_The French Invasion--and after_
"Now, Robber! look what thou hast done:
Come, for the strife prepare thee.
This land we fight on is our own--
And God's revenge is near thee!
ZHUKOVSKI "NAPOLEON."
Not unfrequently Russia has been treated by the powers of western Europe
with less consideration for justice than they have observed in their
dealings with each other, but on no occasion has a civilised country
more grossly outraged the sense of right than did France by its
memorable campaign of 1812. It is possible that Napoleon still felt
piqued because his offer to enter the Russian army had been declined by
Zaborovski in 1789--a rejection which the old general had many times
keenly regretted long before 1812--and it may be that Napoleon resented
his refusal by the Princess Katerina, and was disgusted that the hand of
the Princess Anna, which he had subsequently sought in marriage, had
been bestowed in preference upon a German princelet. It is idle to
suppose that technical breaches of the treaty of Tilsit by Russia--who
was unable to stop commercial relations with England--were anything more
than a mere pretext for the war. Like the wolf in the fable who had
determined to devour the lamb that had disturbed the lower waters of the
stream, any excuse served this wickedly ambitious upstart to gratify
his lust for further spoils and military glory. Doubtless
Napoleon--before whom Latin and Teutonic kings bowed low and their
subjects trembled when he but feigned to unsheath his sword--expected
that the formidable preparations he made for war would awe Russia into
submission, and thus gratify his vanity: but Russia heeded his bluster
as little as did England, so, with the eyes of Europe upon him, he had
no option but to drink up the liquor he had uncorked. Russia doubted his
seriousness, but regarded the inevitable with equanimity. It seemed
improbable that France, after centuries of enlightenment and progress,
with its professed love of philosophy, art and culture, should raid
Russia for pelf--just as Tartars, Kalmucks, and hordes of rough
unlettered barbarians out of Asia had done in ages past. If it were so
to be, Russia doubted not but she could triumph over the forces of the
west even as she had done over those of the east.
On the 10th June 1812 the French army crossed the Niemen unopposed, and
five days later occupied Vilna, where Napoleon expected attack, but,
unmolested for eighteen days, moved on towards Vitebsk. The Russian
army, commanded by Barclay de Tolly, did nothing more than cause the
invaders to manoeuvre unceasingly, and advance further into the
country. On the banks of the Dvina Napoleon thought to end the campaign
of 1812; recuperate his army and march against Moscow the following
spring; but as yet no action had been fought, so he again hurried on
after the Russians, this time towards Smolensk.
It is held that the withdrawal of the Russians disconcerted Napoleon;
but he had already met other armies than the English, so to him this
retreat of his enemy was not new. He expected to come up with the
Russians at Smolensk, but Barclay de Tolly, although assuring the
inhabitants of their safety, sent away the treasure and had determined
to abandon the town. It was garrisoned by but one regiment when
Neverovski fell back upon it after his engagement with the French at
Krasnoe. Raevski, sent to his aid, entrenched his troops and
determined to hold the town until the two armies under Tolly and
Bagrateon, then encamped on the left bank of the Dnieper, should arrive.
But they fell further back instead of advancing, and after one day's
fighting, with terrible loss, the Russians evacuated after setting fire
to the town. Napoleon remained there four days, then followed the
Russians towards Moscow. Notwithstanding his proclamations of amity
towards the peasants, his promises of freedom for the serfs, the people
began to realise that the march of the _Grande Armée_ was as disastrous
as an incursion of the Tartar Horde. The country was devastated; the
houses were pillaged; the owners shot; churches deserted; horses stabled
in the sacred places; holy ikons burnt; matrons and maidens ravished by
these heroes of the "twenty nations" of the west. Resistance there must
be and the villagers took up arms; Kutuzov took chief command of the
army, but Barclay de Tolly still gave his advice, and General Sir Robert
Wilson remained tactical counsellor. On August 24th (old style) the
Russians gave battle on the banks of the Moskva, near Borodino. In this
"battle of the generals" about 120,000 men were engaged on each side,
and 80,000 were killed, among them 18 generals and 15 other officers of
high rank in the French army; and 22 commanding officers on the Russian
side. Over 50,000 corpses and 30,000 dead horses were found in the field
of battle, and though the Russians retreated, the French halted five
days, then they moved forward upon Moscow, being nearly starved and
quite tired of the war. Kutuzov had then to decide whether or not to
risk another battle in an attempt to save Moscow.
