The Burning of Moscow by Alexander Mikaberidze

Author:Alexander Mikaberidze [Mikaberidze, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781593523
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2014-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

The Moscow Municipality

One of the problems Napoleon was grappling with was the establishment of a new municipal government in Moscow. When it became clear that the city had been abandoned, Napoleon fully intended to restore municipal authority once his army had settled down. Marquis A. Pastoret, the well-informed intendant of Vitebsk province, noted that upon entering the city one of first questions Napoleon addressed to General Dumas was whether municipal government had already been organized. Learning that the city government was non-existent, Napoleon urged Dumas to make appropriate arrangements, and then interrogated a German apothecary to learn whether there were any notables still remaining the city. That same evening Dumas submitted to the emperor a draft decree on establishing the Moscow municipality, but also informed him that he was unable to find any suitable Muscovites for this job. The outbreak of fire that same night naturally pushed the whole plan to the back and Napoleon returned to it only after the fires subsided.125

Throughout this time Jean-Baptiste Barthelemy de Lesseps, the former French consul-general to St Petersburg and now the civil governor of Moscow, did his best to restore normality in the city.126 He ‘has not forgotten the thirty years of hospitality he had enjoyed in Russia,’ observed Caulaincourt. ‘This excellent man did all he could do to put a stop to many evils … He collected, sheltered, nourished and in fact saved quite a number of unfortunate men, women and children whose houses had burned down and who were straying about like ghosts amidst the ruins.’ In late September de Lesseps received imperial permission to proceed with the establishment of the new municipal authority. He instructed Jacob Dulon, a prominent Muscovite merchant of French descent whom he had known for many years and whose house he occupied,127 and François Xavier Villiers, reader in French at the University of Moscow, to gather together any remaining Muscovite notables. Over the next couple of days more than a dozen of them, including the officials Bestuzhev-Riumin, P. Zagryazhskii and G. Vishnevskii, and the merchants Peter Korobov, Ivan Kozlov, Ivan Isaev, Konyaev and Peter Nakhodkin, were contacted by ‘strangers’ who instructed them to meet at Dulon’s house on 24 September.128 Some of these affluent men could have fled from the city but they chose to stay for a variety of reasons. Merchant Gregorii Kolchugin, for example, stayed because of Rostopchin’s assertion that the city would not voluntarily be evacuated, and on account of family and business matters.129 Other notables certainly shared similar circumstances and some paid dearly for heir beliefs. Another merchant, Ivan Kulman, was robbed repeatedly during the first three days of the Allied occupation of the city and his house burned down in the fires. Previously a wealthy man, he lost everything in those days and survived on handouts he begged from Allied soldiers in the streets. He later recalled, ‘when everything burned down and I had nothing left, I decided to seek any kind of employment in the French service …’130

As the

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