Moscow Burns in the Distance — War and Peace

The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was watched from various roads by fugitive Muscovites and by the retreating troops, and they watched it with many different feelings.

The Rostov party spent that night at Mytishchi, fourteen miles from Moscow. They had started so late on the first of September, the road so blocked by vehicles and troops, so many forgotten things sent back for, that they had meant to stop only three miles out. They woke late the next morning, were delayed again and again, and got no farther than Great Mytishchi. By ten in the evening the family and the wounded travelling with them were distributed in the yards and huts of that large village. Servants, coachmen, and orderlies, after attending to their masters, had supper, fed the horses, and came out onto the porches. In a neighbouring hut lay Raevski's adjutant with a fractured wrist, moaning piteously in the autumn dark. He had spent the first night in the same yard as the Rostovs. The countess said she had not been able to close her eyes, and at Mytishchi she moved into a worse hut simply to be farther from him.

In the darkness one of the servants noticed, above the high body of a coach, the small glow of another fire. One glow had long been visible: Little Mytishchi, set alight by Mamonov's Cossacks. This one was farther off, more to the left. Two men sat on the coach steps. Others joined them. Someone said it must be Moscow, in the Sushchevski or Rogozhski quarter. No one answered, and for a time they all gazed at the spreading flames. Old Daniel Terentich, the count's valet, came up shouting at Mishka to gather the clothes, then fell silent with the rest. The glow rose and fell, farther and farther. Voices spoke of wind and dry weather, of crows flying, of putting it out. Who was to put it out, Daniel Terentich said at last, calm and deliberate. Moscow it is, brothers: Mother Moscow, the white. His voice faltered, and he gave way to an old man's sob. It was as if they had only waited for that to understand what they were watching. Sighs, words of prayer, and the sobbing of the count's old valet followed.