At the Council of War, held at Fili. Barclay de Toily said that
when it was a matter of the salvation of Russia, Moscow was only a
city like any other. Other generals, like Grabbe, declared that
although it would be glorious to die before Moscow, the question
they had to decide was not what would add to their glory, but to
the defeat of the enemy. Prince Eugen of Wurtemburg held that
honour ought to be placed before all, and that Moscow ought to
become the tomb of every true Russian, all should choose death
rather than flight. Wilson, whose object was rather the defeat of
Napoleon than the preservation of Russia, said Moscow, to them,
must be only a city, "like any other." Ermolev, Ostermann,
Beningsen and others were in favour of a last battle. "Amid such
diverse counsel." said Kutuzov, "my head, be it good or bad, must
decide for itself," and he ordered a retreat through the town, but
he himself would not enter it, and wept as he hurriedly passed the
suburbs.
During the first decade of the eighteenth century there were joyous days
in Moscow; in 1801 Alexander was crowned; in 1803 he revisited the town
when there were public rejoicings for the victories over the Turks; when
in 1812, after the outbreak of hostilities Alexander came to Moscow, the
patriotic citizens promised to raise 80,000 men in that district and
equip them. The Tsar returned to St Petersburg and appointed Count
Rostopchin governor; a clever man, courtier, wit, cynic, he proved an
able administrator, possessed the gift of inciting and controlling the
uneducated masses, so his plan to destroy the city escaped opposition
from the inhabitants.
Rostopchin studied the peasants' ways and knew how to throw dust in
the eyes of all. "I do everything to gain the goodwill of
everybody. My two visits to the Iberian Mother of God, the freedom
of access I allow to all, the verification of weights and measures,
even the fifty blows with a stick to a sub-officer who made the
mujiks wait too long for their salt, have won me the confidence of
your devoted and faithful subjects. I resolved at any disagreeable
news to question its truth; by this means I weaken the first
impression and before there is time to verify it, other news will
come which will need to be attended to." The Government mistrusted
the people, most of whom are serfs, and might allow themselves to
be tempted by the proclamations of "freedom for all" which were
issued by Napoleon. Rostopchin gave the patriot Glinka 300,000
roubles to be used as would best serve the interests of Moscow, but
Glinka returned the money, for all were ready enough to resist the
invader. Rostopchin invented victories: he caused news of one by
Ostermann and another by Wittgenstein to be promulgated, and though
sensible people did not believe him, the ignorant were faithful to
the end. "Fear nothing," he said to the citizens; "a storm has
come; we will dissipate it; the grist will be ground into meal.
Some think Napoleon is coming to stay; others that he thinks only
to skin us. He makes the soldiers expect the Field-Marshal's
_baton_, beggars think to get gold, and while such simpletons await
him, he takes them by the neck and hurls them to death." Again: "I
will answer with my head that the scoundrel shall not enter the
city; if he attempts this I shall call on all. Forward, comrades of
Moscow! Let us out to fight. We shall be 100,000; we shall take
with us the ikon of the Virgin, 150 guns and be sure we shall
finish the affair one and all." After Borodino he issued another
proclamation: "Brothers, we are many and ready to sacrifice life
for the salvation of our land, and prevent the scoundrel entering
Moscow; you must help. Moscow is our mother; she has suckled us,
nursed us, enriched us. In the name of the Mother of God I call on
you to help to defend the Holy Places of Moscow, of Russia! Arm
yourselves how you can, on foot or horseback, take only enough food
for three days, go with the Holy Cross, preceded by the standards
from the Churches, and assemble on the three Hills. I shall be
there, and together we will exterminate the invaders. Glory in
Heaven for those who go! Eternal peace for those who die!
