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Chapter 26 - The French enter Moscow
Toward four o’clock in the afternoon Murat’s troops were entering Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite1.
About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the Miraculous2 Icon3 of St. Nikolai, Murat halted to await news from the advanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found the citadel4, le Kremlin.
Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow. They all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired commander dressed up in feathers and gold.
“Is that their Tsar himself? He’s not bad!” low voices could be heard saying.
An interpreter rode up to the group.
“Take off your cap . . . your caps!” These words went from one to another in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and asked if it was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening in perplexity to the unfamiliar5 Polish accent and not realizing that the interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what was being said to him and slipped behind the others.
Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the Russian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded6 and that there was probably an ambuscade there.
“Good!” said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his suite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the gates.
The guns emerged at a trot7 from the column following Murat and advanced up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the Vozdvizhenka Street they halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers superintended the placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin through field glasses.
The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had been put there, and two musket9 shots rang out from under the gate as soon as an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was standing10 by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and the latter ran back again with his men.
The sound of three more shots came from the gate.
One shot struck a French soldier’s foot, and from behind the screens came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a word of command the expression of cheerful serenity11 on the faces of the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined12 concentrated readiness for strife13 and suffering. To all of them from the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka, Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove sanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the gates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash off their linstocks, and an officer gave the word “Fire!” This was followed by two whistling sounds of canister shot, one after another. The shot rattled14 against the stone of the gate and upon the wooden beams and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over the Square.
A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding15 over the stone-built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange sound above their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and circled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings. Together with that sound came a solitary16 human cry from the gateway17 and amid the smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a peasant’s coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the French. “Fire!” repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musket and of two cannon18 shots were heard simultaneously19. The gate again hidden by smoke.
Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry8 soldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three wounded and four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot of the wall, toward the Znamenka.
“Clear that away!” said the officer, pointing to the beams and the corpses20, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw the corpses over the parapet.
Who these men were nobody knew. “Clear that away!” was all that was said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed later on that they might not stink21. Thiers alone dedicates a few eloquent22 lines to their memory: “These wretches23 had occupied the sacred citadel, having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal24, and fired” (the wretches) “at the French. Some of them were sabered and the Kremlin was purged25 of their presence.”
Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered the gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of the windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the Square for fuel and kindled26 fires there.
Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French were not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in it as in a camp.
Though tattered27, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order. It was a weary and famished28, but still a fighting and menacing army. But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed30 into their different lodgings31. As soon as the men of the various regiments33 began to disperse29 among the wealthy and deserted34 houses, the army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript, neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of articles which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man when he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its paw into the narrow neck of a jug35, and having seized a handful of nuts will not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore perishes, the French when they left Moscow had inevitably36 to perish because they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they had stolen was as impossible for them as it is for the monkey to open its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment32 had entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was left. Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through the windows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In cellars and storerooms similar men were busy among the provisions, and in the yards unlocking or breaking open coach house and stable doors, lighting37 fires in kitchens and kneading and baking bread with rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or caressing38 women and children. There were many such men both in the shops and houses — but there was no army.
Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding any violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a roll call for that very evening. But despite all these measures the men, who had till then constituted an army, flowed all over the wealthy, deserted city with its comforts and plentiful39 supplies. As a hungry herd40 of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren field, but gets out of hand and at once disperses41 uncontrollably as soon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army disperse all over the wealthy city.
No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers — like water percolating42 through sand — spread irresistibly43 through the city in all directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. The cavalry44, on entering a merchant’s house that had been abandoned and finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on, all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they had had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the streets to see the city and, hearing that everything had been abandoned, rushed to places where valuables were to be had for the taking. The officers followed to check the soldiers and were involuntarily drawn45 into doing the same. In Carriage Row carriages had been left in the shops, and generals flocked there to select caleches and coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who had remained invited commanding officers to their houses, hoping thereby46 to secure themselves from being plundered47. There were masses of wealth and there seemed no end to it. All around the quarters occupied by the French were other regions still unexplored and unoccupied where, they thought, yet greater riches might be found. And Moscow engulfed48 the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is spilled on dry ground both the dry ground and the water disappear and mud results; and in the same way the entry of the famished army into the rich and deserted city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction of both the army and the wealthy city.
The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine,* — *The ferocious50 patriotism49 of Rostopchin. the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality, however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people, responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a position in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite apart from whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior fire engines. Deserted Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of shavings has to burn on which sparks continually fall for several days. A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes without conflagrations51 when the house owners are in residence and a police force is present, cannot help burning when its inhabitants have left it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves meals twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to billet troops in the villages of any district and the number of fires in that district immediately increases. How much then must the probability of fire be increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops are quartered. “Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine” and the barbarity of the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire by the soldiers’ pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the carelessness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even if there was any arson52 (which is very doubtful, for no one had any reason to burn the houses — in any case a troublesome and dangerous thing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same thing would have happened without any incendiarism.
However tempting53 it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin’s ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of the fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house must burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are allowed to live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its inhabitants, it is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not by those who remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its inhabitants abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and salt, nor bring them the keys of the city.
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1
suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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2
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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3
icon
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| n.偶像，崇拜的对象，画像 | |
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4
citadel
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| n.城堡；堡垒；避难所 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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6
barricaded
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| 设路障于，以障碍物阻塞( barricade的过去式和过去分词 )； 设路障[防御工事]保卫或固守 | |
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7
trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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8
infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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9
musket
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| n.滑膛枪 | |
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10
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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12
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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13
strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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14
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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resounding
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| adj. 响亮的 | |
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16
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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17
gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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18
cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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21
stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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22
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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23
wretches
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| n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋 | |
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24
arsenal
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| n.兵工厂，军械库 | |
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25
purged
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| 清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响 | |
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26
kindled
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| （使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光 | |
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27
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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28
famished
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| adj.饥饿的 | |
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29
disperse
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| vi.使分散；使消失；vt.分散；驱散 | |
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dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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31
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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32
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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34
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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jug
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| n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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37
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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38
caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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39
plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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40
herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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41
disperses
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| v.（使）分散( disperse的第三人称单数 )；疏散；驱散；散布 | |
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42
percolating
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| n.渗透v.滤( percolate的现在分词 )；渗透；（思想等）渗透；渗入 | |
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43
irresistibly
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| adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地 | |
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44
cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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45
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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46
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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47
plundered
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
engulfed
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| v.吞没，包住( engulf的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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50
ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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51
conflagrations
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| n.大火（灾）( conflagration的名词复数 ) | |
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52
arson
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| n.纵火，放火 | |
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53
tempting
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| a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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