Part 7

Rostopchine tried his best to keep the population at peace by his original proclamations, which were pasted on all the walls and distributed broadcast. After Borodino he urged the people to take up arms, and he promised to be at the head of the men to fight a supreme battle on the Three Mountains. Meanwhile he worked to save the treasures of the church, the archives, the collections of precious objects in the government palaces. From the arsenal he armed the people. A tribune was erected from which the metropolitan addressed the multitude and made them kneel down to receive his blessing. Rostopchine stood behind the metropolitan and came forward after the priest had finished his ellocution, saying that he had come to announce a great favor of his majesty. As a proof that they should not be delivered unarmed to the enemy, his majesty permitted them to pillage the arsenal, and the people shouted: “Thanks, may God give to the Tzar many years to live!” This was a very wise idea of Rostopchine to have the arsenal emptied, a feat which he could not have accomplished in time in any other way. The pillage lasted several days and went on in good order.

* * * * *

The French had entered Moscow. The first word of Napoleon to Mortier, whom he had named governor of Moscow, was “no pillage!” But this point of honor had to be abandoned. The 100 thousand men who had entered were troops of the élite, but they came starving at the end of their adventurous expedition. During the first days they walked the streets in search of a piece of bread and a little wine. But little had been left in the cellars of the abandoned houses and in the basements of the little shops, and with the conflagration there was almost nothing to be found. The Grand Army was starving as much almost as on the march. Dogs which had returned in considerable numbers to lament on the ruins of the houses of their masters were looked upon as precious venison. The uniforms were already in rags, and the Russian climate made itself felt. These poor soldiers, poorly clad, dying from starvation, were begging for a piece of bread, for linen or sheepskin, and, above all, for shoes. There was no arrangement for the distribution of rations; they had to take from wherever they could, or perish.

Napoleon established himself in the Kremlin, the generals in the mansions of the noblemen, the soldiers in the taverns or private houses until the fire dislodged them. Napoleon, with a part of his staff, was obliged to seek refuge in the park Petrovski, the commanders took quarters wherever they could, the soldiers dispersed themselves among the ruins. Supervision had become an impossibility. The men, left to themselves, naturally lost all discipline under these circumstances of deception and under so many provocations among a hostile population. Notwithstanding all these conditions, they behaved well in general and to a great extent showed self-control and humanity toward the conquered. The example of pillage had been set by the Russians themselves. Koutouzof had commanded the destruction of the mansions. The slaves burned the palaces of their masters.

All eye-witnesses speak of the extreme destitution of the soldiers in regard to clothing after one month’s stay in Moscow. Already at this time, even before the most terrible and final trials of the retreat which awaited them, one had to consider them lost. When they first took to woman’s clothes or shoes or hats it was considered an amusement, a joke, but very soon a mantilla, a soutane, a veil became a precious object and nobody laughed at it when frozen members were wrapped in these garments. The greatest calamity was the want of shoes. Some soldiers followed women simply for the purpose of taking their shoes from them. A special chapter of horrors could be written on the sufferings of the soldiers on the retreat over ice and snow fields on account of the miserable supply of shoes.

At first Napoleon reviewed the regiments near the ponds of the Kremlin, and at the first reviews the troops marched proudly, briskly, with firm step, but soon they began to fail with astonishing rapidity. They answered the roll of the drums calling them together, clad in dirty rags and with torn shoes, in fast diminishing numbers. During the last weeks of their stay in Moscow many had reached the last stage of misery, after having wandered through the streets looking for a little bit of nourishment, dressed up as for a carnival, but without desire to dance, as one remarked in grim humor.

These were the men whose destination had brought them many hundreds of miles from home to the semi-Asiatic capital of the Ivans, who had been drinking in the glory and the joy of warriors, and who now died from hunger and cold, with their laurels still intact. Thanks to the authorized military requisitions and the excesses of the stragglers of the Grand Army, a desert had been made of the city before Napoleon had begun his retreat. No more cattle, no provisions, and the inhabitants gone, camping with wife and children in the deepest parts of the forests. Those who had remained or returned to the villages, organized against marauders whom they received with pitchforks or rifles, and these peasants gave no quarter.

“The enemy appeared nearly every day in our village (Bogorodsic),” says Maria Stepanova, the wife of a pope, “and as soon as they were perceived all men took up arms; our cossacks charged them with their long sabers or shot them with their pistols, and behind the cossacks were running the peasants, some with axes, some with pitchforks. After every excursion they brought ten or more prisoners which they drowned in the Protka which runs near the village, or they fusilladed them on the prairie. The unfortunates passed our windows, my mother and I did not know where to hide ourselves in order not to hear their cries and the report of the firearms. My poor husband, Ivan Demitovitch, became quite pale, the fever took him, his teeth chattered, he was so compassionate! One day the cossacks brought some prisoners and locked them up in a cart-house built of stone. They are too few, they said, it is not worth while to take any trouble about them now; with the next lot which we shall take we will shoot or drown them together. This cart-house had a window with bars. Peasants came to look at the prisoners and gave them bread and boiled eggs; they did not want to see them starving while awaiting death. One day when I brought them eatables I saw at the window a young soldier—so young! His forehead was pressed against the bars, tears in his eyes, and tears running down his cheeks. I myself began to cry, and even to-day my heart aches when I think of him. I passed lepecheks through the bars and went away without looking behind me. At that time came an order from the government that no more prisoners should be killed but sent to Kalouga. How we were contented!”

