The whole night Napoleon watches the tempest of fire with terror; now is his power tottering, his genius conquered; a hidden demon is fanning the flames, and like Scipio gazing upon burning Carthage, he shudders thinking of Rome.

  The sun rises upon this furnace and day brings to light the disasters of the night. The fire has swept over an immense circle, driving in front of it every living being and creeping up nearer and nearer to the Kremlin. Then reports are brought in and the authors of the incendiarism are being found.

  On the night of the 14th, that is to say the night following the occupation, a globe of fire, like a bomb fell on to the Palace of Prince Trubetski and set it alight; no doubt this was a signal, for at the same moment the Bourse bursts into flames, and at two or three different places fire made its appearance, encouraged by sticks soaked in tar wielded by the Russian police. Bombs had been hidden in almost all the stoves, and the French soldiers, having lit them to warm themselves were blown to pieces; thus were the bombs doubly dangerous, for they destroyed men and set fire to houses. The whole night was spent by the soldiers in flying from house to house and watching the. house they were leaving or the one they were entering suddenly burst into flames spontaneously without any visible cause. Moscow, like the old cursed cities of the Bible, is utterly doomed to destruction, except that the fire, instead of falling from heaven, seems to be vomited from the earth.

  Then is Napoleon vanquished and recognises that the fires, rising simultaneously in all directions are the work of one mind if not of one hand. He passes his hand across his brow, from which the perspiration is dripping and gives vent to a sigh, while murmuring: — ”See how these people make war. The civilization of St. Petersburg has deceived us, the modern Russians are just as savage as the ancient Scythians.”

  He at once gives orders that any one found starting or assisting a fire is to be arrested, tried and executed on the spot; the Old Guards, quartered in the Kremlin, are to fall in; the horses are to be harnessed to the wagons and hold themselves in readiness to leave this city in search of which he had travelled so far and on which he had counted so much.

  In an hour’s time the Emperor is told that his orders have been executed; twenty incendiaries have been caught red handed and shot. At their trials they confessed that there were nine hundred of them and that before evacuating Moscow, Rostopchin the Governor had made them hide in the cellars so as to start a fire in every quarter. They obeyed him faithfully. In the last hour the flames have made further progress; the Kremlin looks like an island cast upon a sea of fire. The very air is charged with burning vapours, the window panes in the Kremlin are cracking and breaking. The cinder laden air is choking everyone.

  Just then another cry is heard: “The Kremlin is on fire! the Kremlin is on fire!”

  Napoleon turns pale with anger. So the ancient palace, the time-hallowed Kremlin, the home of the Czars, is to be polluted at the hands of these political incendiaries. But at any rate the culprit has been secured and is brought before the Emperor. He is a private in the Russian police. Napoleon himself cross examines him: he repeats the same story; he and eight comrades were assigned the Kremlin. Napoleon dismisses him in disgust, and he is shot down in the courtyard.

  Then they urge the Emperor to quit the palace where he is pursued by the fire. But he clings to his fancy, he will neither accept nor refuse the idea; he remains deaf, listless, disheartened; suddenly a muttered report is whispered around him: “the Kremlin is undermined.”

  The next minute the Grenadiers are heard shouting for him; the ominous report has reached them; they want their Emperor, they must have their Emperor; if there is any further delay they will come and look for him themselves.

  Napoleon at last makes up his mind, but how shall he escape? He has waited so long that there is no longer any exit. The Emperor orders Gourgaud and the Prince of Neuchatel to ascend the terrace of the Kremlin and endeavour to find a way of escape and at the same time he orders several orderlies to distribute themselves about the neighbourhood of the palace with the same object; everyone hastens to obey him, the officers descending rapidly by the staircases while Berthier and Gourgaud climb on to the terrace. On emerging they are obliged to cling to each other; the violence of the wind and the rarefaction of the air, cause so tremendous a commotion of the atmosphere that the eddies whirling about in every direction very nearly carried them away; meanwhile from their position it is impossible to see anything but a limitless ocean of flames.

