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Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road
was issued at night on the first of September.
The first troops started at once, and during the night they
marched slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however,
those nearing the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of
them masses of soldiers crowding and hurrying across the bridge,
ascending on the opposite side and blocking the streets and alleys,
while endless masses of troops were bearing down on them from
behind, and an unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them. They
all rushed forward to the bridge, onto it, and to the fords and
the boats. Kutuzov himself had driven round by side streets to
the other side of Moscow.
By ten o'clock in the morning of the second of September,
only the rear guard remained in the Dorogomilov suburb, where
they had ample room. The main army was on the other side of Moscow
or beyond it.
At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of
September, Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklonny
Hill looking at the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth
of August to the second of September, that is from the battle
of Borodino to the entry of the French into Moscow, during the
whole of that agitating, memorable week, there had been the extraordinary
autumn weather that always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs
low and gives more heat than in spring, when everything shines
so brightly in the rare clear atmosphere that the eyes smart,
when the lungs are strengthened and refreshed by inhaling the
aromatic autumn air, when even the nights are warm, and when in
those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and delight us continually
by falling from the sky.
At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather
still held.
The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from
the Poklonny Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her
gardens, and her churches, and she seemed to be living her usual
life, her cupolas glittering like stars in the sunlight.
The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture,
such as he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather
envious and uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form
of life that has no knowledge of them. This city was evidently
living with the full force of its own life. By the indefinite
signs which, even at a distance, distinguish a living body from
a dead one, Napoleon from the Poklonny Hill perceived the throb
of life in the town and felt, as it were, the breathing of that
great and beautiful body.
Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother;
every foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance
as the mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon
felt it.
"Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou
la sainte. La voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait
temps,"* said he, and dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow
to be spread out before him, and summoned Lelorgne d'Ideville,
the interpreter.
*"That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy
Moscow! Here it is then at last, that famous city. It was high
time."
"A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has
lost her honor," thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at
Smolensk). From that point of view he gazed at the Oriental beauty
he had not seen before. It seemed strange to him that his long-felt
wish, which had seemed unattainable, had at last been realized.
In the clear morning light he gazed now at the city and now at
the plan, considering its details, and the assurance of possessing
it agitated and awed him.
"But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here
is this capital at my feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what
is he thinking? A strange, beautiful, and majestic city; and a
strange and majestic moment! In what light must I appear to them!"
thought he, thinking of his troops. "Here she is, the reward
for all those fainthearted men," he reflected, glancing at
those near him and at the troops who were approaching and forming
up. "One word from me, one movement of my hand, and that
ancient capital of the Tsars would perish. But my clemency is
always ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous
and truly great. But no, it can't be true that I am in Moscow,"
he suddenly thought. "Yet here she is lying at my feet, with
her golden domes and crosses scintillating and twinkling in the
sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism
and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy....
It is just this which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know
him." (It seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what
was taking place lay in the personal struggle between himself
and Alexander.) "From the height of the Kremlin- yes, there
is the Kremlin, yes- I will give them just laws; I will teach
them the meaning of true civilization, I will make generations
of boyars remember their conqueror with love. I will tell the
deputation that I did not, and do not, desire war, that I have
waged war only against the false policy of their court; that I
love and respect Alexander and that in Moscow I will accept terms
of peace worthy of myself and of my people. I do not wish to utilize
the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored monarch. 'Boyars,'
I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire the peace and
welfare of all my subjects.' However, I know their presence will
inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly,
impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in
Moscow? Yes, there she lies."
"Qu'on m'amene les boyars,"* said he to his suite.
*"Bring the boyars to me."
A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch
the boyars.
Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing
in the same place on the Poklonny Hill awaiting the deputation.
His speech to the boyars had already taken definite shape in his
imagination. That speech was full of dignity and greatness as
Napoleon understood it.
He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he
intended to adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed
days for assemblies at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian
notables and his own would mingle. He mentally appointed a governor,
one who would win the hearts of the people. Having learned that
there were many charitable institutions in Moscow he mentally
decided that he would shower favors on them all. He thought that,
as in Africa he had to put on a burnoose and sit in a mosque,
so in Moscow he must be beneficent like the Tsars. And in order
finally to touch the hearts of the Russians- and being like all
Frenchmen unable to imagine anything sentimental without a reference
to ma chere, ma tendre, ma pauvre mere* - he decided that he would
place an inscription on all these establishments in large letters:
"This establishment is dedicated to my dear mother."
Or no, it should be simply: Maison de ma Mere,*[2] he concluded.
"But am I really in Moscow? Yes, here it lies before me,
but why is the deputation from the city so long in appearing?"
he wondered.
*"My dear, my tender, my poor mother."
*[2] "House of my Mother."
Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in
whispers among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite.
Those sent to fetch the deputation had returned with the news
that Moscow was empty, that everyone had left it. The faces of
those who were not conferring together were pale and perturbed.
They were not alarmed by the fact that Moscow had been abandoned
by its inhabitants (grave as that fact seemed), but by the question
how to tell the Emperor- without putting him in the terrible position
of appearing ridiculous- that he had been awaiting the boyars
so long in vain: that there were drunken mobs left in Moscow but
no one else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must be
scraped together, others disputed that opinion and maintained
that the Emperor should first be carefully and skillfully prepared,
and then told the truth.
"He will have to be told, all the same," said some
gentlemen of the suite. "But, gentlemen..."
The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating
upon his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before
the outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow
from under his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.
"But it's impossible..." declared the gentlemen
of the suite, shrugging their shoulders but not venturing to utter
the implied word- le ridicule...
At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor's
instinct suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been
too long drawn out was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a
sign with his hand. A single report of a signaling gun followed,
and the troops, who were already spread out on different sides
of Moscow, moved into the city through Tver, Kaluga, and Dorogomilov
gates. Faster and faster, vying with one another, they moved at
the double or at a trot, vanishing amid the clouds of dust they
raised and making the air ring with a deafening roar of mingling
shouts.
Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with
them as far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there again stopped and,
dismounting from his horse, paced for a long time by the Kammer-Kollezski
rampart, awaiting the deputation.
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