires flared up at various points around the city as the last units of the Russian army were leaving. Voronenko seems to have ceased his work that night, but it was carried on the following day by others, probably from the city’s criminal elements as they went about looting, by careless French soldiers engaged in the same activity, and abetted by a strong wind which got up that day. As night fell on 15 September, large parts of the city were on fire, an alarming development as more than two-thirds of the houses were made of wood. Napoleon ordered Mortier to send out firefighting details and to arrest the incendiaries. There was not much the soldiers could do against the fires without pumps or other equipment, but they were more successful in arresting incendiaries, real or imagined, who were promptly shot.9
The fire raged out of control and spread to several districts of the city. By four o’clock on the morning on 16 September, as the sea of flame began lapping around the walls of the Kremlin, Napoleon was woken up by his fearful entourage. There were large stores of powder in the Kremlin arsenal, and it was feared that one of the sparks and embers swirling through the air might ignite it. He was finally prevailed upon to quit the city, and rode out along flaming streets, followed by most of his guard. He took up residence in the imperial country palace at Petrovskoie, a few kilometres outside Moscow.
From there, the spectacle was beautiful, if terrifying. It was possible to read at night and to feel the heat, and even at this distance the fire made a roar as of a distant hurricane. ‘It was the most grand, the most sublime, and the most terrific sight the world ever beheld!’ Napoleon reminisced on St Helena. The Dutch General Dedem de Gelder thought it ‘the most beautiful horror one could ever witness … I gazed in wonder all night at this unique spectacle, horrible, yet majestic and imposing.’ But inside the city, it was infernal. ‘The whole city was on fire, thick sheaves of flame of various colours rose up on all sides to the heavens, blotting out the horizon, sending in all directions a blinding light and a burning heat,’ in the words of Dr Larrey. ‘These sheaves of fire, swirling in every direction through the violence of the wind, were accompanied in their upward rise and onward progress by a dreadful whistling and by thunderous explosions resulting from the combustion of powders, saltpetre, resinous oils and alcohol contained in the houses and shops.’ Tin tiles from the roofs flew through the air, borne upward by the rush of hot air, while whole tin roofs and domes buckled with a bang and flew upwards in one piece.10
The fire had displaced not only Napoleon. Those inhabitants who had stayed put in their houses were flushed out by the onward march of the flames, and gathered in herds in the larger squares, trying to find a way out of the inferno. There were scenes of horror as the fire reached the hospitals where the Russian wounded from Borodino had been laid. ‘When the flames took hold on the buildings in which they were crammed,’ wrote Chambray, ‘they could be seen dragging themselves along corridors or throwing themselves out of windows, yelling with pain.’11
With Napoleon and most of the military authorities out of the way, there was nothing to stop the soldiers from looting. A city ablaze is not conducive to the niceties of respect for other people’s property, particularly if it has been abandoned by the owners. Even to those who might have had qualms, it seemed wrong to allow precious supplies and indeed precious objects to be destroyed. The instinctive desire to salvage such things from the flames turned everyone into looters. Officers and even generals joined in the frenzy – and frenzy it was, because there was no time to lose, and reticence was out of place in the face of the rapidly advancing flames.
And once they had rescued things from a burning house or shop, people felt little compunction in rescuing them from houses that were still intact, but which were condemned to burn as well. The German painter Albrecht Adam, attached to Prince Eugène’s staff, was shocked when a senior general took him into a palace which contained a fine art collection and exclaimed: ‘Come, Monsieur Adam, now we must become picture thieves!’ But it did not stop him from taking an Italian Madonna for himself. The situation degenerated rapidly as the soldiers struggled to get hold of as much as they could before the roaring fire destroyed it. As they often passed through cellars they were also for the most part drunk. ‘The men of Marshal Davout’s 1st army corps, which was stationed in Moscow and its environs, flooded into the city, penetrating into every accessible place, and particularly into the cellars, looting everything they could find and indulging in all the excesses of drink,’ in the words of Colonel Boulart. ‘One could see a continuous procession of soldiers carrying off to their camp wine, sugar, tea, furniture, furs, and so on.’12
In this, they were ably seconded and even incited by some of the inhabitants and Russian soldiers who had stayed behind. The convicts who had been released were amongst the first to start looting, and in many cases servants left behind helped themselves to their masters’ possessions as soon as they realised their actions could be blamed on others. In some cases they showed the soldiers where the masters had walled up or buried their most valued possessions. The Russian looters were soon accosted by French or allied soldiers, who not only robbed them but forced them to help by carrying their booty.