  They come down and tell the Emperor their news.

  Then Napoleon no longer hesitates; at the risk of rushing headlong into the flames, he rapidly descends the northern staircase, on the steps of which the Strelitz were butchered, but on reaching the courtyard no means of exit can be found, all the gates are blocked by fire; the delay has been too protracted, there is no time left now.

  Just then an officer runs up panting, the sweat on his brow and his hair singed; he has discovered an exit; it is by way of a closed postern which is said to open on to the Moskva; four sappers make for the door and break it down with their axes. Napoleon stumbles through two walls of rocks; his officers, marshals and body guard follow him; should they require to retrace their steps the thing will be impossible, they must go forward.

  The officer was mistaken; the postern does not give on to the river, but on to a narrow street in flames. No matter; should the street lead to the infernal regions, they must follow it. Napoleon sets the example and dashes headlong under the archway of fire; everyone follows him, no one dreams of seeking safety apart from him; if he dies so will they.

  There is no longer any path, no one is there to guide them, there are no stars; they stagger along haphazard amid the roaring of flames, the crackling of burning wood and the falling in of vaults; all the houses were on fire or already consumed while the flames were bursting from the windows and the doors of those that remained standing, as if attempting to pursue the fugitives; beams were falling, molten lead was running in the gutters; everything was on fire, air, walls and even the sky; some of the fugitives fell as they ran, suffocated for the want of air or crushed beneath the ruins.

  At this moment, some soldiers of the First Corps who were looking for the Emperor appeared almost from the midst of the flames; they recognised him, and while ten or twelve of them surrounded him as if they were about to defend him from an ordinary enemy, the others marched in front calling out: “This way! this way!”

  Napoleon entrusted himself to them with the same confidence that they were accustomed to repose in him and five minutes later he found himself in safety amid the ruins of a quarter which had been destroyed that morning.

  Then he stumbles upon a double row of vehicles, baggage and ammunition waggons, and asks to whom they belong. He is told that they are the park of the First Corps, who have rescued them; each waggon contains thousands of pounds of powder, and firebrands are blazing between the wheels!

  Napoleon gives the order to make a start for Petroski, a royal residence situated beyond the city, half-an-hour’s drive from the St. Petersburg gate, in the midst of Prince Eugène’s cantonments: henceforth the Imperial quarters will be there.

  For two days and nights Moscow continues to burn; and then, on the morning of the third day the flames died out while through the smoke which hung over it like a fog Napoleon could discern reared aloft the blackened and half-consumed skeleton of the holy city.

  Except for a few remaining traces of the fire, which appear to have been left as gloomy reminders of that terrible time, Moscow has risen again from its ashes, more splendid, more magnificent and more gilded than ever before. The Kremlin alone, standing up like an ancient and indestructible witness of the past, has preserved its Byzantine character, bearing a striking resemblance, at a first glance, to the Doge’s palace at Venice. My first visit was to this building and of the five gates piercing its high embattled walls, I chose the Spaskoï or holy gate and entered as is customary, with head uncovered, the ancient palace, on which the history of old Muscovy is pivoted.

  It is said that the Kremlin derives its name from the word Kremle, meaning stone. It embraces the Senate House, the arsenal, the Church of the Annunciation, the Cathedral of the Assumption, where the ceremony of coronation is held, and as a matter of fact the Emperor Nicholas had just been crowned there; the Church of St. Michael containing the monuments of the early sovereigns of the Empire; the palace of the Patriarchs and the palace of the old Czars. Peter I. was born in this granite nest.

  Thanks to Ivan, who made good use of the Emperor’s orders and to whom by the way the utmost deference was paid, I was able to make a very close inspection of the palace. I was first of all shown the little postern by which Napoleon made his escape, then the apartment he had occupied, at whose window he had sat with folded arms, for a whole day and night watching the advance of this novel and unknown enemy, irresistible and indomitable, which inch by inch stole from him his prize. I then climbed on to the terrace, from the heights of which Gourgaud and Berthier were nearly precipitated, and from there I surveyed Moscow, no longer in torment and writhing in its burning agony, but fresh, joyous, smiling, studded everywhere with its green gardens, sparkling everywhere with its gilded domes.

