Napoleon's Moscow

One Evening at Moscow we took a short drive out on the road by which Napoleon entered the City.  There is an Eminence at a short distance from the City, which [27] would shut out the view of Moscow from one approaching it from the opposite side.  Was this that the great personification of Ambition, of good & bad deeds, after leading his weary soldiers through the snows of Russia, harassed on all sides by the waiting Cossacks, first saw the end of his journey, and how taking up a handful of the Earth, turned to his followers and cheered them wit the words which in his mouth seemed almost equivalent to Victory “Voici la terre de Moscou.”  A few days afterwards and this great army left the place of their destination, a broken band and Napoleon wended his way to Paris, his confidence in his Omnipotence somewhat reduced from the place where he put it---- 

Moscow truly foreign--the city after the fire of 1812

The burning of Moscow

Our driver brought us to the top of an elevated piece of ground when we turned and beheld the city at our feet, the Moskva winding through the city and [26] losing itself on our left in the midst of a pretty country for this part of the world.  I have been so long away from home, and have been so accustomed to visiting new places, and considering them for the time being as my real home, that people and places now remind me of really being as far distant from my native land as I naturally am, but looking at Moscow from this height I was forced to think that I was truly in a foreign land.  All that I had heretofore viewed had been European (so to speak), modern—in fact in some degree like America, but this was new.  I beheld before me that which I had before seen in imagination only, and [illeg.] to myself as Asiatic, Oriental, in the times of the Caliph, in fact as something which belonged to another race of people.  Moscow of course is in a great degree modern as regards its’ buildings, yet when its Churches [26] & Mosques were burned as well as its private residences, in 1812, they have generally been rebuilt after the same models, and though often new in materials, are old in style.  This burning of Moscow has of late caused many words pro & con.  As regards the Great Conqueror who here first felt himself somewhat at least subdued, the Russians themselves universally deny the charge of having fired the City & place the fact upon the Soldiers of Napoleon.  By so doing I must say I think they destroy much of the romance of history attributing the deed to their determination, that if the Emperor entered Moscow that he should do so after its glory had departed.