Fire of Moscow ( 1812 ) The 1812 Fire of Moscow broke out on September 14 , 1812 in Moscow on the day when Russia n troops and most residents abandoned the city and Napoleon ' s vanguard troops entered the city following the Battle of Borodino . The fire raged until September 18 , destroying an estimated three - quarters of Moscow . Causes . 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 conflagration 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 . Today , the majority of historians blames 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 ) Coulaincourt 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 ' . La Grande Armée , that set its position in the manner of a military camp and was looting the city , also had its share of responsibility ; many buildings caught fire from bonfires they made for cooking . The catastrophe started as many small fires , which promptly grew out of control and formed a massive blaze . Napoleon ' s police measures and executions of " arsonists " were put into effect after much of the city was already ablaze . 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 . 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 Fire Department , these house fires will spread to become neighborhood fires , and ultimately a city - wide conflagration . Timeline of events . Dates in Gregorian calendar ( new style ) and numbers referenced to Clausewitz and Tarle Extent of the disaster . Ivan Katayev ( 1911 ) summarized losses as 3 / 4 of all properties in the city : Some 12 , 000 bodies were recovered of which an estimated 2 , 000 were wounded Russian soldiers perished in the fire . Moscow State University , Buturlin ' s library , Petrovsky and Arbatsky theaters were completely destroyed ; many pieces of art , notably the source manuscript of epic poem The Tale of Igor ' s Campaign , were lost forever . The Moscow Orphanage near Kitai - gorod , converted to a hospital , was saved by local police . The population of Moscow in 1811 is estimated at 270 , 000 ; after the war , when residents returned to the city , it decreased to 215 , 000 ; by 1840 , it had increased to 349 , 000 . Maps compiled by Russian authorities after the war ( notably the 1817 military map reprinted for the public in the 1831 guide book ) show that the majority of Moscow territory had succumbed to the fire . Notable exceptions are Moscow Kremlin , the Orphanage , northern segment of Bely Gorod from Tverskaya Street to Pokrovka Street , Patriarshy Ponds in the west , as well as suburban settlements . The map probably exaggerates the damage , showing some surviving blocks as if they were destroyed . For instance , Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street west from Boulevard Ring retained many of its mansions : troops defended their own lodgings and the French theatre , as well as the French colony in Kuznetsky Most . On the other hand , French patronage did not help the Batashov Palace ( present - day Yauzskaya Hospital ) , occupied by Murat ' s headquarters : after two days of firefighting , it was consumed by fire that razed Taganka . Still , the remaining buildings had enough space for the French army . As General de Marbot reasoned , " It is often claimed that the fire of Moscow … was the principal cause of the failure of the 1812 campaign . This assertion seems to me to be contestable . To begin with , the destruction of Moscow was not so complete that there did not remain enough houses , palaces , churches and barracks to accommodate the entire army [ for a whole month ] . " However , many units were stationed not in the city , but in remote suburbs like Ostankino ( light cavalry ) or Khimki ( Italian corps ) ; others were dispatched south to screen Russian movements . Reconstruction of the city . A shortage of funds , state and private , delayed reconstruction of Moscow by at least five years . In those years , many properties were sold by ruined owners , and whole neighborhoods changed their social status ; for example , all properties on once - diverse Maroseika Street were bought out by the merchant class . The disaster allowed the authorities a unique opportunity to plan the city from scratch . In February , 1813 , Alexander I of Russia set up the Commission of Building in Moscow , with the instruction to produce a viable master plan for the city . The 1813 plan by William Hastie was deemed inadequate for the task , thus the Commission hired numerous local architects and topographers who produced the final , 1817 , master plan ( incorporating Hastie ' s ideas of clearing the Central Squares of Moscow ) . In 1816 – 30 , city planners set up the Garden Ring , a circular highway in place of an old fortification rampart , and widened many other streets . Later in 1817 , the city held groundbreaking ceremony for Alexander Witberg ' s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour , a monument to the 1812 War in Sparrow Hills . This project was later canceled and the current Cathedral emerged in the center of Moscow . Reconstruction of Red Square and Kitai - gorod was handled by Joseph Bove , who designed the neoclassical Upper Trade Rows as a mirror of Matvey Kazakov ' s Kremlin Senate . In February 1818 , Ivan Martos completed the Monument to Minin and Pozharsky , the first public monument in Moscow , placed in the center of Red Square . Bove also designed the symmetrical Theatre Square and completed Bolshoi and Maly theaters by 1825 . Moscow University and other public buildings were rebuilt by Domenico Giliardi and Afanasy Grigoriev . Bove also handled the " façade department " , authorizing façade designs for all new buildings . A severe shortage of brick , stone and cement forced many developers to build in wood ; the city had to agree with the inevitable , on condition that the houses follow the neoclassical standards . Local craftsmen responded with mass - produced wooden imitations of classical ornaments . Most of these houses were eventually destroyed . Extant examples include a recently restored house on the corner of Glazovsky and Denezhny Lanes in Arbat District , and Vasily Pushkin house in Staraya Basmannaya Street .