‘The army had dissolved completely; everywhere one could see drunken soldiers and officers loaded with booty and provisions seized from houses which had fallen prey to the flames,’ wrote Major Pion des Loches. They would stumble on better pickings, and dump what they had already looted in order to make room for more valuable booty. ‘The streets were strewn with books, porcelain, furniture, and clothing of every kind.’13
The roar of the fire was pierced by the screams of people being beaten up and women being raped, and by the howls of chained-up dogs being burnt alive. ‘All these excesses of avarice were joined by the worst depravations of debauchery,’ according to Eugène Labaume. ‘Neither the nobility of rank nor the candour of youth nor the tears of beauty were respected in a rush of cruel licentiousness which was inevitable in this monstrous war in which sixteen united nations differing in language and customs felt at liberty to give full rein to their lusts safe in the knowledge that their depredations would only be attributed to one of them.’14
The cantinières were in the forefront, determined to stock up for the next few months, and they were among the most determined and pitiless looters, ripping the clothes off women in their search for precious items. Anyone who put up any resistance or tried to safeguard their valuables was likely to be bludgeoned to death, irrespective of age or sex. And any French looter who became isolated from his companions and wandered into a cellar where a larger number of the inhabitants were hiding was likely to meet the same fate.
Captain Fantin des Odoards remembered seeing three drunken soldiers being drawn in a gilded chariot by half-starved nags, people carrying precious supplies of flour wrapped in costly silks and vodka in gilt chamberpots, the only receptacle that had come to hand, and raddled old cantinières flouncing around in looted ballgowns. ‘The saturnalia of the carnival back home never came close to these hideous and grotesque sights,’ he recalled.15
Those of the remaining inhabitants who ventured out were beaten up, stripped even of their shirts and often forced to carry the very things stolen from them back to the looters’ camp. As they were dispossessed, so they too were forced to join in the scavenging in order to survive, and old men, women and children were soon all busy, mainly at night so as to avoid the French.
One minor official stranded in Moscow with his family was robbed and turned out of his house by a gang of soldiers. They were then set upon in the street by another gang, who took everything the first lot had left them. As the family huddled in a courtyard they were accosted by a third gang who, finding nothing to steal, simply beat them up. They were then picked on to carry things by various groups of looters.16
After three days the fire began to abate, and on 18 September Napoleon rode back into Moscow. The fire died out the following day, order was restored and normality of a sort returned. Some of the inhabitants who had fled actually began to drift back into the city. But nothing seemed normal about this campaign any more to the men of the Grande Armée, who were horrified at the Russian burning of the city. ‘How can one make war on barbarians like these?’ complained Lieutenant Henckens, echoing a widely-held view.17 And Napoleon himself was baffled.
According to the parameters by which he, and most European states and statesmen, operated, he had won the war. The fact that the Russian army slunk away rather than surrendering did not alter this seemingly obvious fact; that is why he made no attempt at vigorous pursuit or at rounding up the odd stray unit and the thousands of stragglers and walking wounded.
The absence of a delegation formally surrendering Moscow to him was a blow, but that did not change the fact that he was in possession of the ancient capital. The fire, which had destroyed about two-thirds of the city, had robbed him of a wealth of material resources, but it did not affect the supply situation in a critical way.18 It did have a psychological effect on him and on his troops, but it had no strategic significance.
