Chapter 26 Chapter Twenty Six

Around three o'clock in the afternoon, Murat's troops entered Moscow.In front came a detachment of Württemberg hussars, followed by the King of Naples himself on horseback with a large retinue. In the middle of Arbat Street, near the Saint Nicholas Monastery, Murat stopped, waiting for the vanguard to report back to the city's fortress "le Kremlin". Around Murat, a small group of residents who stayed behind gathered.They all looked timidly and incredulously at the strange long-haired magistrate with feathers and gold ornaments. "Is this their Tsar, is it not, is he himself?" they whispered.The interpreter rode his horse towards the crowd.

"Hats off... hats off," the crowd passed among themselves.The interpreter asks an old janitor how far is the Kremlin?The gatekeeper listened to his unfamiliar Polish accent in puzzlement, thinking that the voice of the interpreter was not Russian, so he didn't understand what he said, and hid behind others. Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the Russian troops were.Someone in the crowd understood the question posed to him, and suddenly several voices answered.An officer of the vanguard drove up to Murat and reported that the gates of the fortress were blocked and that there was probably an ambush there.

"Okay," said Murat, and ordered to an accompanying officer to bring four light guns forward and shoot at the gate of the fortress. The artillery moved away from the column advancing behind Murat and headed down the Arbat Street.At the end of Vozdvirenka Street, the artillerymen stopped and lined up on the square.Several French officers directed the placement of the gun emplacements and watched the Kremlin with binoculars. Inside the Kremlin, the bells for vespers were ringing, and the bells were bewildering the French.They decided it was a signal of war.Several infantrymen ran towards the Kutafiev Gate.Logs and baffles were stacked at the door.A small detachment of soldiers, led by an officer, had just begun to run towards the door, through which two shots were fired.The general standing by the emplacement gave the officer a command, and the officer ran back with the soldiers.

There were three more shots at the door. A shot hit a French soldier in the leg, and several people behind the shield screamed strangely.On the faces of the general, the officer, and the soldiers, the expressions that seemed relaxed and happy just now, as if they were obeying orders, suddenly turned into expressions of tenacity, concentration, facing struggle, and preparing to suffer.For all their officers and soldiers, from the marshal to the last soldier, this place is not Vozdvirenka Street, Mokhov Street, Kutafiev Street or Troitz Gate, but a new The battlefield is a place where bloody battles may be fought.Therefore, all officers and soldiers are ready to fight this battle.The shouting from inside the gate stopped.The cannon was pushed out.The artillerymen blew the soot off the matchlocks.An officer issued the password: feu!The two shells roared and fired one after the other.Shots crackled and exploded on the stone wall of the gate, on the logs and shields at the gate, and two clouds of smoke drifted across the square.

-------- ① Let it go! Not long after the sound of the cannon hitting the stone wall of the Kremlin, there was a strange sound above the heads of the French army.A large flock of crows was startled above the fence, chattering and flapping thousands of wings loudly, circling in the air.In addition to the crow's cry, I also heard a shout from a person inside the door, and a figure without a hat and a long coat appeared from behind the gunpowder smoke.He aimed his gun at the French army. "feu!" repeated the command of the artillery officer, and the sound of a musket and two shells rang out at the same time.Gunpowder smoke enveloped the gate again.

There was no more movement behind the shield, and the French infantry marched together with the officer to the gate.Inside the door lay three wounded and four dead.The two men in long coats stooped and fled along the base of the wall towards Znamenka. "Enlevez-moica," said an officer, pointing to logs and corpses, whereupon several Frenchmen wounded up and threw the corpses over the wall.Who these people are, no one knows. "Enlevez-moica," was the only word that referred to them, and they were thrown away and then removed so as not to stink.Only Thiers commemorated them with a few eloquent words: "Cesmiserables avaienten vahilacitadelles acree, s'etaient empares des fusils del' arsenal, ettiraient (cesmiserables) surles Francais. Onensabraquelques—unseton purgeale Kremlindeleur presence."②

-------- ① Remove these. ②These unfortunate multitudes gathered in this holy fortress, and took out muskets from the armory to shoot at the French army.Some of them were hacked to death and purged from the Kremlin. Murat received reports that the road had been cleared.The French entered the palace gates and pitched tents in the Privy Council Square.Soldiers threw chairs from the windows of the Privy Council into the square, and a fire was lit. Other groups passed through the Kremlin and camped in the streets of Maroseka, Lubyanka, Pokrovka, etc.In addition, there are troops stationed in Vozdvirenka, Znamenka, Nikolskaya and Tver streets.The French were everywhere quartered, not so much in their houses as in their barracks, as the owners of the houses could not be found.

