To Strike Fear Into Napoleon’s Occupying Army, These Retreating Soldiers Burned Down Their Own City

By the time Napoleon Bonaparte and his men reached Moscow on September 14, 1812, an eerie quiet had descended upon the city. Most of its more than 250,000 residents had evacuated in anticipation of the approaching assault. Russian forces had also retreated—but they had by no means given up. Instead of confronting the invaders in battle, they chose a scorched-earth approach: They would not allow the French to survive the brutal winter, which was fast approaching.

Three months earlier, Napoleon had crossed into Russia, leading nearly 500,000 men across the Neman River and on toward Moscow. Upon reaching the city—and finding it empty—the soldiers eagerly anticipated a respite from their long journey. When night fell, Napoleon and his troops took up residence in the lavish quarters of Moscow’s elite.

“Both officers and the rank-and-file were only too eager to enjoy the palatial homes of wealthy Muscovites,” writes historian Alexander Mikaberidze in The Burning of Moscow: Napoleon's Trial by Fire, 1812. “Senior officers were often greeted at the gates of palaces by servants in livery, offering hospitality in the hopes of sparing themselves and their master’s property a worse fate.”

The French enjoyed a luxurious first night in the city, perhaps hoping that there would be many more such evenings to come. They helped themselves to food and drink, and finally—after hundreds of miles of hardship and travel—they went to sleep.

Napoleon was suspicious of the quiet. According to Philippe-Paul de Ségur, a general who later wrote a history of the 1812 invasion, the emperor had been incredulous when he learned the city was empty: “Perhaps these inhabitants do not even know how to surrender, for here everything is new; they to us, and we to them.”

That night, Napoleon decided to rest at a house in Moscow’s suburbs. Around 2 a.m. on September 15, he learned that a fire was blazing through the abandoned city. The French ruler left his makeshift quarters and headed to the Kremlin, which was still far from the blaze. Despite the unwelcome tidings, he couldn’t help but feel moved by the sight of the beautiful city. As Ségur later recalled:

At the sight of this half-Gothic, half-modern palace, … his former hopes revived. His ambition was flattered by this great conquest. “At length, then,” he exclaimed, “I am in Moscow, in the ancient palace of the czars, in the Kremlin!” He examined every part of it with pride, curiosity and gratification.

With every passing hour, the blaze intensified, eventually overtaking Moscow. The fires quickly claimed many of the city’s wooden buildings. It was only when the Kremlin itself caught fire that Napoleon agreed to abandon the site. Few viable routes out of the flames remained, but the emperor and his men managed to make a narrow escape.

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“He no doubt found it very difficult to reconcile himself to the prospect of abandoning the symbol of Russian imperial authority—Napoleon was the first foreigner to conquer Moscow in 200 years—in the heart of which he had hoped to negotiate a peace with the Russian sovereign,” writes Mikaberidze.

The flames ravaged Moscow for days, subsiding only on September 18. While the Kremlin survived, three-quarters of the city’s buildings were destroyed.

The French concluded that the fires were the work of the Muscovites. Rather than allow Napoleon to conquer Moscow, they had chosen to leave it in ruins, depriving the French of food and other vital resources. (The French believed Fyodor Rostopchin, Moscow’s governor general, had engineered the disaster, though he later denied these accusations.)

Napoleon wrote to Alexander I, hopeful that the Russian ruler would still want peace. “My lord brother: Beautiful, magical Moscow exists no more,” he implored. “How could you consign to destruction the loveliest city in the world, a city it has taken hundreds of years to build?” These despairing words received no reply.

In October, after weeks of waiting, Napoleon and his men began their long journey home. Along the way, they experienced “continual harassment from the merciless Russian Army,” per History.com. However, most casualties were caused by cold exposure and disease.

When the French crossed Russia’s border with East Prussia in December 1812, fewer than 100,000 men remained. Soon after Napoleon made it out of Russia, he left his army and returned to Paris to defend his increasingly tenuous grasp on power. Forced to abdicate in April 1814, he returned to the throne the following year, only to lose his crown once again after the British defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon died in exile in 1821.

Ellen Wexler | | READ MORE

Ellen Wexler is Smithsonian magazine’s assistant digital editor, humanities.