Part I

The ultimate responsibility for the fire of Moscow is something that eludes modern historians. Older historiography used to take it as a given that the city's governor-general, Count Rostopchin set the blazes that engulfed the city and sabotaged any French effort to contain the fires. However, recent research into the fire and occupation of the city have undercut these claims.

The key pieces of evidence for the arson theory are the writings of Grande Armee officers after the fact, including Napoleon, and Rostopchin's own letters to the Russian military prior to the French occupation that he was going to light the city. On the eve of Borodino, Rostopchin wrote to Bagration:

if, due to unfortunate circumstance, it would not be possible to save the capital, I will set it on fire.

Earlier in the campaign, the Governor-General had also sent letters to military and tsarist officials proclaiming that Moscow stood ready to fight and would rather be destroyed than capitulate to a foreign invader. Much of Rostopchin's warnings seemed to be validated when the French occupied the city on 13/14 September and the fires broke out on the 14th. Contemporary accounts and memoirists like Segur painted a vivid account of Russian arson teams and devices. Napoleon, for example, wrote back to France in his Bulletins that the Russian governor set the blazes with gunpowder and other inflammable material, which destroyed a good portion of the old city. In the immediate aftermath of the fires Rostopochin also took credit for the blazes.

On the surface, this seems like a damning case for Rostopchin's responsibility, but things are more complicated. There are two important chinks in the arson thesis. Firstly, analyzing Rostopchin's letters or Napoleon's Bulletins without the full context misses some key elements of the whole picture. Part of Rostopchin's motivations for writing his missives prior to 14 September was to ensure that the Russian Army would stand and fight before Moscow instead of abandoning the city. The retreat of Russian forces after the Grande Armee crossed the Niemen was a source of considerable tension and recrimination inside Russian state circles and the army's generals received no end of criticism that they were ceding territory without giving proper fight. Claims to destroy Moscow thus were partly a form of negative reinforcement if the army continued to retreat. Even after Borodino, the existing Russian armies in the field were still strong enough on paper to mount a defense of the city. Moreover, Rostopchin also had to appear to before the tsarist government to be doing his job as governor, so hyperbolic statements like "100,000 armed local residents" stand ready to aid the Russian army also reflected on his mobilization of the city for the war effort. In contrast to his letters, daily broadsheets produced on his orders for Moscow's population stressed that the city would not be abandoned and that the French would never enter it right up through September. Most of Rostopchin's efforts in the spring and summer of 1812 were devoted not to a well-thought out plan of arson, but the construction of a massive secret weapon, a large balloon built to the designs of the German inventor Franz Leppich. The balloon was nowhere near complete by the time of the city's occupation, but elements of it were likely captured by the Grande Armee and may have contributed rumors of special incendiary devices inside the city.

French accounts of deliberate arson are also suspect for a number of reasons. Napoleon's Bulletins were not just reports, but highly selective pieces of propaganda. It was in his interest to play up tales of Russian arson as it both accentuated Russian barbarity and took some of the sting out to a rather disappointing end to the 1812 summer campaign. Napoleon had negotiated an entry into the city with Russian forces, but having a good portion of the city go up in flames was an image with such immediate potent symbolism it was imperative for Napoleon to cast blame for it on the Russians. Napoleon had occupied other capitals during prior campaigns, most notably Berlin and Vienna, and none of them had the level of destruction as Moscow. Napoleon went to great lengths not only to emphasize the barbarity of the Russians' actions, but that the brave officers and men of the Grande Armee had secured enough food and provisions to make it out of the winter. Other French accounts that speak of arson also have to take into account not only the fog of war, but that most soldiers did not speak Russian or even appreciate the city's geography and politics. Napoleonic veterans accounts of Russian troops and people often dipped into demi-Orientalist narratives of a tough Russian national character that was reinforced by Asiatic tyranny of an absolutist state. Setting the city afire fit within these existing narratives.

The second major factor calling into question the deliberate arson thesis is the timing and state of the Grande Armee's entrance int the city. Rostopchin vacillated in late August over evacuating key facilities and treasures of the city and foot-dragged any wholesale evacuation. By 14 September, there was actually a considerable amount of gunpowder, cannon, and ammunition in the Moscow arsenals that was too heavy to be evacuated. Napoleon's public and private correspondence indicates that the Grande Armee recovered a considerable amount of gunpowder and weapons when they occupied the city. But a good deal of the war material not captured by the French ended up set on fire as it could not be evacuated. Some of the reports for the first outbreaks of fire were adjacent to the arsenals, some of which were already on fire. A number of accounts at the time spoke of high winds, which likely further spread the fires in the largely wooden city.

Adding to the problems of incomplete demolitions, the Grande Armee witnessed a near complete breakdown of discipline inside the city. After a long campaign characterized by grueling marches, Moscow for a number of the soldiers was the imagined terminus of their efforts. Looting and pillaging of conquered cities was a characteristic in many Napoleonic campaigns, and Moscow was apparently little different. There were multiple accounts both by Muscovites and from Grande Armee veterans of widespread looting. Heinrich Brandt, a Polish officer in the drew a particularly evocative picture of the looting in his memoirs:

in our camp alone there was a vast quantity of silver, enameled gold, linen, precious gems and furs for the men to sleep on, and more were being brought in on a daily basis. In addition there was a whole mass of objects such as chairs, torches and so on, which the looters were forcing Russians, as drunk as themselves, to carry. Most of the objects were quickly snatched up by dealers, who paid ridiculous prices and appeared out of nowhere. So it was that starvation quickly gave way to excess. Our camps were overflowing with fresh and preserved meats, smoked fish, wine, rum, cognac, and so on. Around each fire the men were cooking, eating, and especially, drinking. The arrival of each new consignment of pillaged items was met with loud cheers.

rumors of arson, which Brandt also believed, added to the justification of the looting. The existing fires added a more destructive element to this breakdown in discipline as it made some looters desperate to get their share lest the flames consume it. This loss of control not only made it harder for the Grande Armee to contain the fires, and one of the things Rostopchin did evacuate was the most important firefighting gear, but also inculcated a more haphazard respect for the city among its occupiers. Camp and cooking fires added another random element in a wooden city which had no remaining municipal infrastructure or civic order. It took several days for the Grande Armee's officer to restore a semblance of order among its troops, and enough of the city survived to make a comfortable autumn quarters for the remnants of the army. Most accounts from Russians and veterans spoke of the Grande Armee leaving the city burdened with furs and other luxuries. It was only along the retreat, which covered the same ground that the Grande Armee had advanced, that strains in the Grande Armee's logistical system became dangerously acute as this area had been picked over by two armies the previous summer.