w inhabitants who had remained invited commanding officers to
their houses, hoping thereby to secure themselves from being plundered.
There were masses of wealth and there seemed no end to it. All around
the quarters occupied by the French were other regions still unexplored
and unoccupied where, they thought, yet greater riches might be found.
And Moscow engulfed the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is
spilled on dry ground both the dry ground and the water disappear and
mud results; and in the same way the entry of the famished army into the
rich and deserted city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction
of both the army and the wealthy city.

The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de
Rostopchine, * the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,
however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning
of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people, responsible
for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a position in which
any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite apart from whether it
had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior fire engines. Deserted
Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of shavings has to burn on
which sparks continually fall for several days. A town built of wood,
where scarcely a day passes without conflagrations when the house owners
are in residence and a police force is present, cannot help burning when
its inhabitants have left it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke
pipes, make campfires of the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and
cook themselves meals twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to
billet troops in the villages of any district and the number of fires in
that district immediately increases. How much then must the probability
of fire be increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops
are quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity
of the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire by
the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the carelessness of
enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even if there was any
arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any reason to burn the
houses--in any case a troublesome and dangerous thing to do), arson
cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same thing would have happened
without any incendiarism.

* To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism.

However