Punishment at the Last Day for all who hold back!"
To the last Rostopchin nursed the illusion of the citizens; he told them
men were at work upon some wonderful military engine--a fire
balloon--which would destroy the French army instantaneously. Meanwhile
the Archbishop Augustine, who had ordered the procession through the
town of the ikons of the Iberian Mother of God, the Virgin of Smolensk,
was instructed to take the sacred treasures to Vladimir. Rostopchin had
but one serious complaint against Kutuzov; he had asked for three days'
notice if the town was to be abandoned, he got but twenty-four hours.
Everything of value that could be removed was packed and sent away;
there was a general exodus on the night of the 1st September (old style)
and Rostopchin left with the Russian army, the rear-guard of which was
quitting the city by the Preobrajenski suburb at the same time that the
advance-guard of the French army entered it by the Dragomilov Zastava.
Before he left Rostopchin opened the prisons, gave the lowest class the
entry to the arsenal, and ordered the stores to be fired; also, he put
to death one Vereshchagin, accused of publishing Napoleon's
proclamation, a deed that was no less criminal because needless. And
here Rostopchin's work ended; if he had received longer notice of
Kutuzov's decision to abandon the town he would doubtless have saved
more of the valuable portable property of state and church, and _might_
have destroyed the town. With reference to all the correspondence that
ensued as to the party responsible for the firing of Moscow, it can be
said only that Rostopchin and the Russians would like to have had the
credit for making a so magnificent sacrifice, but it was of political
expedience that the Russians should believe the destruction of the holy
places and their revered city directly due to the invader.
The apologists of Napoleon attribute his misconduct of the campaign to
ill-health; as likely as not the thwarting of his plans by the enemy,
his defeats and doubtful victories caused his illness. Whether his
genius failed him or not, there can be no doubt of the magnitude of the
conception and the utter ineptitude exhibited in its execution. After
Borodino his generals lost faith in him; they remained taciturn and
morose, until at two o'clock on the afternoon of September the 2nd, the
staff obtained their first view of Moscow from the summit of the
Poklonnaya Hill, the "salutation" point of the Sparrow Hills. In the
bright sunlight of the early autumn, the city, resplendent with gold
domes and glittering crosses, seemed the fitting goal for their long
deferred hopes and they of one accord raised a joyful shout, "_Moscou! à
Moscou!_"
Even Napoleon expressed his admiration and delight, and received the
warm congratulations of his now enthusiastic generals. It was rumoured
that an officer had arrived from the town to discuss terms of surrender:
Napoleon halted, but grew uneasy when the expected messenger could not
be found and there were no signs of an approaching delegate or of that
deputation of gorgeously robed boyards he had fondly hoped would attend
his coming to surrender the keys of the Kremlin and sue for his clemency
towards the citizens. An hour before he had commanded Count Duronelle to
hurry on to Moscow and arrange for the ostentatious performance of the
customary ceremony. He was now told that the town had been abandoned by
the officials, that the citizens had forsaken it, but Moscow, empty it
is true, was at his feet. Murat had found a few stragglers, amongst them
a French type-setter, and these wretched fugitives were ordered before
the staff, and by their spokesman begged for protection. "Imbecile" was
the only word Napoleon trusted himself to answer. His chagrin, his
wounded self-love, his mortification at the unexpected turn of affairs
unnerved him. One of the Russian prisoners describes the effect of the
news thus:--
"Napoleon was thoroughly overcome and completely lost his
self-control. His calm and regular step was changed into a quick,
uneven tread. He kept looking around him, fidgetted, stood still,
trembled all over, looked fierce, tweaked his own nose, pulled a
glove off and put it on again, tore another glove out of his
pocket, rolled it up into a ball, and, as if in deep thought, put
it into his other pocket, again took it out, and again put it back,
pulled the other glove from his hand, then quickly drew it on
again, and kept repeating this process. This went on for an hour,
during which the generals standing behind him remained like
statues, not even daring to move."