  Moscow dates from about the middle of the thirteenth century. It is a city therefore of only moderate antiquity; a great lord of the age of Louis XIV. would have had to boast a longer pedigree, to claim a seat in the King’s state-coaches. It may have been in existence a long time before this, poor, unknown and insignificant, but staffing from this time it had risen to the rank of a principality and was governed by Michael the Brave, the brother of Alexander Nevski: he who became an anchorite in later life is now regarded as a Saint and has become one of the most miraculous benefactors of the city of St. Petersburg. The origin of the name of Moscow does not arouse the same doubts as that of the Kremlin. Its good mother is the Moskva an insignificant muddy river, which rises at Giath and falls into the Oka, beyond Riazan, much astonished at having in a few hours’ course, done duty as the belt of a queen.

  The Kremlin forms the centre of Moscow, and is situated on the highest point, so that from the terrace of the palace the whole city can be seen spread out at one’s feet. From this elevation the irregularity of Moscow, like a fantastic city designed by some architect from “The Arabian Nights “appears in all its strange variety, with its mosaic work of roofs, its Byzantine minarets, its Chinese Pagodas, its Italian terraces, its Indian Kiosks, and its Dutch farms. From this same spot the representatives of every nation in the world can be observed, pouring into the three quarters into which it is divided, but especially towards Kitaï Gorod the business quarter. They can be distinguished; the Turk by his turban, the Armenian by his long cloak, the Mangolian by his pointed hat, the mujik by his calico smock frock, and the Frenchman by his well fitting clothes.

  The streets are as tortuous as the river which meanders through them, and whose name is said to be derived from a Sarmatian word meaning serpent; but they have the great advantage of being built with their backs to the wind and sun and never offer to the weary eyes those interminable vistas which seem unendurable to the pedestrian.

  On descending from the terrace where I had remained for more than an hour without tiring of the magnificent view, I passed on to the Senate house an immense building reared in Catherine’s reign, and bearing on the four sides of the cube which surmounts its dome, the word “Law “in Russia characters cut in large, letters. As the assembly hall was of little interest to me and the extent of my visit to Moscow was limited, I moved on to the arsenal, a vast building, commenced in 1702 in the reign of Peter I.

  Blown up by mines in 1812, immediately after the evacuation of the French Army, the arsenal still bears traces of the terrible explosion which destroyed a great part of it, without breaking a sheet of glass which happened to be in front of an image of St. Nicholas, an event looked upon as a miraculous intervention of the Saint, so an inscription cut beneath it states.

  Another evidence of an equally wonderful miracle, but one due to the instrumentality of winter, a much more powerful saint than Alexander Nevski is to be found in the eight hundred and seventy pieces of artillery taken from the French and their allies, collected from highways, river banks, morasses and ravines, on the route from Moscow to Vilna. These trophies are drawn up in front of the building. Every one of them, though a prisoner still bears the proud title bestowed upon it when it was cast, in total ignorance of what the future would bring about. One is the “Invincible “another the “Impregnable” a third the “Avenger.” The whole scene proves that it is not only on columns and monuments that the brass tablet has learned to lie.

  In front of one of the side walls is the famous cannon cast in 1694, weighing ninety-six thousand pounds thirteen ounces, of which the length is seventeen feet and the diameter four feet three inches; it is surrounded by several other pieces captured from the Turks and the Persians, of whom it might be the grandfather, although the smallest, taken by itself would appear enormous. They are loaded with strange Oriental decorations and each of them, to display its power, has the figures designating its weight stamped on its breech. Compared with the smallest of these weapons, our largest seems a mere plaything.