The real problem was that Napoleon was losing the initiative. He had calculated that if Alexander continued in his refusal to negotiate, he would play on the natural divisions within Russian society to produce a political crisis which would oblige the Tsar to treat with him or risk being replaced by a man who would. Napoleon was a master of propaganda, and he was usually – with the notable exception of Spain – able to persuade local populations that their armies were beaten and their governments or rulers politically bankrupt. He had been confident that he would find enough discontented merchants and liberal aristocrats, not to mention rebellious servants, through whom to foment some kind of revolution if necessary. But as he sat in an empty Moscow, he found himself in a propaganda black hole. He could not even find spies – ‘neither for silver nor for gold could one find a single person ready to go to St Petersburg or to infiltrate the army’, Caulaincourt noted.19 The burnt-out city no longer represented a political asset or even a forum. Napoleon could find nobody to talk to and no way of getting his message out. He was at a loss as to what to do next.
He had never meant to linger in Moscow, and the fire only confirmed him in this intention. When he returned to the Kremlin from Petrovskoie he began to make plans for a withdrawal. But there was no logical place to draw back to, short of Vilna, and that would mean losing face as well as the initiative. He therefore considered leaving the main body of his army in Moscow and setting off in the direction of St Petersburg with Prince Eugène’s corps and a few other units. He could defeat Wintzingerode and perhaps Wittgenstein as well, which might frighten the capital and force Alexander to treat. And if he needed to, he could veer back towards Vitebsk, while the forces he had left in Moscow could march back to Smolensk.
Prince Eugène was apparently keen on the plan, but others in Napoleon’s entourage raised endless objections – so much so that, according to Baron Fain, ‘they managed for the first time to make him doubt the superiority of his own assessment’. Some of them wanted to fall back and take winter quarters in Smolensk; others suggested a march on the industrial cities of Tula and Kaluga followed by a foray through the rich lands of the south. But Napoleon would be leaving behind all his supplies and his lines of communication, both of which were tied to Minsk and Vilna. Also, in the Ukraine he would have been at the mercy of Austria.20
In the absence of any obvious military course to follow, he fell back on the idea of negotiation, assuming that if he could somehow get across to Alexander that he was prepared to be generous, the Tsar would come to realise that a settlement would be the best way out of the impasse for both of them.21 The problem was how to open up a channel of communication.
The only Russian of any standing left in Moscow when the French entered was General Ivan Akinfevich Tutolmin, who had taken over the directorship of the city’s great orphanage on his retirement from the army. He had remained with his charges, and when the French entered the city he asked for and obtained from them a regular guard of gendarmes to protect his institution. On the day of his return to Moscow, Napoleon sent for the General and gave him money for his orphanage. He also asked him to write to its patroness, the Dowager Empress, with a view to opening negotiations.22
Another potential intermediary was Ivan Alekseevich Yakovlev, a man of substance who had been unable to get away from Moscow on time. On 20 September he summoned Yakovlev to the Kremlin, where the unfortunate Russian was subjected to the usual self-justificatory harangue, part bombast, part pleading, delivered in a tone that veered from the cajoling to the bullying. There had never been any reason for war, Napoleon declared, and if there had been, then the battlefield should have been in Lithuania, not in the heart of Russia. The retreat into the heartland and the refusal to negotiate were not dictated by patriotism but by barbarism. Peter the Great would call them barbarians for having burnt Moscow. ‘I have no reason to be in Russia,’ he complained. ‘I do not want anything from her, as long as the treaty of Tilsit is respected. I want to leave here, as my only quarrel is with England. Ah, if only I could take London! I would not leave that. Yes, I wish to go home. If the Emperor Alexander wants peace, he only has to let me know.’23
