CHAPTER 5
Meanwhile, there was something to attend to that was even more important than the retreat of the army without putting up a fight: the evacuation of Moscow and the burning of the city. Count Rostopchin, whom we usually take to be the motive force behind this event, was acting in a very different manner from Kutuzov.
After the battle of Borodino, this event – the evacuation and burning of Moscow – became as inevitable as the retreat of the army without putting up a fight.
Every Russian could have predicted the outcome, not by intellectual effort but from the gut-feeling that lies within us as it lay within our fathers.
What had happened in Moscow was happening now in every town and village on Russian soil from Smolensk onwards, and without the assistance of Count Rostopchin and his posters. The people were waiting philosophically for the enemy to arrive. There was no rioting, no disturbance of the peace, and nobody was torn to pieces; they calmly awaited their fate, sensing within themselves sufficient strength to do what was necessary when the crisis came. And once the enemy began to get near, the wealthier elements of the population went away, leaving their property behind, while the poorer people stayed on, setting fire to all that was left and destroying it.
An awareness that this was the way things were going, and always would go, was, and is, deeply implanted in every Russian heart. This awareness, along with a foreboding that Moscow was going to be taken by the enemy, lay deeply implanted in Russian society in the Moscow of 1812. Those who had started to leave the city in July and early August had shown they were expecting it. Those who left the city taking with them only what they could carry, and leaving their houses and half their property behind, were acting out of patriotism, but the
‘Shame on you, running away from danger. Only cowards are deserting Moscow,’ they were told. In his posters Rostopchin kept drumming it into them that it was disgraceful to leave Moscow. They felt ashamed when they heard themselves described as cowards; they felt ashamed to be going away, but they still went, and they knew they had to. Why did they go? They couldn’t possibly have been scared off by Rostopchin’s accounts of atrocities carried out by Napoleon in conquered countries. As they streamed away the first to go were the wealthy, educated people, who knew full well that Vienna and Berlin had survived intact, and that throughout the occupation the inhabitants of those cities had enjoyed themselves with all those utterly charming Frenchmen, whom all Russians, and especially the ladies, found so attractive at that time.
They were leaving because for the Russians it wasn’t a question of how easy life might or might not be under French rule in Moscow. It was just not possible to live under French rule; this was the worst thing that could possibly happen. They were leaving before Borodino; and after Borodino the movement speeded up, notwithstanding calls to defend the city, notwithstanding any number of proclamations from the governor of Moscow about going into battle with the wonder-working Icon of Iversk and the air-balloons that would finish off the French, and all the other rubbish that Rostopchin splashed all over his posters. They knew it was the army’s job to fight, and if the army proved incapable it would be no good marching out with young ladies and house serfs to fight Napoleon on the Three Hills; no, they must get away, however much it hurt to leave their property behind knowing it would be destroyed. Away they went, without a passing thought for the solemn significance of Muscovites abandoning this huge, thriving capital city, and obviously consigning it to the flames. (A large city of wooden buildings, once abandoned, would be certain to burn down.) They went away for personal reasons, yet it was their departure that brought about the splendid achievement that will always redound to the glory of the Russian people. The lady who moved out in June and took her black servants and her entertainers from Moscow down to Saratov, with a vague determination that she would never be a servant of Bonaparte, and a real fear of being stopped by orders from Rostopchin, was actually doing nothing less than partaking of that great action that saved Russia.