  In front of us was the belfry of Ivan Velikoï, raised to perpetuate the memory of a famine which desolated Moscow about the year 1600. The belfry is octagonal in shape and the dome is, they say, covered entirely with gold made from ducats. The cross surmounting the church was taken away immediately before Napoleon’s retreat. He intended to place it on the Invalides, and the men in charge of it threw it into the Beresina not being able to drag it farther. The Russians replaced it with a wooden cross covered with copper gilt.

  Just below the church, in a circular cavity boarded with planks, reposes the renowned bell, transported from Novgorod to Moscow, where it was to be the queen over thirty-two other bells which comprise the chimes of the Church of Ivan the Great. As a matter of fact for a short time it did lord it over them, as much by its size as its sound; but one day it broke its bonds, fell, and as a result sank into the ground to the depth of several feet. We visited it by means of a trap door and a staircase of twenty steps, under the care of a sentry who warned us not to break our necks. On reaching the foot of the mountain of bronze, we made its circuit, skirting a little brick wall built to support it. The circumference of the bell is sixty-seven feet four inches, making the diameter twenty-two feet four and a third inches, its height is twenty-one feet four inches and a half, its thickness at the part where the clapper strikes it twenty-three inches and its weight four hundred and forty-three thousand seven hundred and seventy-two pounds which at the current price of metal, that is about three francs fifteen sous a pound, represents a sum of nearly seventy thousand five hundred louis.

  But the real value of the bell is three times as much, for when it was being cast, the nobility and the common people vied with each other in throwing in their gold, silver and plate. Thus were nearly four million seven hundred and forty-two thousand francs swallowed up. absolutely uselessly and bringing no return.

  On certain days in the year, the peasants visit the bell with great reverence, and cross themselves on every step of the staircase both going down and ascending.

  As I was in a hurry to finish with the Kremlin I entered the Church of the Assumption, where the coronation of the Emperor had taken place six months before. It is a rather small building in the shape of a square and was founded in 1325. But it collapsed in 1474 and was rebuilt in the following year by some Italian architects who were brought from Florence by Ivan III. The church which will hold five hundred people, contains the tombs of the patriarchs and the throne of the Czars. Before 1812 it was lighted by a silver chandelier weighing more than 3,700 pounds which disappeared during the French invasion. But in revenge it has been replaced by another cast from the silver taken from us during the retreat, though it is true that the church lost by this compulsory exchange, as the one there now weighs only six hundred and sixty pounds.

  I was very eager to pay a visit to Petroski the same day; but my invitation to dine with the Countess Vaninkov prevented me. I contented myself with a glance at the stone scaffold on which the bloodthirsty civiliser of Russia more than once carried out the sentence of death with the same hand that had signed it; and I told Ivan to take me to the Church of the Protection of the Virgin which the Russians call Vassili-Blajennoï and is the most curious of the two hundred and sixty-three enclosed within the walls of the capital.

  This building, erected in 1354, in the reign of Ivan the Terrible, to commemorate the taking of Kazan, is the work of an Italian architect, who, summoned from the heart of the most splendid civilization to the midst of a barbarous people, wished to build something which by its peculiarities would satisfy the untutored taste of the Czar. Seventeen cupolas stud the roof of Vassili-Blajennoï and each is of a different shape and colour. With this incongruous collection of balls, pineapples, melons and prickly pears, green, red, blue, yellow and violet, Ivan the Terrible appeared very pleased. His pleasure increased by such leaps and bounds during the next few days that when the. architect came to take his leave, and ask for his fee and return to Italy, he gave him twice the amount he had promised and had his eyes put out, for fear that he might endow the city of the Medici with a similar masterpiece to the one he possessed.

  It was now time to repair to the Countess Vaninkov’s. I found Louise installed there. But, the only abatement she could be induced to make was not to start until the morning of the day after to-morrow. As to the infant, he was already master of the house; at the least cry, the whole of the household was afoot, and I found the nurse in a magnificent Russian costume which the two young ladies had bought for her.

 

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