Napoleon gave Yakovlev and his family safe conduct out of Moscow on condition he delivered a letter to Alexander for him. The letter, dated 20 September, informed the Tsar that Moscow had been burnt on the orders of Rostopchin, which Napoleon condemned as an act of barbarism and for which he expressed heartfelt regret. He reminded Alexander that in Vienna, Berlin, Madrid and every other city he had occupied the civil administration had been left in place, and this had guaranteed life and property. He expressed the conviction that Rostopchin’s conduct had not been in accord with Alexander’s wishes or orders. ‘I have made war on Your Majesty without animosity,’ he assured Alexander, saying that a single note from him would put an end to hostilities.24
Napoleon also sent a minor civil servant, the commissar Rukhin, to St Petersburg with a proposal for peace, but the poor man was set upon at the first Russian outpost he reached and tortured as a suspected French spy. It was only after a couple of weeks that he was able to hand on Napoleon’s letter.25
On 3 October, Napoleon asked Caulaincourt to go to St Petersburg in person to open negotiations, but Caulaincourt excused himself, saying that Alexander would not receive him. Napoleon then decided to send Lauriston, who had reached headquarters just before Gzhatsk. ‘I want peace, I need peace, I must have peace!’ Napoleon told him as he set off two days later. ‘Just save my honour!’26
‘Like everyone else, the Emperor realised that his repeated messages would, by showing up the difficulty of his position, only confirm the enemy in his hostile dispositions,’ argued Caulaincourt. ‘Yet he kept sending him new ones! For a man who was so politic, such a good calculator, this reveals an extraordinary blind faith in his own star, and one might almost say in the blindness or the weakness of his adversaries! How, with his eagle’s eye and his superior judgement could he delude himself to such a degree?’27
Nor did Napoleon draw the right conclusions from the fire. He dismissed Rostopchin’s firing of the city as the irresponsible act of a deranged Asiatic, and did not believe that it had been in any way an expression of popular feeling. He was right in a sense, but he failed to grasp that the blame for the destruction of Moscow would fall on him, while the symbol of the burning city would unite the Tsar with his nation and turn the war into a fight to the death.
Napoleon’s reaction to the fire was to demonstrate that if it had been meant to deny him the supplies he needed, it had failed in its purpose. He backed this up by giving the impression that, fire or no fire, he was prepared to sit it out in Moscow, spending the winter there if necessary. He ordered fresh troops to come and reinforce him, and talked of raising levies of ‘Polish cossacks’ who would sweep the countryside and keep lines of communication secure. He also spoke of bringing the actors of the Comédie Française to Moscow to entertain them through the winter months. He imagined that all this would put Alexander under increased pressure to negotiate. He was, to some extent, bluffing.28
On the face of it, there was nothing to stop Napoleon from taking his winter quarters in Moscow. Although much had been destroyed, enough had survived in cellars and buildings that had escaped the flames to feed and clothe his army for some months. There were even quantities of cannons, muskets, cartridges, shot and powder left in the city’s arsenal.29 The only area in which supplies were deficient was fodder for the horses, but this was crucial, for without horses he would be able neither to keep his lines of communication open nor to open a fresh campaign in the spring.
Another crucial factor was the situation in his rear and on his wings. From the moment that St Cyr had pushed Wittgenstein back from Polotsk, there was not much activity on that wing. Conditions in the 2nd and 6th Corps were not bad, although there was a persistent shortage of victuals. The state of the troops varied a great deal, with the French, Swiss, Portuguese and Croat infantry and the French and Polish cavalry in good shape, but the Bavarians in very poor condition. They had been prone to disease, and after General Wrede took over command following the death of General Deroy, they went to pieces. ‘The Bavarian soldiers left the colours in their hundreds and came to Wilna, pretending to be ill, in order to get into the hospitals,’ according to General van Hogendorp, Governor General of Lithuania. He rounded up 1100 of them, and found that only about a hundred were actually ill, so he sent the rest back to their units, only to find them deserting once more.30
The troops positioned on Napoleon’s extreme right wing, in the south, under the command of Prince Schwarzenberg, were in far better shape, principally because their commander studiously avoided fighting and had an unspoken agreement with his Russian opposite number not to engage in unnecessary hostilities.