Various accounts are given respecting the first entry of the troops into
Moscow. Some of the inhabitants who remained, having faith in the
assurances of Rostopchin, welcomed the invaders believing them to be
some of the foreign allies of the Russian army. An official who had not
been able to escape states that he saw some serfs carrying arms from the
arsenal, one, who was intoxicated had a musket in one hand and in the
other a carbine, for remarking upon the folly of such an armament, the
man threw first the musket then the carbine at him, and a crowd of
rioters rushed from the arsenal all armed, as the advance-guard of the
French approached. The captain begged an interpreter to advise the crowd
to throw down their arms and not engage in an unequal struggle, but the
ignorant people, excited if not intoxicated, fired a few rounds
accidentally, or by design, and the French thereupon made use of their
artillery, and a wild fight ensued. After some ten or a dozen had been
sabred, the others asked for quarter, and received it. Another story is
to the effect that some of the armed citizens mistaking a general for
Napoleon, fired at him as he approached the Kremlin and were then
charged by his guard and put to flight. When later, Napoleon rode up to
the Borovitski Gate, a decrepid soldier, a tottering veteran, too
stubborn to forsake his post, resolutely blocked the way and was
mercilessly struck down by the advance-guard.
The fires commenced the same evening that the French entered the town;
there were no engines available and the soldiers, hungry and joyful,
disregarded the danger and attended to their more immediate needs.
Rostopchin had ordered that the contents of the "cellars" should be
burned, but there was no lack of liquor, and the conquerors were not to
be denied. As the "Warriors" sing in Zhukovski's epic:--
"O, yes!--the ruby stream to drain
Is glory's pride and pleasure--
Wine! Conqueror thou of care and pain,
Thou art the hero's treasure."
So whilst rank and file caroused, the small beginnings of the great
conflagration were neglected and men were powerless to cope with the
later developments, though some worked like Trojans. The stores of oil,
of spirits, the inflammable wares in the Gostinnoi Dvor were ignited,
and although Marshal Mortier worked well to extinguish the fires near
the Kremlin, the lack of engines and the continuous outbursts of fresh
fires, made complete success impossible. The looting of the town
commenced at once; soon the greedy soldiers left their partly cooked
rations to search for valuables, even the sentinels forsook their posts
and they fought with the rabble from the prisons for such goods as
seemed most easily removed. In time, not content with such as had been
abandoned, they commenced to rob from the person; women were spoiled of
head-dresses and gowns, the men fought with each other for the temporary
possession of pelf. The only lights for this unholy work were the
torches all carried and the fires the looters set ablaze in order that
they might see. When Napoleon thought the conflagration was the result
of a preconcerted scheme he ordered all incendiaries to be shot, and
then none durst carry a light by night without risk of being there and
then shot by some predatory soldier on his own initiative, or, not less
surely executed in due form after a mock court-martial at dawn of day.
