Philippe-paul Ségur

History of the Expedition to Russia, Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 Philippe-paul Ségur

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1825 edition. Excerpt: ...as at Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid, the principal nobles hesitated not to retire on our approach: for with them to remain would seem to be the same as to betray. But here, tradesmen, artizans, day-labourers, all thought it their duty to flee like the most powerful of the grandees. There was no occasion to command: these people have not yet ideas sufficient to judge for themselves, to distinguish and to discover differences; the example of the nobles was sufficient. A few foreigners who had remained at Moscow might have enlightened them; of these some were exiled, and terror drove away the rest. It was, besides, an easy task to excite apprehensions of profanation, pillage, and devastation in the minds of people so cut off from other nations, and in the inhabitants of a city which had been so often plundered and burnt by the Tartars. With these examples before their eyes, they could not await an impious and ferocious enemy but for the purpose of fighting him: the rest must necessarily shun his approach with horror, if they would save themselves in this life and in the next: obedience, honour, religion, fear, every thing in short enjoined them to flee with all that they could carry off. A fortnight before our arrival, the departure of the archives, the public chests and treasure, and that of the nobles and the principal merchants, together with their most valuable effects, indicated to the rest of the inhabitants what course to pursue. The governor, already impatient to see the city evacuated, appointed superintendants to expedite the emigration. On the 3d of September, a Frenchwoman, at the risk of being torn in pieces by the furious VOL. II. c Mougiks, ventured to leave her hiding-place. She wandered a long time through extensive quarters, the...