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Updated: June 29, 2025
The value of my autograph will be enormously increased hereafter for collectors by the fact that when I receive requests for it I drop them into the waste-basket. Yes, I merely keep the stamps." "Oh!" "Yes." "Oh!" more faintly. "Yes!" more firmly. Turning her back to Aurora, Antonia once more addressed Princess Rostopchine. "Vera Sergeievna, you were saying...."
On the 14th. the criminals in the prisons, with one-half of their heads shaved, were set at liberty that they might participate in the burning and pillaging. Before leaving Moscow Rostopchine uncovered his head and said to his son, "Salute Moscow for the last time; in half an hour it will be on fire." Quite a literature has developed on the question: who has burned Moscow?
Rostopchine tried his best to keep the population at peace by his original proclamations, which were pasted on all the walls and distributed broadcast. After Borodino he urged the people to take up arms, and he promised to be at the head of the men to fight a supreme battle on the Three Mountains.
I had been reading Billbassoff's "Life of the Empress Catherine"; and, on my asking some questions regarding it, the professor said that at the death of the Empress, her son, the Emperor Paul, intrusted the examination of her papers to Rostopchine, who, on going through them, found a casket containing letters and the like, which she had evidently considered especially precious, and among these a letter from Orloff, giving the details of the murder of her husband, Peter III, at Ropscha.
"In the city," writes Rostopchine, "rumors were current of visions, of voices which had been heard in the graveyards. Passages from the Apocalypsis were quoted referring to Napoleon's fall." But Rostopchine himself, was he free from credulity?
Having said all, Tchikhirine went on, briskly singing, and the people who saw him go said wherever he came, that is well spoken, it is the truth!" Rostopchine knew very well how to make Tchikhirine speak when he had been drinking more than usual, he knew how to make the saints speak, he invented pious legends which were not guaranteed by the Holy Synod and not found in the Lives of the Saints.
There exist documents of the events in Moscow of 1812, the souvenirs of Count de Toll, the apology of Rostopchine, which we shall come to in another chapter, the recitals of Domerque, of Wolzogen, of Segur, but these reminiscences of people in Moscow are the only ones from persons who actually suffered by the catastrophe, and they are in their way as valuable as the writings of our two writers, von Scherer and von Borcke.
At that time Rostopchine was 47 years of age, in perfect health and had developed a most extraordinary activity, something which was not known of his predecessors; the governors of Moscow before his time had been old and decrepit. He understood the character of the Russian people and made himself popular at once, and adored, because he made himself accessible to everybody.
The enthusiasm ran so high that the idea was conceived to unhitch the horses from his coach and carry him in his carriage. This, as Rostopchine tells us, was the intention not only of the common people but of many distinguished ones also, even of such as wore decorations. The emperor, to avoid such exaggerated manifestations, was obliged to arrange for his entry during the night.
Soldiers of the war of 1808, on whom Saragossa had fallen in formidable ruin, frowned in 1823 at the easy surrender of citadels, and began to regret Palafox. It is the nature of France to prefer to have Rostopchine rather than Ballesteros in front of her.
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