[The following is in regards to the deliberate abandonment of Moscow by Russian forces during Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812.]
”so now the horde of barbarians is lodged in the ruins of that beautiful capital,” Empress Elizabeth wrote to her mother. “They acted there as they have done everywhere else. Our people began to set fire to the object of all their affections rather than let it fall undamaged into the hands of the enemy, and the great nation [the French] will not stop sacking, looting, and destroying so long as there is anything left to destroy. In the meantime, our army has gone around Moscow and is posted in the vicinity of the road by which the enemy came and is already beginning to disrupt his communications. When Napoleon entered Moscow he found nothing of what he hoped for. He was counting on a public, there no longer was one, everyone had left; he was counting on resources, he found almost nothing; he was counting on the moral effect, the discouragement and prostration he would cause the nation, he has only aroused rage and the desire for vengeance… Every step that [Napoleon] takes in Russia brings him nearer to the abyss. We shall see how he endures the winter!”
While there may have been a tactical advantage in sacrificing Moscow, for many it was as if the very soul of the nation had been ripped out. “I regard Russia as lost forever,” Rostopchin wrote to his wife. And in their agony and grief, the people blamed the emperor. Roxanne Stourdza, a lady-in-waiting to Empress Elizabeth, witnessed the dark mood when she accompanied Alexander to the celebration of his coronation anniversary in St. Petersburg:
”Our windowed carriages moved slowly through the immense crowd whose very silence and angry faces contrasted with he festive occasion. So long as I live I shall never forget the moment when we ascended the steps of the cathedral, between two ranks of common people who uttered not a single cheer. One could have heard the sound of our footsteps, and I have never doubted that one spark would have been enough, at that moment, to produce a general conflagration. A glance at the Emperor told me what was going on in his mind and I felt my knees buckle under me.”
”You are openly accused of having brought disaster upon your empire,” the emperor’s sister Catherine wrote to him, “of having caused general ruin and the ruin of private individuals, lastly, of having lost the honor of the country and your own personal honor… You need not fear a catastrophe of the revolutionary sort, no! But I leave it to you to judge the state of affairs in a country whose leader is despised… The idea of peace, fortunately, is not widespread; far from it, for the feeling of shame following the loss of Moscow gives rise to the desire for revenge.”
Source:
Farquhar, Michael. “Chapter 9 – Alexander I (1801-1825): Napoleon’s Conqueror.” Secret Lives of the Tsars: Three Centuries of Autocracy, Debauchery, Betrayal, Murder, and Madness from Romanov Russia. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014. 176-77. Print.
Further Reading:
Princess Louise of Baden / Elizabeth Alexeievna (Russian: Елизавета Алексеевна): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Alexeievna_(Louise_of_Baden)
Alexander Vasilievich Nikitenko (Александр Васильевич Никитенко)
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