At that very time, in circumstances even more important than retreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of Moscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented as the instigator of that event, acts in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov. After Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow is as inevitable as the army's retreat beyond the city without fighting. Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers. The same thing that takes place in Moscow has happened in all the towns and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, without the participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The people await the enemy unconcernedly, do not riot or become excited or tear anyone to pieces, but face their fate, feeling within them the strength to find what they should do at that most difficult moment. As soon as the enemy draws near, the wealthy classes go away abandoning their property, while the poorer remain and burn and destroy what is left.
The consciousness that this would be so, and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, is present in Russian Moscow society in 1812. Those who quit in July and at the beginning of August already show that they expect it. They go taking what they can, abandoning houses and half their belongings, from that latent patriotism which expresses itself not by phrases or by giving one's children to save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively, simply, organically, and therefore in the way that always produces the most powerful results. It is disgraceful to run away from danger, they are told. Rostopchin's broadsheets impress on them that to leave Moscow is shameful. They are ashamed to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they leave, knowing it has to be done. It is impossible to suppose that Rostopchin has scared them by accounts of horrors Napoleon committed in conquered countries. The first to go are the rich educated people, who know quite well that Vienna and Berlin remained intact and that during Napoleon's occupation the inhabitants spent their time pleasantly with the charming Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russian ladies, then liked so much. They go because for Russians there can be no question as to whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It is out of the question to be under French rule. That would be the worst thing that could happen. They go even before Borodino and still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin's calls to defend the city, his announcement that he will take the wonder-working icon of the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, the balloons that are to destroy the French, and all the nonsense he writes. They know that it is for the army to fight, and that if it cannot succeed it will not do to take young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills to fight Napoleon.
They go away without thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense and wealthy city being given over to destruction, for a great city with wooden buildings is certain, when abandoned by its inhabitants, to be burned. They go each on his own account, and yet only in consequence of their going is the momentous event accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Rostopchin's orders, has already in June moved her household from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a vague consciousness that she is not Bonaparte's servant, is really, simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia. But Count Rostopchin, who now taunts those who leave and now has the government offices removed, now distributes quite useless weapons to the drunken rabble, now has processions displaying the icons and now forbids Father Augustin to remove icons or relics of saints, now seizes all the private carts in Moscow and on one hundred and thirty-six of them removes Leppich's balloon, now hints that he will burn Moscow and relates how he set fire to his own house, now writes a proclamation to the French upbraiding them for destroying his Orphanage, now claims the glory of having hinted at the burning and now repudiates the deed, now orders the people to catch all spies and now reproaches them for doing so, now expels French residents and now allows Madame Aubert-Chalme, the centre of the French colony, to remain, but orders the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev arrested and exiled for no particular offence, now assembles the people at the Three Hills to fight and now, to get rid of them, hands over a man to be killed and himself drives away by a back gate, now declares he will not survive the fall of Moscow and now writes French verses in albums concerning his share in the affair: this man does not understand the meaning of what is happening. He merely wants to do something himself that will astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat, and like a child he makes sport of the momentous and unavoidable event, trying with his puny hand now to speed and now to stay the enormous popular tide that bears him along with it.