Discipline was lax; among the soldiery of the army of occupation, many
bold souls did just as they wished, and of their enormities, their
cruelties and shameful orgies, nothing need be written. Others had leave
of absence--a licence to pilfer. They not only ransacked the occupied
houses, but dragged people from their hiding places, harnessed them to
carts, with bayonet and worse urged them on, heavily laden, through
burning streets, and saving themselves from the crumbling walls and
roofs, saw their miserable captives crushed, buried, or struggling among
the burning debris, and abandoned to their fate. In the immediate
neighbourhood of the Kremlin the pilfering was official; in the
Cathedral of the Assumption, great scales and steelyards were set up,
and outside two furnaces, one for gold the other for silver, were kept
ever burning to melt down the settings torn from the sacred pictures,
the church vessels, the gilt ornaments, aye, even the decorations on the
priests' robes. Horses were stabled in the cathedrals and churches;
Marshal Davoust slept in the sanctuary with sentinels on both sides of
the "royal doors" of the ikonostas. "Destroy that mosque," was
Napoleon's peremptory order to one of his generals with reference to the
Church of the Protection of the Virgin, but he delayed executing the
order finding this cathedral convenient as a stable and storehouse. At
first the fire was most severe in the warehouses flanking the Grand
Square and along the quays. It spread most rapidly amidst the great
stores on the south side of the river. The Balchoog was a sea of flame
and the whole of the Zamoskvoretski quarter was practically destroyed.
On the other side the burning Gostinnoi Dvor ignited neighbouring
stores in the Nikolskaya, Ilyinka and elsewhere on the Kitai Gorod. The
gleeds carried by a north wind threatened the palaces in the
Kremlin--where, under a cloud of sparks, the buildings glowed red and
seemed to many to be also burning. The ammunition had already been
brought there and caused the French great anxiety. Napoleon, after a
peaceful night in the royal palace, was unwilling to believe that the
tires were other than accidental, but as the day waned and the fires
increased in number as well as size, he grew agitated and exclaimed,
"They are true to themselves these Scythians! It is the work of
incendiaries; what men then are they, these Scythians!"
He passed the next night in the Kremlin, but not at rest. It was with
the greatest difficulty that the soldiers on the roof of the palace
disposed of the burning fragments that at times fell upon the metal like
a shower of hail. The heat was intense; the stores of spirits exploded,
and blue flames hid the yellow and orange of the burning timbers and
darted with lightning rapidity in all directions, a snake-like progress
through the denser parts of the town, firing even the logs of wood with
which the streets were at that time paved. When the fire reached the
hospitals, where 20,000 unfortunate wounded lay almost helpless, scenes
of unmitigated horror were witnessed by the invaders unable to succour,
and chiefly intent on their own safety. The famous Imperial Guard
stationed in the Kremlin was divided into two sections; one was occupied
in struggling against the fire, the other held all in readiness for
instant flight. At last the Church of the Trinity caught fire, and
whilst the Guard at once set about its destruction, Napoleon, with the
King of Naples, Murat, Beauharnais, Berthier and his staff, left the
Kremlin hurriedly for the Petrovski Palace. The Tverskaya was ablaze,
passage by that way impossible; the party crossed for the Nikitskaya
but in the neighbourhood of the Arbat lost their way, and after many
adventures and near escapes found the suburbs, and by a roundabout route
reached the Palace at nightfall. In many places the fire had burned out
by September the 5th, and that night a heavy rain, luckily continued
during the next day, stopped the spread of the fire, and on Sunday the
8th, Napoleon returned over the still smouldering embers to his old
quarters in the Kremlin. Amidst or near by the cinders of the capital,
Napoleon remained for more than a month. The remaining inhabitants
suffered great hardships; some fraternised with the French soldiers and
helped in quenching fires, but parties accused of incendiarism were
still led out almost daily to execution. The French residents were in a
most pitiable condition; Napoleon could not or would not do anything for
them; they, and the rest of the citizens, with many of the soldiers were
soon threatened with starvation.
This campaign more than any other undertaking of his life, reveals the
despicable character of Napoleon as a man; even as a commander he seemed
to have lost grip of the serious situation of his troops: he, who at one
time could never make a mistake now only happened on the right thing by
accident, and that rarely. In an impoverished province, amidst a
famished population, he could not possibly winter his army, but acted as
though he intended to do so. He made stupid speeches respecting the
career of Peter the Great; read up the proclamations of Pugatchev,
hoping to find in them something which would enable him to incite the
people to rebel; tried even to make allies of the Tartars, and failed;
at the same time he sent again and again to Alexander professing warm
personal friendship and readiness to conclude peace. Alexander heard
his overtures with silent contempt. The Russian generals were
mercilessly harassing the divisions of the Great Army in the provinces,
and armed bands of peasants sought revenge on those invaders who had
violated women and children, and desecrated the churches.
