On this day in history, Moscow turned to ash.
In the autumn of 1812, Napoleon’s Grande Armée occupied the Russian capital of Moscow, marking the summit of the French invasion of Russia. During the occupation’s 36-day duration, Russian peasantry and French soldiers looted the city for nearly all it was worth.
Napoleon’s men took control of Moscow on September 14, and it was Moscow’s military governor, Count Fyodor Rostopchin, who allegedly opted to resort to guerrilla warfare to protect the city. Although historians still debate to this day as to the exact cause of the fire, the simple fact of the matter remains: Moscow was burned to the ground. “Scorched earth” is a military strategy used to obliterate any and all resources that an enemy may use to effectively participate in a conflict. The reigning theory as to the cause of the fire is that Rostopchin, upon seeing Napoleon’s men at the city gates, ordered the iconic Kremlin and other buildings to be torched. However, the casualty count was less than would be assumed; of the original 270,000 citizens pre-Napoleon, there only remained around 8,000 by the time the fires spread. Most of Moscow’s population, including the soldiers there, fled as the French approached.
By September 18, the fire had destroyed over 75% of the city. Napoleon stood on the nearby Kremlin Hill, watching the destruction, and ordered any arsonists to be shot and hanged from trees. Then, just as the last bit of Moscow was about to fall, it began to rain, thereby putting out the raging flames. Napoleon and his Grande Armée entered the Kremlin, where they would remain in control of Moscow for another month.
Famously, the historical novel War and Peace by Leon Tolstoy featured the great fire, where Tolstoy remarks that the arson was inevitable: “Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.”
