armchairs or lying on silk sofas. At their feet were heaped or spread out cashmere shawls, the rarest of Siberian furs, cloth of gold from Persia, and silver dishes in which they were eating coarse black bread baked in the ashes and half - cooked bloody horseflesh. (Herold 358). On 20 September Napoleon wrote to Tsar Alexander: The beautiful ... superb city of Moscow no longer exists. Rostopchin had it burned. Four hundred incendiaries ... have been shot ... Such conduct is atrocious and without reason ... I have made war on your Majesty without animosity: a note from him before or after the last battle would have stopped my march. I might even have been able to sacrifice ... the advantages of entering Moscow. If Your Majesty still has any of his old sentiments for me, he will take this letter in the best spirit. (Connelly 172)Napoleon obviously expected the czar to propose the terms for peace. He thought that to make peace was the only rational move Alexander could make. But the tsar did not even reply to the Emperors letter. The Russians believed (and still do) that it was the French who set fire to Moscow to vent their frustration at finding so little to loot and to eat in the city. Among Russias allies, the belief grew that the fire was an act of noble self - sacrifice on the part of the Russians, prepared to destroy what they valued most for the sake of defeating Napoleon. After the war, Governor Rostopchin, found himself lionized in European society, which believed that it was he who had issued the order for the burning. Responding to this flattery, Rostopchin openly claimed that he had been responsible. However, on returning to Russia, where the fire of Moscow was regarded as a dastardly act, he found that his claim had made him very unpopular. Accordingly, he denied his complicity. The probability suggests that it was indeed Rostopchin who was responsible. After all it was he who, before leaving Moscow, ignited his own house an...
