Moscow Rebuilds Like a Living Thing — War and Peace

It would be hard to explain why ants hurry round a ruined heap, dragging rubbish, larvae, and corpses, jostling and fighting. It would be equally hard to explain why Russians, after the French left, thronged to the place that had been Moscow. Watching the ants, their tenacity and number prove that something indestructible, though intangible, is still the strength of the colony. In October Moscow had no government, churches, shrines, riches, or houses, and it was still the Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed except something powerful and unseen.

The motives of those who came were diverse, personal, and at first often savage. One motive they shared: a desire to apply their activity at the place called Moscow. Within a week there were fifteen thousand inhabitants, in a fortnight twenty-five thousand. By autumn 1813 the number exceeded 1812. The first to enter were Cossacks of Wintzingerode's detachment, peasants from nearby villages, and residents who had been hiding. Finding the city plundered, they plundered it in their turn and continued what the French had begun. Peasant carts carried off what lay in ruined houses. Householders seized goods from other houses and called them their own. As more people came, plundering grew harder and took more definite forms.

The French had found Moscow abandoned but with the organisations of regular life still standing, lifeless shells of shops, palaces, hospitals, and churches. The longer they stayed, the more those forms perished into one confused scene of plunder, and the more both wealth and the plunderers' strength were destroyed. Russian reoccupation had the opposite effect: the longer it went on, the more rapidly wealth and regular life returned. House owners, clergy, officials, tradesmen, artisans, and peasants streamed in as blood flows to the heart. Within a week peasants with empty carts were stopped and set to cart corpses. Others brought rye, oats, and hay and beat prices down. Carpenters arrived every day. Booths opened. Services resumed in unburned churches. Clerks set up baize-covered tables. Owners quarrelled over goods gathered into this house or that. They abused the police and bribed them. Count Rostopchin wrote proclamations.