essed the people. He declared that "he would
defend Moscow to the last extremity; that the tribunals were already
closed, but that was of no consequence; that there was no occasion for
tribunals to try the guilty." He added, that "in two days he would give
the signal." He recommended to the people to "arm themselves with
hatchets, and especially with three-pronged forks, as the French were
not heavier than a sheaf of corn." As for the wounded, he said he should
cause "masses to be said and the water to be blessed in order to their
speedy recovery. Next day," he added, "he should repair to Kutusoff, to
take final measures for exterminating the enemy. And then," said he, "we
will send these guests to the devil; we will despatch the perfidious
wretches, and fall to work to reduce them to powder."

Kutusoff had in fact never despaired of the salvation of the country.
After employing the militia during the battle of Borodino to carry
ammunition and to assist the wounded, he had just formed with them the
third rank of his army. At Mojaisk, the good face which he had kept up
had enabled him to gain sufficient time to make an orderly retreat, to
pick his wounded, to abandon such as were incurable, and to embarrass
the enemy's army with them. Subsequently at Zelkowo, a check had stopped
the impetuous advance of Murat. At length, on the 13th of September,
Moscow beheld the fires of the Russian bivouacs.

There the national pride, an advantageous position, and the works with
which it was strengthened, all induced a belief that the general had
determined to save the capital or to perish with it. He hesitated,
however, and whether from policy or prudence, he at length abandoned the
governor of Moscow to his full responsibility.

The Russian army in this position of Fili, in front of Moscow, numbered
ninety-one thousand men, six thousand of whom were cossacks, sixty-five
thousand veteran troops, (the relics of one hundred and twenty-one
thousand engaged at the Moskwa,) and twenty thousand recruits, armed
half with muskets and half with pikes.

The French army, one hundred and thirty thousand strong the day before
the great battle, had lost about forty thousand men at Borodino, and
still consisted of ninety thousand. Some regiments on the march and the
divisions of Laborde and Pino had just rejoined it: so that on its
arrival before Moscow it still amounted to nearly one hundred thousand
men. Its march was retarded by six hundred a