page_title: Fire of Moscow (1812)
section_title: Causes
hierarchical_section_title: Fire of Moscow (1812) / Causes
caption_attribution_description: Русский: В.&#160;В.&#160;Верещагин. «В Кремле — пожар!». 1887—1898. Холст, масло. Государственный исторический музей, Москва.
context_page_description: The 1812 Fire of Moscow broke out on 14 September 1812, when Russian troops and most of the remaining residents abandoned the city of Moscow just ahead of French Emperor Napoleon's vanguard troops entering the city after the Battle of Borodino. The fire all but destroyed the city, which had been mostly abandoned by its residents the previous month.
context_section_description: Before leaving Moscow Count Rostopchin gave orders to have the Kremlin and major public buildings (including churches and monasteries) either blown up or set on fire. But this was not the foremost cause of the fire that destroyed the city. As the bulk of the French army moved into the city, there were some fires. Their cause has never been determined and both neglect as well as Rostopchin's orders may be among possible reasons. According to Germaine de Staël, who left the city a few weeks before Napoleon arrived, it was Rostopchin who ordered to set his mansion on fire, which spread to the city with its 1,600 churches. Today, the majority of historians blame the initial fires on Russian sabotage.
  This version of events is confirmed by General Armand de Caulaincourt.  He states that they had been in Moscow for three days. That evening a small fire had broken out but was extinguished and 'attributed to the carelessness of the troops'. Later that evening (10h 30min) Caulaincourt was woken by his valet with the news that 'for three quarters of an hour the city has been in flames'. Fires continued to break out in multiple separate points. Incendiarists were arrested and interrogated and declared that their commanding officer had ordered them to burn everything. 'Houses had been designated to this end.'  Later on in the same chapter he asserts 'The existence of inflammable fuses, all made in the same fashion and placed in different public and private buildings, is a fact of which I, as many others, had personal evidence. I saw the fuses on the spot and many were taken to the Emperor.' He goes on to write 'The examination of the police rank-and-file... all proved that the fire had been prepared and executed by order of Count Rostopchin'. 
  Furthermore, a Moscow police officer was captured trying to set the Kremlin on fire where Napoleon was staying at the time; brought before Napoleon, the officer admitted he and others had been ordered to set the city on fire after which he was bayonetted by guardsmen on the spot on the orders of a furious Napoleon. 
  The catastrophe started as many small fires, which promptly grew out of control and formed a massive blaze. The fires spread quickly since most buildings in Moscow were made of wood. And although Moscow had a fire brigade, their equipment had previously either been removed or destroyed on Rostopchin's orders. When Napoleon retreated to a castle outside the city, his troops finally lost their discipline and began to loot and pillage all across Moscow. Even hard punishments could not prevent the plundering, beating or raping of Moscow's citizens by French soldiers during the fire. The flames spread into the Kremlin's arsenal, but the fire was put out by French Guardsmen. The burning of Moscow is  reported to have been visible up to 215 km away.
  Tolstoy, in his novel War and Peace, suggests that the fire was not deliberately set, either by the Russians or the French, but was the natural result of placing a deserted and mostly wooden city in the hands of invading troops, when fires start nearly every day even with the owners present and a fully functioning police department, and that the soldiers will start fires–from smoking their pipes, cooking their food twice a day, and burning enemy's possessions in the streets. Some of those fires will inevitably get out of control. Without an efficient firefighting action, these individual building fires will spread to become neighborhood fires, and ultimately a citywide conflagration.
caption: Napoleon watching the fire of Moscow from the walls of the Kremlin
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