other commander could have drawn anything approaching the same degree of trust and obedience. As Ivan Radozhitsky put it, ‘only Field-Marshal Prince Kutuzov, a true son of Russia, nourished at her breast, could have abandoned without a fight the empire’s ancient capital’.68
In the immediate aftermath of the fighting, abandoning Moscow seems to have been far from Kutuzov’s mind. On the contrary, he told his subordinates that he intended to attack the next day. Only the news that Napoleon had not committed his Guards and that Russian losses were enormous persuaded him to change his mind. In all, the most recent Russian estimates suggest that they lost between 45,000 and 50,000 men at Shevardino and Borodino, as against perhaps 35,000 French casualties. In particular, Bagration’s Second Army had been nearly destroyed. Even some weeks later, after stragglers had returned to the ranks, Second Army was reckoned to have lost more than 16,000 men on 7 September, and this was on top of the 5,000 lost at Shevardino two days before. As serious, casualties among the army’s senior officers had been crippling.69
Kutuzov therefore ordered a retreat. For almost the only time during the campaign the Russian rearguard performed poorly. This was blamed on its commander, Matvei Platov, and was seen by regular officers as confirmation of their long-held view that Cossack generals were not competent to command infantry and artillery. The basic problem was that Platov’s rearguard did not impose delays on the French or keep them at a sufficiently respectful distance from the main body of the retreating Russian army, as Konovnitsyn had always done with great skill. As a result, the already exhausted troops did not get the rest they needed. The army’s precipitate departure from Mozhaisk meant that thousands of wounded were left behind, in sharp contrast to what had happened previously during the retreat. When Kutuzov reinforced the rearguard and replaced Platov by Mikhail Miloradovich matters improved greatly but the episode fed growing tensions between the regular and Cossack leaders.70
The basic point, however, was that the Russians were running out of space. Six days after the battle of Borodino, Kutuzov’s army was on the outskirts of Moscow. The great question now was whether or not to fight for the city. Kutuzov would find it harder than Barclay to abandon Moscow. Both generals were patriots who had risked their lives on many battlefields, but the Russia for which they fought was not quite the same. Barclay had great loyalty and admiration for the Russian soldier but he was a Protestant Balt brought up in Petersburg. For him, Russia meant above all else the emperor, the army and the state. For reasons both of sentiment and interest these were very much part of Kutuzov’s Russia too, but not all of it. For any member of the old Russian aristocracy who had not lost his roots there was also another Russia, an Orthodox land which had existed before the Romanovs and before the empire and whose capital was Moscow.
Kutuzov’s last words to Alexander on leaving Petersburg to assume the supreme command were that he would rather perish than abandon Moscow. Shortly after arriving at headquarters he wrote to Rostopchin, Moscow’s governor-general, that ‘the question remains undecided as to which is more important – to lose the army or to lose Moscow. In my opinion the loss of Moscow entails the loss of Russia itself.’ When the council of war met at Fili on 13 September, however, Kutuzov understood that actually this was no longer the question. If he stood and fought, there was every probability that both the army and the capital would be lost. No doubt the commander-in-chief had already made his decision to abandon the city before the council met at four o’clock that afternoon. But such a momentous step could not be taken without consulting his senior generals. Moreover, Kutuzov was anxious to share some of the responsibility for a decision which was bound to cause huge anger and condemnation.71
The main protagonists at the council of war were Bennigsen and Barclay. The former had chosen the ground on which the army was preparing to fight outside Moscow. In time-honoured fashion pride alone would have forbidden him to admit that he had made a mistake. From his subsequent correspondence with Alexander it was also clear that he was anxious to thrust responsibility for the city’s loss onto Kutuzov and Barclay. At the council of war Barclay set out the reasons why the Russian army would certainly be defeated if it stood on the defensive in this position. Not only would they be greatly outnumbered but their position was divided up by ravines, which would make it very difficult to coordinate resistance. A lost battle would entail a rushed retreat through Moscow, which could easily result in the army’s disintegration. The only possibility was to attack Napoleon’s army but the huge loss of officers at Borodino made a battle of manoeuvre immensely risky. Toll and Ermolov shared Barclay’s view, though Ermolov lacked the moral courage to speak up and take responsibility in front of his seniors. On the contrary, Barclay showed not just moral courage but also some generosity of spirit by speaking up decisively and thereby sharing the burden of responsibility of a man who had superseded him in command.72
There remained the difficult task of getting an exhausted and somewhat demoralized army with all its baggage and some of its wounded through the streets of a great city. With the enemy on their heels this could be an extremely dangerous enterprise. Matters were not helped by the fact that the news that Moscow was to be abandoned had broken on the civilian population very late. As the army passed through Moscow on 14 September a mass civilian exodus was still under way. One staff officer described the scene as ‘not the passage of an army but the relocation of whole tribes from one corner of the earth to another’. Barclay did his usual indefatigable best to impose some order on this chaos. Officers were posted at key intersections to direct the troops. Cavalry rode down the sides of the columns to stop desertion and plundering. Barclay himself oversaw arrangements.73
The true hero of the occasion, however, was Miloradovich, who was now commanding the Russian rearguard. His opposite number in the French advance guard was usually Joachim Murat, and the two men had much in common. Both generals were showmen who loved splendid clothes and the grand gesture. It would be an understatement to say that neither man was an intellectual but Miloradovich was not only honourable and generous but on occasion surprisingly modest and shrewd. He certainly summed up the essence of the present danger and with some
In principle Kutuzov might have retreated out of Moscow in a number of directions. Had he turned north- west, for instance, he could have blocked the road to Tver and Petersburg, whose population was bound to be in an uproar at the news of Moscow’s fall. In fact he retreated south-eastwards down the road to Riazan. This was in many ways the safest exit from Moscow in the face of an enemy who was entering the city from the west. On 17 September, however, after crossing the river Moskva at Borovsk, Kutuzov turned sharply westwards. Marching rapidly he crossed the roads to Kashira and Tula before turning southwards down the Old Kaluga Road which led out from Moscow to the south-west.
Meanwhile on 15 September Napoleon entered Moscow and set up his headquarters in the Kremlin. That very day fires started in many parts of the city. Moscow burned for six days. Three-quarters of its buildings were destroyed. In all, during the summer and autumn of 1812, 270 million rubles’ worth of private property was destroyed in the city and province of Moscow, an astronomical sum for that era. The overwhelming majority of the civilian population had already fled but those who remained were driven from their homes, made destitute and sometimes killed. Of the more than 30,000 wounded soldiers who had been in Moscow, all but 6,000 were evacuated in time, thanks above all to the efforts of James Wylie, the efficient head of the army’s medical services. But very many of those who were left behind died in the flames. When the Russians recaptured Moscow they found and burned 12,000 corpses.75
Even before the fire began the Russians had also been forced to abandon vast stocks of military materials in the city, including more than 70,000 muskets, though admittedly half of these were in need of repair. Moscow had been the rear base for Kutuzov’s army and by the time the news came that the city was to be abandoned it was very difficult to evacuate all military stores. Finding sufficient carts at this last moment was impossible, so most weapons, equipment and other military goods were evacuated on twenty-three barges. The first three escaped but the fourth, overloaded by the artillery department, got stuck in the river Moskva and blocked the passage of the remaining nineteen. These barges carried almost 5 million rubles’ worth of weapons, clothing and equipment, all of which had to be burned in order to keep it out of Napoleon’s hands.76
Who or what caused the fire has always been a source of dispute. The one certain point is that neither Alexander nor Napoleon ordered the city to be burned. Rostopchin said before the city’s fall that the French would
