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It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose
heap has been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging
bits of rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap,
or why they jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would
be equally difficult to explain what caused the Russians after
the departure of the French to throng to the place that had formerly
been Moscow. But when we watch the ants round their ruined heap,
the tenacity, energy, and immense number of the delving insects
prove that despite the destruction of the heap, something indestructible,
which though intangible is the real strength of the colony, still
exists; and similarly, though in Moscow in the month of October
there was no government no churches, shrines, riches, or houses-
it was still the Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed,
except something intangible yet powerful and indestructible.
The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow
after it had been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal,
and at first for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only
they all had in common: a desire to get to the place that had
been called Moscow, to apply their activities there.
Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants,
in a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn
of 1813 the number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what
it had been in 1812.
The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of Wintzingerode's
detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and residents
who had fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its vicinity.
The Russians who entered Moscow, finding it plundered, plundered
it in their turn. They continued what the French had begun. Trains
of peasant carts came to Moscow to carry off to the villages what
had been abandoned in the ruined houses and the streets. The Cossacks
carried off what they could to their camps, and the householders
seized all they could find in other houses and moved it to their
own, pretending that it was their property.
But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third
contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more
and more difficult and assumed more definite forms.
The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations
of regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and craftsmanship,
with luxury, and governmental and religious institutions. These
forms were lifeless but still existed. There were bazaars, shops,
warehouses, market stalls, granaries- for the most part still
stocked with goods- and there were factories and workshops, palaces
and wealthy houses filled with luxuries, hospitals, prisons, government
offices, churches, and cathedrals. The longer the French remained
the more these forms of town life perished, until finally all
was merged into one confused, lifeless scene of plunder.
The more the plundering by the French continued, the more
both the wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was
destroyed. But plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation
of the city began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued
and the greater the number of people taking part in it the more
rapidly was the wealth of the city and its regular life restored.
Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by
curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-interest- house
owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and
peasants- streamed into Moscow as blood flows to the heart.
Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry
off plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the
corpses out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their
comrades' discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay,
and beat down one another's prices to below what they had been
in former days. Gangs of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived
in Moscow every day, and on all sides logs were being hewn, new
houses built, and old, charred ones repaired. Tradesmen began
trading in booths. Cookshops and taverns were opened in partially
burned houses. The clergy resumed the services in many churches
that had not been burned. Donors contributed Church property that
had been stolen. Government clerks set up their baize-covered
tables and their pigeonholes of documents in small rooms. The
higher authorities and the police organized the distribution of
goods left behind by the French. The owners of houses in which
much property had been left, brought there from other houses,
complained of the injustice of taking everything to the Faceted
Palace in the Kremlin; others insisted that as the French had
gathered things from different houses into this or that house,
it would be unfair to allow its owner to keep all that was found
there. They abused the police and bribed them, made out estimates
at ten times their value for government stores that had perished
in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin wrote proclamations.
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