War And Peace

The first Russians to enter central Moscow were the Cossacks of Wintzengerode’s detachment, along with a few peasants from the nearest villages and some residents who had fled from Moscow and hidden away in the outskirts. When they entered the ruined city and found it pillaged, the Russians went pillaging too. They carried on the work started by the French. Trains of peasants’ carts drove into Moscow to take back to the villages everything that had been abandoned in the ruined Moscow houses and streets. The Cossacks took what they could back to their camps. Householders picked up anything available in other people’s houses and took it home pretending it was their own property.

But the earliest pillaging parties were soon succeeded by a second lot, then a third, and with each passing day, as the numbers involved increased, the business of looting became more and more difficult and took on more specific forms.

The French had found Moscow deserted but with every outward form of organically functioning town life still in place, including all the various branches of commerce and craftsmanship, high life, political government and religion. These forms had no life in them, but they were there. There were markets, stalls, shops, corn-exchanges and bazaars – for the most part still stocked with goods; there were factories and workshops; there were palaces and wealthy houses filled with luxury items; there were hospitals, prisons, government offices, churches and cathedrals. The longer the French stayed on the more these forms of town life fell away, until finally everything collapsed into a single collective scene of pillage with no life left in it.

The longer the French looting continued the more completely it consumed the wealth of Moscow and the energies of the looters. The longer the Russian looting continued, as they began the reoccupation of the city, and the more looters there were, the more rapidly were the wealth of Moscow and normal city life restored.

Apart from the looters people of every kind were drawn back, some by curiosity, some by the duties of office, some out of self-interest – householders, clergy, officials high and low, traders, artisans and peasants – and they streamed back into Moscow from every corner, like blood rushing back to the heart.

Within a week any peasants arriving with empty carts to seize goods and take them away were stopped by the authorities and made to haul dead bodies out of town. Other peasants, hearing of companions down on their luck, drove into the town with wheat, oats and hay, undercutting each other’s prices until they were lower than they had been before the war. Gangs of carpenters bent on rich pickings were arriving in Moscow by the day, and on every side you could see new houses going up, or old, half-burnt ones under repair. Tradesmen did business in booths. Cook-shops and taverns were opened in half-burnt houses. The clergy started holding services again in many churches that had escaped the fire. Stolen church goods were returned as donations. Government clerks set up their baize-covered tables and filing-cabinets in little rooms. The higher authorities worked with the police to organize the distribution of any goods left behind by the French. The owners of houses that still contained lots of goods looted from other premises complained about the unfairness of having to take everything to the Faceted Palace in the Kremlin. Others claimed that the French had taken things from all over the place into individual houses, so it was unfair to let the master of the house hang on to everything found in it. The police came in for abuse and were approached with bribes. Estimates for Crown property lost in the fire were inflated by a factor of ten. Appeals were launched. And Count Rostopchin started up again with his proclamations.

CHAPTER 15

At the end of January Pierre arrived in Moscow and settled in the one wing of his house that had emerged unscathed. He called on Count Rostopchin and several acquaintances who were back in town, and got things ready to leave for Petersburg in a couple of days’ time. Everyone was full of a sense of victory; the thrill of new life ran through the shattered but rapidly reviving city. Everybody greeted Pierre warmly. They all wanted to see him, and ask about what he had seen. Pierre felt very well disposed towards everyone he met, but he was instinctively a little cautious in his dealings to avoid getting cornered in some way. To all the questions that came his way, important or trivial, he replied in the vaguest terms. Where was he going to live? Was he going in for rebuilding? When was he off to Petersburg? Would he mind taking a parcel for somebody? All he would say was, ‘Yes, I might well . . . I have it in mind . . .’ and so on.