On October the 6th, Napoleon decided to begin his retreat on the morrow,
and that same evening drew up a scheme for the visit of a Parisian
theatrical company to Moscow and its installation there. Of precious
metal from the churches of the Kremlin, nearly five tons of silver and
four and a half hundredweights of gold had been melted into ingots. The
great wooden cross, thirty feet in length, which surmounted Ivan Veliki,
had been regilt at great cost but the year before, and the French,
thinking it solid gold, threw it down. Like all the crosses, it was of
worthless material, but contained a small cross of pure gold, which
these disgusted pillagers failed to find.
When the time came for Napoleon to leave Moscow he was unwilling that
any should know his intention. "Perhaps I shall return to Moscow," he
said to one of his company, but as he had already given orders to
Lariboisiere, the chief of artillery, to destroy the Kremlin, he
doubtless, better than anyone else, knew that this could not be.
Napoleon thought to destroy everything of value left standing in the
town; walls, towers, palaces, churches, convents, monasteries--all were
ruined. "The defeat of Murat at Tarutin forced Napoleon to hurry away
earlier than he intended, and to Marshal Mortier was left the task of
destruction. He having made the requisite preparations left during the
night of the 11-12th October, and, not far from Fili, gave the signal by
cannon for the firing of the mines. It was a terrible explosion in the
darkness and stillness of night; it killed some and wounded many, and
was followed quickly by minor explosions at different points."
Napoleon failed even in this attempt; the damage done was trifling--the
tower over the Nikolski Gate fell, so did one at the corner of the
Kremlin wall. There were breaches here and there, but churches and other
buildings remained intact. It is said that the heavy rain destroyed the
trains of gunpowder to the mines, from which subsequently sixty tons of
the explosive were taken. Fesanzac states Mortier intentionally used
powder of bad quality, not wishing to destroy the buildings; it is more
probable that he used the best he could get and that the director of
artillery was unwilling to waste serviceable munitions of war he might
require later.
The story of the retreat of the Grande Armée is well known and need not
be recapitulated here. If the French and their allies suffered, the
peasants also endured terrible hardships. Shot down for defending the
honour of their wives and daughters; for protecting their property; for
refusing to honour the false hundred rouble notes Napoleon had ordered
to be printed in order to reward his soldiers; on any and every other
pretence whatever, they yet accomplished a terrible revenge, harassing
the invaders to the last. The French slew and destroyed; wrecked old
walls, desecrated churches, and in sheer spite threw the spoil they
could not carry further into the rivers and lakes. Wilson urged Kutuzov
to engage the refugees, whom he termed ghosts roaming too far from their
graves, but Kutuzov trusted to the cold and the distance to wear out the
remnant of the great army. He underestimated the powers of human
endurance, some 70,000 escaped of the half million or more that had
invaded Russia. Napoleon, that "incomparable military genius," does not
appear on this occasion to have possessed the astuteness even of the
mediæval Tartar Khans, who on their invasions withdrew "without
ostensible cause" at the end of the season. More selfish than they, he
saved himself by deserting his men. They died like flies on the approach
of winter; some were burned during their sleep by outraged peasants;
more were slipped through holes in the ice; many reached Vilna only to
be entrapped by the Russian soldiers, or, if still more unfortunate,
tossed from the upper windows of the Ghetto and kicked to death by old
polish Jewesses in the streets. Piteous? Yes, but it is the pity one
feels for the burglarious murderer who falls on the spikes of the area
railings. The invasion of the twenty nations had even such inglorious
ending; its effect upon the Muscovites was similar to that which
followed a great Tartar raid; it was unexpected--disastrous, and, as
long as remembered, engendered in the Russ that same distrust of the
west it had previously entertained of the east.