In order to strengthen his position, Napoleon had ordered Marshal Victor, who had been stationed in East Prussia with his 9th Corps of some 40,000 men, to move forward into Russia and take up position in the Smolensk area, from which he could come to the assistance of the main army or either of the wings if necessary. Theoretically, Napoleon’s position was quite strong. ‘He knew to the last man how many men he had stationed between the Rhine and Moscow,’ according to Rapp, and the numbers told him that he was still strong enough to deal with any eventuality.31 What he could not see was the condition of the troops.
General Pouget had been lightly wounded, so in September he was given the post of Governor of Vitebsk. The garrison consisted of nine hundred men and two four-pounder cannon, which does not sound insignificant. In actual fact, apart from sixteen gendarmes and two dozen soldiers from the Young Guard, the rest were a motley crew of stragglers, rounded-up deserters and men who had come out of hospital, with every nationality in the Grande Armée represented. Most of them had fallen behind shortly after crossing the Niemen and had never seen the enemy. They were poorly trained, with no idea of how to look after their weapons, carry out regular patrols or perform picket duty. They were unmotivated, lazy and dirty. When the time came to retreat, they would break ranks at the first sight of a cossack and defy Pouget’s attempt to make a stand, with the result that he was captured along with the rest of them. He later claimed that had he been alone with the gendarmes and the two dozen Young Guard, he would have got through.32
Lieutenant Jean-Roch Coignet of the Grenadiers of the Guard was on his way to join the Grande Armée in July, and as he came through Vilna he was given the job of taking a column of some seven hundred stragglers forward to rejoin their units. Since he had started life as a shepherd boy, this should have presented no problem. But the 133 Spaniards in the column promptly deserted, and when he went after them they fired at him. He had to find a cavalry unit to help him round them up, and then it was only by making them draw straws and shooting half of them that he could get the column to stay together at all.33
The whole area behind the Grande Armée was awash with soldiery which was of no military use and only served to ravage the country, arousing the fury of the inhabitants. Bands of deserters from various units and of every nationality, usually under the chieftainship of a Frenchman, established themselves in manor houses a small way off the main road and, buying the good will of the locals in exchange for protection, preyed on the traffic travelling along it.
General Rapp, who had travelled from Danzig to Napoleon’s headquarters at Smolensk, was horrified at the state of the army’s rear. According to him, the Grande Armée left behind more debris than a beaten one, with the result that echelons of recruits marching up to join it were demoralised by what they saw. Many actually died of hunger along the road, as did the fresh remounts being walked from France and Germany, and the cattle being driven up from Austria and Italy. ‘From the moment of our leaving Vilna, in every village, in every farm, we found isolated soldiers who were abandoning the army under various pretexts,’ wrote Prince Wilhelm of Baden, who marched in with Victor’s corps in September.34
Very little could be done about this state of affairs, since the dispositions made by Napoleon in these areas had been confined to a minimum. Wishing to keep political options open, he had not set up proper organs of local government. As a result, the administration of the occupied areas was chaotic and venal. Beginning with the devious Pradt in Warsaw and the despotic Hogendorp in Vilna, and ending with the venal commissaires in the various towns along the way, there was no real sense of purpose, no dedication, and no single authority capable of restoring order. At the end of September, more than six weeks after the battle, the streets of Smolensk were still strewn with corpses, on which stray dogs from the surrounding countryside were happily feeding. ‘Worse organisation, grosser negligence I have never seen, never dreamed of,’ wrote Captain Franz Roeder of the Hessian Life Guards who marched through on his way to Moscow.35
Those who suffered most as a result of this state of affairs were the sick and the wounded lying in the hospitals at Vilna, Minsk, Vitebsk, Polotsk, Smolensk and, perhaps most of all, the survivors of Borodino, cooped up in the monastery of Kolotskoie and at Mozhaisk. There were thousands of French wounded, including twenty-eight generals, scattered in various buildings at Mozhaisk. The commissaire des guerres Bellot de Kergorre, who was in charge, claimed that no provision had been made for them. The more mobile would drag themselves into the street and beg from passersby, while he pilfered food from passing supply trains in order to feed the rest. They died of hunger and of dehydration, as there was little water nearby and he had been given no buckets or vessels of any sort. He had no dressings, no lint, no bandages, no stretchers, no beds, no candles and no nurses. He appealed to Junot, whose corps was stationed at Mozhaisk, for help, but the Westphalian soldiers were more trouble than they were worth. When his charges died, all he could do was dump them in the street outside. He also had hundreds of Russian wounded, who subsisted on the stalks of cabbages dug up in neighbouring gardens and the occasional dead horse.
