Chapter 21 Chapter 21

The Russian army passed through Moscow from two o'clock at night to two o'clock in the afternoon, followed by the last evacuated residents and wounded soldiers. During the march there was an extraordinary crowding on the stone bridges, on the Moskva and Yauz bridges. When the army bypassed the Kremlin in two ways and gathered on the Moscow River Bridge and the Stone Bridge, a large number of soldiers took advantage of the short stay and the opportunity of crowding each other to turn back from the bridge and sneak past Vasily Brazhiny Church. Return to the hill near Red Square via the Borowitsky Gate.They have a certain feeling that they can easily take other people's things there.This group of guys, like buying cheap goods, crowded all the aisles in the mall.But the sweet voices of the shop assistants to persuade them to buy are no longer heard, and the hawkers and colorful female customers are no longer seen-only the uniforms and overcoats of the soldiers are shaking.Merchants and shopkeepers (there were not many of them) wandered through the soldiers like lost souls, opened their shops, went in and bolted the doors, and together with their clerks moved their goods elsewhere.On the square near the shopping mall, there is a snare drum team, beating the assembly drum.But the sound of the drum did not make the looting soldiers run and assemble as before, but they ran farther away from the snare drum.Among the soldiers, in and around the shops and in the passages, men in gray coats with shaved heads could be seen.Two officers, one with a belt in his uniform on a lean gray horse, the other on foot in an overcoat, stood talking at the corner of Iliinka Street.A third officer came up to them on horseback.

-------- ① Refers to a prisoner released from prison. "The general ordered them to be driven out at any rate. What is this, it's indecent! Half of them ran away." "Where are you going? . . . where are you going? . . . " he called out to three unarmed infantrymen, who were slipping by on their way to the market, holding up their coattails. "Stop, bastard!" "Can they be assembled?" another officer replied. "You cannot assemble; I have to go quickly, so that the rest of the people don't run away, that's the only way! " "How do I get there?—they're all parked there, huddled motionless on the bridge. Or set up a blockade to keep the rest of them from escaping, shall we?"

"Okay, go over there! Drive them out." The superior officer yelled. The officer in the belt got off his horse, called a drummer, and walked with him into the arcade of the mall.Several soldiers ran away together.A businessman with a ring of red pimples around his nose, with a calm and shrewd expression on his rich face, came to the officer in a hurry and smartly shaking his arms. "My lord," said he, "do good, and protect us. We don't care about anything here, we gladly give it away. Please, I'll get the cloth right now. For a noble man like you, it's It’s okay to give away two horses, and it’s called honor! Because we think, how should I put it, it’s robbery! Excuse me! Could you send a sentry to let us close the door..."

Several businessmen gathered around at this time. "Oh! You're still talking nonsense," said one of the thin men with a straight face. "He lost his head, and his hair is still crying. Take it if you like!" He waved his hand vigorously, and turned to face the officer. "You, Ivan Sidonitch, can really speak," put in the merchant just now angrily, "please, my lord." "What are you talking about!" exclaimed the thin man. "I have three shops and a hundred thousand rubles worth of goods. How can you keep the army away? Oh man, the will of God is irresistible."

"Come in, my lord," said the merchant just now, bowing.The officer stood bewildered, with an indecision on his face. "It's none of my business!" he exclaimed suddenly, walking quickly down the shop.In an open shop there were sounds of fighting and insults, and when the officer approached a man (in a long gray coat and with a shaved head) jumped out of the door, being shoved out. The man stooped away from the merchants and officers.The officer rushed to the soldiers in the shop.At this moment there was a terrified cry from the crowd on the Moskva Bridge, and the officer immediately ran out of the mall and into the square.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he asked, but his companion had already rode in the direction of the shout, and he passed the Vasily Brazhiny Church.The officer who ran out of the mall mounted his horse and followed suit.When he rode to the bridge, he saw two cannons with their front frames removed, infantrymen walking up the bridge, several carts overturned, some panicked faces, and the faces of soldiers smiling. Faces, a two-car parked next to the cannon.Behind the wheels of the car crouched four collared hounds.The things in the car are piled up like a mountain, the top.Leaning on an upside-down baby chair, a peasant woman was sitting screaming desperately, and the comrades told the officers that the roar of the crowd and the screaming of the peasant woman were due to the fact that General Ermolov had run into the crowd. After he passed away, he learned that the soldiers had gone to the store and that crowds of civilians were blocking the bridge, so he ordered the cannons to be removed from the front frame, making it look like they were about to fire on the bridge.The crowd overturned the vehicles, yelled loudly, and crowded the bridge to clear the bridge before the army moved forward.