Buonaparte had not gazed long on this great capital ere it struck him as something remarkable that no smoke issued from the chimneys.  Neither appeared there any military on the battlements of the old walls and towers.  There reached him neither message of defiance, nor any deputation of citizens to present the keys of their town, and recommend it and themselves to his protection.  He was yet marvelling what these strange circumstances could mean, when Murat, who commanded in the van, and had pushed on to the gates, came back and informed him that he had held a parley with Milarodowitch, the general of the Russian rear-guard, and that, unless two hours were granted for the safe withdrawing of his troops, he would at once set fire to Moscow.  Napoleon immediately granted the armistice.  The two hours elapsed, and still no procession of nobles or magistrates made its appearance.

On entering the city the French found it deserted by all but the very lowest and most wretched of its vast population.  They soon spread themselves over its innumerable streets, and commenced the work of pillage.  The magnificent palaces of the Russian boyards, the bazaars of the merchants, churches and convents, and public buildings of every description, swarmed with their numbers.

The meanest soldier clothed himself in silk and furs, and drank at his pleasure the costliest wines.  Napoleon, perplexed at the abandonment of so great a city, had some difficulty in keeping together 30,000 men under Murat, who followed Milarodowitch, and watched the walls on that side.

The Emperor, who had retired to rest in a suburban palace, was awakened at midnight by the cry of fire.  The chief market-place was in flames; and some hours elapsed before they could be extinguished by the exertions of the soldiery.  While the fire still blazed, Napoleon established his quarters in the Kremlin, and wrote, by that fatal light, a letter to the Czar, containing proposals for peace.  The letter was committed to a prisoner of rank; no answer ever reached Buonaparte.

Next morning found the fire extinguished, and the French officers were busied throughout the day in selecting houses for their residence.  The flames, however, burst out again as night set in, and under circumstances which might well fill the mind of the invaders with astonishment and with alarm.  Various detached parts of the city appeared to be at once on fire; combustibles and matches were discovered in different places as laid deliberately; the water-pipes were cut:  the wind changed three times in the course of the night, and the flames always broke out again with new vigour in the quarter from which the prevailing breeze blew right on the Kremlin.  It was sufficiently plain that Rostophchin, governor of Moscow, had adopted the same plan of resistance in which Smolensko had already been sacrificed; and his agents, whenever they fell into the hands of the French, were massacred without mercy.