In Moscow there are now few traces of the French invasion, for its
effect was general rather than particular. The palace occupied by
Napoleon has been destroyed; in its place the Tsar Nicholas built his
new Imperial residence, from the windows of which may still be seen the
old Borovitski Gate, by which Napoleon first entered and last left the
Kremlin. Beyond that gate there is now an immense and stately pile, the
magnificent new Cathedral of Our Saviour, built by the people in
gratitude for their deliverance from the invaders. A monument that
furnishes conclusive evidence that the spirit of earnestness which
actuated the old cathedral builders is not yet extinct in Russia.
One other memorial of the times will attract the attention of visitors
to the Kremlin: arranged along the front of the arsenal, opposite the
Senate House, are ranged the cannon captured from, or abandoned by, the
_Grande Armée_. The inscriptions, one in French the other in Russian, on
the plates to the
[Illustration: BOROVITSKI GATE AND ST SAVIOUR'S CATHEDRAL]
right and left of the principal entrance set forth the origin of these
trophies. Most of the weapons have the Napoleonic initial boldly
engraved upon the breech; actually only 365 are French; there are 189
Austrian, 123 Prussian, 40 Neapolitan, 36 Bavarian, 1 Westphalian, 12
Saxon, 1 Hanoverian, 70 Italian, 3 Wurtemburgian, 8 Spanish, 22 Dutch, 5
Polish--in all 875.
Before the great fire there were over 2500 brick or stone buildings in
Moscow, and about 6600 of wood; the fire destroyed over 2000 of the
brick buildings and some 4500 of the wooden dwellings. It may seem
strange that so many of the old buildings escaped. Of course the old
convents, monasteries and churches in the suburbs, like the Novo
Devichi, Simonov, Petrovski Palace, etc., were beyond the limit of the
fire; the remainder, many of them, stood in their own grounds or were
isolated from other buildings, much as the Strastnoi Monastyr is now. At
that time, although the town limits were practically the same as at
present--the line of the Kammer College rampart--the houses were fewer
and, outside the Kitai Gorod, few streets consisted of continuous rows
of houses. If the visitor wishes to have a clear comprehension of the
sort of town, in detail, the great village of Moscow was at the
beginning of this century, a drive along the Sadovia or through the side
streets between that thoroughfare and the boundary will help its
acquisition. More, it will bring him face to face with the best of the
buildings of "Skorodom" that sprang from among the cinders of the great
conflagration. A pleasant, bungalow-like, garden-town; spacious houses,
with pretentious façades in the pseudo-classic style of the first
empire; mostly squat and inconvenient, irregular, bright with native
carpentry, stucco, painted metal roofs, and clean washed walls. It is
this Moscow that is so picturesque and so rapidly disappearing before
the march of industrialism, sanitation, and an increasing population.
When Alexander I. visited the town in 1816, great haste was made to
present a fair show of dwellings in the vast open spaces; some, painted
and distempered, were without windows, roofs, staircases, or even
floors; these walls, then little more than the semblances of buildings,
just such as now put on the stage, were later utilised by fitting
dwellings, of a sort, to them. Some have long served their purpose;
others, curious, quaint and singular, still remain--but he who would see
them must not long delay.
With reference to the historic and sacred buildings, those answerable
for their keeping sought only to restore, enrich, and preserve. At no
time has Moscow possessed more or better memorials of the past than she
does at present. The risk of destruction by fire has greatly lessened;
of further demolition by ruthless invaders there is, happily, no longer
a possibility, and the slower but not less certain destruction from the
inroad of industrialism may be stayed by the timely awakening of the
Moscow citizens to the value of the relics they possess, and the desire
not only to preserve them for their own sake, but also as ornaments to
the old town of which all are so fond and now anxious to beautify.