Many savageries have been committed by the low class of Russians who had remained in Moscow. This is not surprising because these were of the most depraved of the population, including especially many criminals who had been set free to pillage and burn the city. “A little while before the French entered,” tells the serf Soimonof, “the order had been given to empty all the vodka (whiskey) from the distilleries of the crown into the street; the liquor was running in rivulets, and the rabble drank until they were senselessly drunk, they had even licked the stones and the wooden pavement. Shouting and fighting naturally followed.”

The really good people of Moscow had given proofs of high moral qualities, worthy of admiration, under the sad circumstances. Poor moujiks who had learned of the defeat of the Russians at Borodino said their place was no longer in a city which was to be desecrated by the presence of the enemy, and, leaving their huts to be burned down, their miserable belongings to be pillaged, they went on the highways at the mercy of God, disposed to march as long as their eyes could see before them. Others, running before the flames, carried their aged and sick on their shoulders, showing but one sentiment in their complete ruin, namely, absolute resignation to the will of God.

Some readers may say that the foregoing chapter does not give the medical history of the campaign. To these I wish to reply that it is impossible to understand the medical history without knowing the general conditions of the Grand Army, which were the cause of the death of hundreds of thousands of soldiers from cold and starvation.

ROSTOPCHINE

The conflagration of Moscow in 1812 and the fall of the French empire are two facts which cannot be separated, but to the name of Moscow is attached another name, that of Rostopchine. Count Fedor Wassiljavitch Rostopchine is connected with one of the greatest events in universal history. He caused a crisis which decided the fate of Russia and arrested the march of ascending France by giving the death blow to Napoleon. The latter, in admitting that Rostopchine was the author of his ruin, meant him when he said, “one man less, and I would have been master of the world.”

Until the year 1876 there existed a mystery around this man and his deed, a mystery which was deepened by Rostopchine himself when he published in 1823 a pamphlet entitled “The Truth about the Conflagration of Moscow,” which did not give the truth but was a mystification.

Alexander Popof, a Russian Counselor of State, who made a special study of the history of the Russian campaign of Napoleon, has explored the archives of St. Petersburg, and his researches, the result of which he published in Russian in the year 1876, have brought to light all diplomacy had concealed about the events which led to the destruction of the Russian capital.

What document, one might ask, could be more precious than the memoirs of Rostopchine, the governor of Moscow in 1812? What good fortune for the historian! In 1872 Count Anatole de Ségur, grandson of Rostopchine, the author of a biography of the latter, wrote, concerning these memoirs, that they were seized, together with all the papers of his grand-father, by order of the Emperor Nicholas, immediately after Rostopchine’s death in the year 1826, and were locked up in the archives of the Imperial Chancellor where they would remain, perhaps forever. Fortunately, one of the daughters of Count Rostopchine had taken a copy of some passages of this precious manuscript. These passages were published in 1864 by a son of Rostopchine, Count Alexis R., in a book entitled “Materiaux en grande partie inédits, pour la biographie future du Comte Rostopchine,” which is of a rare bibliographic value, for only twelve copies were printed. These same fragments, three in number, were reproduced by Count Anatole de Ségur in the biography of his ancestor, of which we have spoken. Aside from these extracts nothing was known of Rostopchine’s memoirs until Popof had made his researches. To verify the memoirs Popof quotes long passages which he compares carefully with other documents of that epoch. This book on the whole is a continuous commentary upon the memoirs of Rostopchine.

Rostopchine, having been made governor of Moscow in March, 1812, wrote to the Tzar: “Your empire has two strongholds, its immensity and its climate. It has these 16,000,000 men who profess the same creed, speak the same language, and whose chin has never been touched by a razor. The long beards are the power of Russia, and the blood of your soldiers will be a seed of heroes. If unfortunate circumstances should force you to retreat before the invader, the Russian emperor will always be terrible in Moscow, formidable in Kazan, invincible at Tobolsk.” This letter was dated June 11/23, 1812.