However many men and horses Napoleon may have had, and whatever the quantities of food and fodder at his disposal, the manner in which these resources were being husbanded meant that he could not possibly remain in Moscow for more than a few weeks without his forces beginning to disintegrate. But rather than order a gradual evacuation of all sick and wounded westwards, he was ordering the call-up of another 140,000 men in France, 30,000 in Italy, 10,000 in Bavaria, and smaller contingents from Poland, Prussia and Lithuania, and he begged Marie-Louise to write to her father asking him to reinforce Schwarzenberg. ‘Not only do I want to have reinforcements sent from all quarters,’ he wrote to Maret in Vilna, ‘I also want those reinforcements to be exaggerated, I want the various sovereigns sending me reinforcements to publish the fact in the papers, doubling the number they are sending.’36
What he did not take into account was that as St Petersburg was the administrative capital, housing all the institutions of state, the loss of Moscow did not in any way weaken the Russian state’s ability to function or affect the interests of its rulers, while its occupation and destruction would contribute mightily to the mobilisation of public opinion in the national cause. His bluff was therefore likely to be called.
Alexander had received Kutuzov’s note announcing a victory on 11 September, just as the Russian army was taking up position outside Moscow. In a flood of relief and gratitude he promoted Kutuzov, sending him a marshal’s baton, and awarded him a grant of 100,000 roubles. Bells were rung in all St Petersburg’s churches, and that evening the whole city was illuminated. Alexander wasted no time, and despatched Colonel Chernyshev to Kutuzov with a plan he had devised for the final destruction of the French.
The next day, the service in the church of St Alexander Nevsky on the Tsar’s name day turned into one of thanksgiving, as Kutuzov’s despatch announcing the victory was read out. Alexander walked among the cheering crowd. The capital resounded to artillery salvoes, and in the evening it was again illuminated.
The joy and the relief were unbounded. ‘Russia rejoice! Raise your head above all the powers on earth!’ wrote one inhabitant to a friend. ‘I am shaking all over from joy. I cannot sleep at night or do anything.’ The next day he was still too excited, and had to pen another letter. ‘Everyone is congratulating each other on the victory, hugging each other, kissing. It is impossible to describe the joy and exaltation on every face.’ The only long faces were those of freshly-minted militia officers like Lieutenant Zotov, who had just proudly donned his uniform and feared he had missed the chance of proving his patriotic ardour. There was much speculation as to whether Napoleon would be brought to St Petersburg in chains or in a cage. But by the third day, the mood had inexplicably changed to one of anxiety and doubt. The streets grew silent, and people noticed that the packing up of state archives and art treasures from the Hermitage Palace was continuing.37
On 18 September a courier from Yaroslavl galloped into St Petersburg bringing Alexander a short, breathless note from Catherine, dated 15 September. ‘Moscow has been taken. There are some things that are beyond comprehension,’ she wrote. ‘Do not forget your resolution: no peace, and you will still conserve a hope of recovering your honour.’ Alexander wrote to Kutuzov, saying he had heard of the fall of Moscow through others, and expressing indignation at having been kept in the dark. To Arakcheev he voiced his regret at ever having been prevailed upon to appoint Kutuzov. It was not for another two days that he heard from him directly.38
On 20 September, Colonel Michaud appeared at Kamenny Island bearing a letter from the commander-in-chief as well as news of the fire, of which the Tsar still knew nothing. ‘My God, so much misfortune! What sad news you bring me, Colonel,’ Alexander exclaimed. The letter was a laconic note from Kutuzov announcing that he had abandoned Moscow. ‘I make bold, in the most humble terms, to assure you, all-merciful sovereign, that the entry of the enemy into Moscow is not the conquest of Russia,’ Kutuzov wrote, but this would have been of little comfort to his imperial master.39
‘From all this I see that Providence expects great sacrifices from us, particularly from me, and I am prepared to bow to her will,’ Alexander said to Michaud. The Colonel explained that after marching through Moscow the Russian army had disengaged from the enemy and made a flanking march around the south of the city. This had brought it to a point astride the road to Kaluga, where it could rest and repair the damage inflicted by Borodino. He assured the Tsar that morale was good and that the whole army had only one fear – that he might open negotiations with Napoleon.