Despite their ragged uniforms, hunger and exhaustion, and their men reduced to a third, the French soldiers entered Moscow in neat ranks.This is a mighty army that is exhausted, extremely weak and still able to fight.But this is only the state of the army before the soldiers are disbanded and live in houses.Once the men and horses of each team were disbanded and lived in empty or wealthy mansions, the army was destroyed forever, and became neither residents nor soldiers, the so-called soldiers and bandits.Five weeks later, when Moscow was evacuated, it was the same people, but no longer an army.They were hordes of bandits, and each of them carried, or carried with him, a great bundle of useful things which he considered valuable.In the evacuation of Moscow, the aim of each was not, as before, to conquer, but merely to preserve what had been looted.Just as a monkey reaches into a narrow-mouthed jar and grabs a handful of nuts without letting go of his fist, lest he lose the nuts he has seized, and ruins himself by doing so, so the French will obviously suffer when they leave Moscow. to perdition.Because they carry what they have snatched with them, they can't throw it away, just like a monkey refuses to let go of a handful of nuts.Every regiment of the French army was stationed in a certain street in Moscow, and after ten minutes there was not a single soldier or officer left.From the windows of houses flashed men in army coats and booties, laughing and passing from room to room; in cellars and cellars, entertaining themselves; at the stable door; in the kitchen, fires were lit, sleeves were rolled up and dough was baked and fried, women and children were terrorized, teased and caressed.Such people abound everywhere, filling shops and dwellings; but the army is gone.

On the same day, the various ministers of the French army issued several orders successively, prohibiting the army from loitering in the city, strictly prohibiting harassment of the residents and robbery, announcing that there should be a general roll call that night, etc.; This group of people is still scattered all over the rich and empty cities with large material reserves.Just as hungry herds huddled together in barren land and scattered irresistibly once they set foot on fertile pastures, so this army dispersed irresistibly to all parts of this rich city. Moscow was deprived of its inhabitants, and soldiers were seeping into the city like water into sand, spreading like unstoppable starlight from the Kremlin where they first entered.The cavalry went into the merchant's house where all their wealth had been left, and not only found a single corral for their own horses, which they could not use up, but still went to occupy another adjacent house, thinking it was better.Many people occupied several houses, chalked who occupied them, and they quarreled and even fought with soldiers from other sections.Before the soldiers had time to tidy up, they ran to the streets to go sightseeing, and heard that everything was thrown away.Wherever you can get something valuable for nothing, go there.The chief went to stop his subordinates, and he himself was involuntarily involved in such behavior.The Carriage Market also had several carriage shops, and generals flocked to the market to select their wagons and buggies.Those who remained invited the Sheriff to their homes, hoping that this would keep them from being robbed.The riches were incalculable, almost inexhaustible; and around the places the French had occupied, there were still places untrodden and unoccupied, where the French thought there was still more wealth.Moscow sucked them deeper and deeper into himself.As water is poured on dry land, and the water disappears with the dry land; just as a hungry army enters a rich and empty city, the result is that the army is destroyed, and the rich city is also destroyed; Turned into fire and looting.

The French attributed the fire of Moscow to the aupatriotisme feroce de Ros-topchine; the Russians to the atrocities of the French army.In fact, if one or several people are to be found responsible for the cause of the Moscow fire, then there is no such reason, and it is impossible to have such a reason.Moscow was destroyed by fire because it was under the conditions that any wooden city would burn, regardless of whether there were a hundred and thirty old fire engines in the city.Moscow must be destroyed by fire, as a result of the evacuation of the population, as inevitable as a pile of shavings, which has been splashed with sparks for several days, is inevitable to ignite.A wooden city, with its inhabitants, its owners, and the police, would be burned almost every day in the summer, and it would have to be burned down, not to mention that there were no inhabitants in the city, but people who smoked pipes and used Privy Council chairs and stools to rise in the Privy Council Square. Soldiers who built bonfires and cooked two meals a day.In peacetime, as soon as the army is stationed in the countryside in certain areas, the number of fires in these areas immediately increases.In an empty wooden city occupied by foreign troops, how much does the probability of fire increase? Neither Lepatriotismeferocede Roastopchine nor the atrocities of the French army were at fault in this matter.Moscow was burned because of the pipes, stoves, bonfires, and carelessness of enemy soldiers who lived there but were not masters.If someone set fire to it (which is doubtful, since no one has any reason to do so, and it is, in any case, troublesome and dangerous), arson cannot be the cause, because the consequences of arson will still be Same.

-------- ① Rastopchin's barbaric patriotism. However willing the French were to ascribe Rastoptchin's barbarism, the Russians to the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later to let their own people carry the hero's torch, it was impossible not to see the conflagration directly connected with it. There is no reason for this, because Moscow will inevitably be burned by fire, just as every village, factory, and house whose owner leaves and lets in an outsider as owner and cooks there will inevitably burn.It is true that Moscow was burned by its inhabitants, but not by those who remained there, but by those who left it.Moscow, occupied by the enemy, did not hold on as well as Berlin, Vienna, and other cities, simply because its inhabitants, instead of offering bread, salt, and keys to the French, abandoned the city and fled.