ROSTOPCHINE


The conflagration of Moscow in 1812 and the fall of the French empire are
two facts which cannot be separated, but to the name of Moscow is attached
another name, that of Rostopchine. Count Fedor Wassiljavitch Rostopchine is
connected with one of the greatest events in universal history. He caused a
crisis which decided the fate of Russia and arrested the march of ascending
France by giving the death blow to Napoleon. The latter, in admitting that
Rostopchine was the author of his ruin, meant him when he said, "one man
less, and I would have been master of the world."

Until the year 1876 there existed a mystery around this man and his deed, a
mystery which was deepened by Rostopchine himself when he published in 1823
a pamphlet entitled "The Truth about the Conflagration of Moscow," which
did not give the truth but was a mystification.

Alexander Popof, a Russian Counselor of State, who made a special study of
the history of the Russian campaign of Napoleon, has explored the archives
of St. Petersburg, and his researches, the result of which he published in
Russian in the year 1876, have brought to light all diplomacy had concealed
about the events which led to the destruction of the Russian capital.

What document, one might ask, could be more precious than the memoirs of
Rostopchine, the governor of Moscow in 1812? What good fortune for the
historian! In 1872 Count Anatole de Segur, grandson of Rostopchine, the
author of a biography of the latter, wrote, concerning these memoirs, that
they were seized, together with all the papers of his grand-father, by
order of the Emperor Nicholas, immediately after Rostopchine's death in the