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The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o'clock
at night till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the
wounded and the last of the inhabitants who were leaving.
The greatest crush during the movement of the troops took
place at the Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges.
While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around
the Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the Stone bridges,
a great many soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion,
turned back from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently
past the church of Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski
gate, back up the hill to the Red Square where some instinct told
them they could easily take things not belonging to them. Crowds
of the kind seen at cheap sales filled all the passages and alleys
of the Bazaar. But there were no dealers with voices of ingratiating
affability inviting customers to enter; there were no hawkers,
nor the usual motley crowd of female purchasers- but only soldiers,
in uniforms and overcoats though without muskets, entering the
Bazaar empty-handed and silently making their way out through
its passages with bundles. Tradesmen and their assistants (of
whom there were but few) moved about among the soldiers quite
bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked them up again,
and themselves carried goods away with the help their assistants.
On the square in front of the Bazaar were drummers beating the
muster call. But the roll of the drums did not make the looting
soldiers run in the direction of the drum as formerly, but made
them, on the contrary, run farther away. Among the soldiers in
the shops and passages some men were to be seen in gray coats,
with closely shaven heads. Two officers, one with a scarf over
his uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse, the other
in an overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka Street,
talking. A third officer galloped up to them.
"The general orders them all to be driven out at once,
without fail. This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed."
"Where are you off to?... Where?..." he shouted
to three infantrymen without muskets who, holding up the skirts
of their overcoats, were slipping past him into the Bazaar passage.
"Stop, you rascals!"
"But how are you going to stop them?" replied another
officer. "There is no getting them together. The army should
push on before the rest bolt, that's all!"
"How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged on
the bridge, and don't move. Shouldn't we put a cordon round to
prevent the rest from running away?"
"Come, go in there and drive them out!" shouted
the senior officer.
The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer,
and went with him into the arcade. Some soldiers started running
away in a group. A shopkeeper with red pimples on his cheeks near
the nose, and a calm, persistent, calculating expression on his
plump face, hurriedly and ostentatiously approached the officer,
swinging his arms.
"Your honor!" said he. "Be so good as to protect
us! We won't grudge trifles, you are welcome to anything- we shall
be delighted! Pray!... I'll fetch a piece of cloth at once for
such an honorable gentleman, or even two pieces with pleasure.
For we feel how it is; but what's all this- sheer robbery! If
you please, could not guards be placed if only to let us close
the shop...."
Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.
"Eh, what twaddle!" said one of them, a thin, stern-looking
man. "When one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's
hair! Take what any of you like!" And flourishing his arm
energetically he turned sideways to the officer.
"It's all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk,"
said the first tradesman angrily. "Please step inside, your
honor!"
"Talk indeed!" cried the thin one. "In my three
shops here I have a hundred thousand rubles' worth of goods. Can
they be saved when the army has gone? Eh, what people! 'Against
God's might our hands can't fight.'"
"Come inside, your honor!" repeated the tradesman,
bowing.
The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision.
"It's not my business!" he exclaimed, and strode
on quickly down one of the passages.
From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation,
and just as the officer came up to it a man in a gray coat with
a shaven head was flung out violently.
This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and the officer.
The officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but
at that moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd
on the Moskva bridge and the officer ran out into the square.
"What is it? What is it?" he asked, but his comrade
was already galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the direction
from which the screams came.
The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When he
reached the bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing
the bridge, several overturned carts, and frightened and laughing
faces among the troops. Beside the cannon a cart was standing
to which two horses were harnessed. Four borzois with collars
were pressing close to the wheels. The cart was loaded high, and
at the very top, beside a child's chair with its legs in the air,
sat a peasant woman uttering piercing and desperate shrieks. He
was told by his fellow officers that the screams of the crowd
and the shrieks of the woman were due to the fact that General
Ermolov, coming up to the crowd and learning that soldiers were
dispersing among the shops while crowds of civilians blocked the
bridge, had ordered two guns to be unlimbered and made a show
of firing at the bridge. The crowd, crushing one another, upsetting
carts, and shouting and squeezing desperately, had cleared off
the bridge and the troops were now moving forward.
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