บทที่ บทที่ 331 · 第331章

It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap

has been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of

rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they

jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally

difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of the

French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But when

we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity, energy, and

immense number of the delving insects prove that despite the destruction

of the heap, something indestructible, which though intangible is the

real strength of the colony, still exists; and similarly, though in

Moscow in the month of October there was no government and no churches,

shrines, riches, or houses—it was still the Moscow it had been in

August. All was destroyed, except something intangible yet powerful and

indestructible.

The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after it had

been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and at first

for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all had in

common: a desire to get to the place that had been called Moscow, to

apply their activities there.

Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in a

fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the

number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in

1812.

The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of Wintzingerode’s

detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and residents who had

fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its vicinity. The Russians who

entered Moscow, finding it plundered, plundered it in their turn. They

continued what the French had begun. Trains of peasant carts came to

Moscow to carry off to the villages what had been abandoned in the

ruined houses and the streets. The Cossacks carried off what they could

to their camps, and the householders seized all they could find in other

houses and moved it to their own, pretending that it was their property.

But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third

contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and more

difficult and assumed more definite forms.

The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations of

regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and craftsmanship, with

luxury, and governmental and religious institutions. These forms were

lifeless but still existed. There were bazaars, shops, warehouses,

market stalls, granaries—for the most part still stocked with goods—and

there were factories and workshops, palaces and wealthy houses filled

with luxuries, hospitals, prisons, government offices, churches, and

cathedrals. The longer the French remained the more these forms of town

life perished, until finally all was merged into one confused, lifeless

scene of plunder.

The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the

wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But

plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city

began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater

the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth

of the city and its regular life restored.

Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by curiosity,

some by official duties, some by self-interest—house owners, clergy,

officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and peasants—streamed into

Moscow as blood flows to the heart.

Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off

plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses

out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades’

discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat down

one another’s prices to below what they had been in former days. Gangs

of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow every day, and on

all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built, and old, charred ones

repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths. Cookshops and taverns were

opened in partially burned houses. The clergy resumed the services

in many churches that had not been burned. Donors contributed

Church property that had been stolen. Government clerks set up their

baize-covered tables and their pigeonholes of documents in small rooms.

The higher authorities and the police organized the distribution of

goods left behind by the French. The owners of houses in which much

property had been left, brought there from other houses, complained of

the injustice of taking everything to the Faceted Palace in the Krémlin;

others insisted that as the French had gathered things from different

houses into this or that house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to

keep all that was found there. They abused the police and bribed them,

made out estimates at ten times their value for government stores that

had perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchín

wrote proclamations.