‘Go back to the army and tell our brave warriors, tell my faithful subjects everywhere you go that even when I do not have a single soldier left, I shall put myself at the head of my beloved nobility and my good peasants, I will command them myself and will use all the means of my whole empire!’ Alexander replied, going on to say that he would never sign a peace with Napoleon, and would rather end his days as a beggar in Siberia than come to terms with him. He worked himself up into a state of high excitement, finally declaring: ‘Napoleon or me, him or me – but we cannot reign together.’40
St Petersburg was by now buzzing with rumour and speculation. Some maintained that Napoleon had been killed in the great battle, others that he had seized Moscow. Those spreading alarmist talk were arrested by the police and forced to sweep the streets in an attempt to stop the rumours getting out of hand, but this did nothing to calm nerves. In the absence of specific news, people began to assume the worst.
The murmuring about treason started up again, and now the finger was being pointed at Alexander himself. His sister Catherine wrote reproaching him with not having stayed in Moscow to defend it. She told him that he was being accused of forfeiting his country’s honour, and that feeling was running high against him. ‘It is not just one class that is blaming you, but all of them in unison,’ she wrote.41
Alexander was particularly stung by the thought that people might think he lacked courage, as he would gladly have faced Napoleon at the head of his army, and had never wavered in his resolve not to negotiate with the enemy. ‘I would prefer to stop being what I am than to treat with the monster who is destroying the world,’ he wrote to Catherine in response to her note. Yet there was a whispering campaign, of which he was aware, to dethrone him in favour of his sister. And the small group of those clamouring for coming to terms with France before the whole state disintegrated was gaining ground. Many of the foreign diplomats in St Petersburg thought that a negotiated settlement could not be deferred much longer. John Quincy Adams noted that English residents were making preparations to leave.42
‘Violent discontent swirled round the capital,’ in the words of Countess Edling. ‘The anxious and exasperated populace might rise at any moment. The nobility were loudly accusing the Emperor of all the misfortunes that had befallen the state, and one hardly dared to take his defence in public.’ It was through a hostile city that Alexander drove to church on 27 September for the customary celebration of the anniversary of his coronation, normally an occasion of joyfulness as well as pomp. He usually rode to church, but his entourage insisted he go in a closed carriage this time. ‘We drove slowly in our glazed carriages through an immense crowd, whose mournful silence and angry faces were in stark contrast to the holiday we were celebrating,’ recalled Countess Edling, who was sitting beside the Empress Elizabeth. ‘I shall never forget the moment when we ascended the steps of the church, between two walls made up by the people who did not utter one cheer. All one could hear at that moment were our steps, and I have never for a moment doubted that it would have taken no more than a spark at that moment to produce a general explosion.’43
On 29 September there was an official announcement which depicted the fall of Moscow as a minor tactical setback. It was followed up by an imperial proclamation written for Alexander by Shishkov. In tone both angry and proud, it declared that the fall of the ancient capital was the rallying call for all Russians and the turning point in the country’s fortunes. Napoleon had climbed into a grave from which he would never emerge, and the Russian nation would triumph.
To Bernadotte, Alexander wrote two days later that although Kutuzov had retreated, Borodino really had been a victory. ‘I repeat to Your Royal Highness the solemn assurance that more than ever I and the nation at the head of which I have the honour to stand, are decided to persevere and to bury ourselves under the ruins of the empire rather than to come to terms with the modern Attila.’44