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At that very time, in circumstances even more important than
retreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning
of Moscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the
instigator of that event, acted in an altogether different manner
from Kutuzov.
After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of
Moscow was as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow
without fighting.
Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but
by the feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.
The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all
the towns and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk,
without the participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets.
The people awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become
excited or tear anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling
within it the strength to find what it should do at that most
difficult moment. And as soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy
classes went away abandoning their property, while the poorer
remained and burned and destroyed what was left.
The consciousness that this would be so and would always be
so was and is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness
of this, and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present
in Russian Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow
already in July and at the beginning of August showed that they
expected this. Those who went away, taking what they could and
abandoning their houses and half their belongings, did so from
the latent patriotism which expresses itself not by phrases or
by giving one's children to save the fatherland and similar unnatural
exploits, but unobtrusively, simply, organically, and therefore
in the way that always produces the most powerful results.
"It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards
are running away from Moscow," they were told. In his broadsheets
Rostopchin impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful.
They were ashamed to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but
still they left, knowing it had to be done. Why did they go? It
is impossible to suppose that Rostopchin had scared them by his
accounts of horrors Napoleon had committed in conquered countries.
The first people to go away were the rich educated people who
knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had remained intact and
that during Napoleon's occupation the inhabitants had spent their
time pleasantly in the company of the charming Frenchmen whom
the Russians, and especially the Russian ladies, then liked so
much.
They went away because for Russians there could be no question
as to whether things would go well or ill under French rule in
Moscow. It was out of the question to be under French rule, it
would be the worst thing that could happen. They went away even
before the battle of Borodino and still more rapidly after it,
despite Rostopchin's calls to defend Moscow or the announcement
of his intention to take the wonder-working icon of the Iberian
Mother of God and go to fight, or of the balloons that were to
destroy the French, and despite all the nonsense Rostopchin wrote
in his broadsheets. They knew that it was for the army to fight,
and that if it could not succeed it would not do to take young
ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter of Moscow to
fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as they were
to abandon their property to destruction. They went away without
thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense and wealthy
city being given over to destruction, for a great city with wooden
buildings was certain when abandoned by its inhabitants to be
burned. They went away each on his own account, and yet it was
only in consequence of their going away that the momentous event
was accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of
the Russian people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count
Rostopchin's orders, had already in June moved with her Negroes
and her women jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with
a vague consciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was
really, simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved
Russia. But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow
and now had the government offices removed; now distributed quite
useless weapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying
the icons, and now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or
the relics of saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow
and on one hundred and thirty-six of them removed the balloon
that was being constructed by Leppich; now hinted that he would
burn Moscow and related how he had set fire to his own house;
now wrote a proclamation to the French solemnly upbraiding them
for having destroyed his Orphanage; now claimed the glory of having
hinted that he would burn Moscow and now repudiated the deed;
now ordered the people to catch all spies and bring them to him,
and now reproached them for doing so; now expelled all the French
residents from Moscow, and now allowed Madame Aubert-Chalme (the
center of the whole French colony in Moscow) to remain, but ordered
the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to be arrested and exiled
for no particular offense; now assembled the people at the Three
Hills to fight the French and now, to get rid of them, handed
over to them a man to be killed and himself drove away by a back
gate; now declared that he would not survive the fall of Moscow,
and now wrote French verses in albums concerning his share in
the affair- this man did not understand the meaning of what was
happening but merely wanted to do something himself that would
astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and
like a child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event-
the abandonment and burning of Moscow- and tried with his puny
hand now to speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that
bore him along with it.
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