At that time Rostopchine was 47 years of age, in perfect health and had developed a most extraordinary activity, something which was not known of his predecessors; the governors of Moscow before his time had been old and decrepit. He understood the character of the Russian people and made himself popular at once, and adored, because he made himself accessible to everybody. He himself describes how he went to work: “I announced that every day from 11 to noon everybody had access to me, and those who had something important to communicate would be received at any hour during the day. On the day of my taking charge I had prayers said and candles lighted before such miraculous pictures as enjoyed the highest popular veneration. I studied to show an extraordinary politeness to all who had dealings with me; I courted the old women, the babblers and the pious, especially the latter. I resorted to all means to make myself agreeable; I had the coffins raised which served as signs to the undertakers and the inscriptions pasted on the church doors. It took me two days to pull the wool over their eyes (pour jeter la poudre aux yeux) and to persuade the greater part of the inhabitants that I was indefatigable and that I was everywhere. I succeeded in giving this idea by appearing on the same morning at different places, far apart from each other, leaving traces everywhere of my justice and severity; thus on the first day I had arrested an officer of the military hospital whose duty it was to oversee the distribution of the soup, but who had not been present when it was time for dinner. I rendered justice to a peasant who had bought 30 pounds of salt but received only 25; I gave the order to imprison an employee who had not done his duty; I went everywhere, spoke to everyone and learned many things which afterward were useful to me. After having tired to death two pairs of horses I came home at 8 o’clock, changed my civilian costume for the military uniform and made myself ready to commence my official work.” Thus Rostopchine took the Moscovitians by their foibles, played the rôle of Haroun-al-Raschid, played comedy; he even employed agents to carry the news of the town to him, to canvass war news and to excite enthusiasm in the cafés and in all kinds of resorts of the common people.

When the emperor notified him one day of his coming visit to the capital and transmitted a proclamation in which he announced to his people the danger of the country, Rostopchine developed great activity. “I went to work,” he writes in his memoirs, “was on my feet day and night, held meetings, saw many people, had printed along with the imperial proclamation a bulletin worded after my own fashion, and the next morning the people of Moscow on rising learned of the coming of the sovereign. The nobility felt flattered on account of the confidence which the emperor placed in them, and became inspired with a noble zeal, the merchants were ready to give money, only the common people apparently remained indifferent, because they did not believe it possible that the enemy could enter Moscow.” The longbeards repeated incessantly:

“Napoleon cannot conquer us, he would have to exterminate us all.”

But the streets became crowded with people, the stores were closed, every one went first to the churches to pray for the Tzar, and from there to the gate of Dragomilof to salute the imperial procession upon its arrival. The enthusiasm ran so high that the idea was conceived to unhitch the horses from his coach and carry him in his carriage. This, as Rostopchine tells us, was the intention not only of the common people but of many distinguished ones also, even of such as wore decorations. The emperor, to avoid such exaggerated manifestations, was obliged to arrange for his entry during the night. On the next morning when the Tzar, according to the old custom, showed himself to his people on the red stairs, the hurrahs, the shouts of the multitude drowned the sounds of the bells of the forty times forty churches which were ringing in the city. At every step, thousands of hands tried to touch the limbs of the sovereign or the flap of his uniform which they kissed and wet with their tears.

“I learned during the night,” writes Rostopchine, “and it was confirmed in the morning, that there were some persons who had united to ask the emperor how many troops we had, how many the enemy, and what were the means of defense. This would have been a bold and, under the present circumstances, a dangerous undertaking, although I hardly feared that these people would venture to do so, because they were of those who are brave in private and poltroons in public.

“At any rate, I had said repeatedly and before everybody that I hoped to offer the emperor the spectacle of an assembly of a faithful and respectful nobility, and that I should be in despair if some malevolent person should permit himself to create disorder and forget the presence of the sovereign. I promised that any one who would do this might be sure of being taken in hand and sent on a long journey before he would have finished his harangue.

“To give more weight to my words I had stationed, not far from the palace, two telegues (two-wheeled carts) hitched up with mail horses and two police officers in road uniform promenading before them. If some curious person should ask them for whom these telegues were ready, they had orders to answer, ‘for those who will be sent to Siberia.’

“These answers and the news of the telegues soon spread among the assembly; the bawlers understood and behaved.”

The nobility of Riazen had sent a deputation to the emperor to offer him 60 thousand men, armed and equipped. Balachef, the minister of police, received this deputation scornfully and ordered them to leave Moscow at once.

There were other offers which were not surprising at that period when the mass of the people consisted of serfs, but which appear strange to us. “Many of my acquaintances,” writes Kamarovski, “said that they would give their musicians, others the actors of their theaters, others their hunters, as it was easier to make soldiers of them than of their peasants.”

The Russian noblemen in their love for liberty sacrificed their slaves. Rostopchine, together with many aristocrats, was not entirely at ease. It was something anomalous to call to arms for the sake of liberty a nation of serfs who vividly felt the injustice of their situation; besides, it had been heard that some moujiks said, “Bonaparte comes to bring us liberty, we do not want any more seigneurs.”