erable-looking Muscovites, allured probably by the
prospect of pillage, approached: they listened, and, imboldened by the
apparent quiet which pervaded the fortress, they ventured to penetrate
into it: they ascended; and their greedy hands were already stretched
forth to lay hold on their plunder, when in an instant they were all
hurled into the air with the buildings they had come to pillage, and
with thirty thousand stand of arms that had been left in them; and soon
their mangled limbs, mingled with fragments of walls and shattered
weapons, thrown to a great distance, descended in a horrible shower.

The earth shook under the feet of Mortier: at Fominskoe, thirty miles
off, the emperor heard the explosion; and in that indignant tone in
which he sometimes addressed Europe, he published the following day a
bulletin, at Borowsk, announcing that "the Kremlin, the arsenal, the
magazines, were all destroyed; that that ancient citadel, which dated
from the origin of the monarchy, and was the first palace of the Czars,
no longer existed; that Moscow was now but a heap of ruins, without
importance either political or military. He had abandoned it to Russian
beggars and plunderers, in order to march against Kutusoff, to throw
himself on the left wing of that general, to drive him back, and then to
proceed quietly to the banks of the Dwina, where he should take up his
winter quarters." Then, apprehensive lest he should appear to be
retreating, he added that "there he should be within eighty leagues of
Wilna and of St. Petersburg, a double advantage; that is to say, twenty
marches nearer to his resources and his object." By this remark he hoped
to give to his retreat the air of an offensive movement.

It was on this occasion he declared that "he had refused to give orders
for the entire destruction of the country which he was quitting: he felt
a repugnance to aggravate the miseries of its inhabitants. To punish
the Russian incendiary, and a few wretches who made war like Tartars, he
would not ruin nine thousand proprietors, and leave two hundred thousand
serfs, innocent of all these barbarities, absolutely destitute of
resources."

On the 28th of October we again beheld Mojaisk.[166] That town was still
full of wounded: some were carried away, and the rest collected together
and abandoned, as at Moscow, to the generosity of the Russians. Napoleon
had proceeded but a short distance from that place when the winter
began. Thus, af