Rostopchin once more addressed the people.  He declared that “he would defend Moscow to the last extremity; that the tribunals were already closed, but that was of no consequence; that there was no occasion for tribunals to try the guilty.”  He added, that “in two days he would give the signal.”  He recommended to the people to “arm themselves with hatchets, and especially with three-pronged forks, as the French were not heavier than a sheaf of corn.”  As for the wounded, he said he should cause “masses to be said and the water to be blessed in order to their speedy recovery.  Next day,” he added, “he should repair to Kutusoff, to take final measures for exterminating the enemy.  And then,” said he, “we will send these guests to the devil; we will despatch the perfidious wretches, and fall to work to reduce them to powder.”

Kutusoff had in fact never despaired of the salvation of the country.  After employing the militia during the battle of Borodino to carry ammunition and to assist the wounded, he had just formed with them the third rank of his army.  At Mojaisk, the good face which he had kept up had enabled him to gain sufficient time to make an orderly retreat, to pick his wounded, to abandon such as were incurable, and to embarrass the enemy’s army with them.  Subsequently at Zelkowo, a check had stopped the impetuous advance of Murat.  At length, on the 13th of September, Moscow beheld the fires of the Russian bivouacs.

There the national pride, an advantageous position, and the works with which it was strengthened, all induced a belief that the general had determined to save the capital or to perish with it.  He hesitated, however, and whether from policy or prudence, he at length abandoned the governor of Moscow to his full responsibility.

The Russian army in this position of Fili, in front of Moscow, numbered ninety-one thousand men, six thousand of whom were cossacks, sixty-five thousand veteran troops, (the relics of one hundred and twenty-one thousand engaged at the Moskwa,) and twenty thousand recruits, armed half with muskets and half with pikes.

The French army, one hundred and thirty thousand strong the day before the great battle, had lost about forty thousand men at Borodino, and still consisted of ninety thousand.  Some regiments on the march and the divisions of Laborde and Pino had just rejoined it:  so that on its arrival before Moscow it still amounted to nearly one hundred thousand men.  Its march was retarded by six hundred and seven pieces of cannon, two thousand five hundred artillery carriages, and five thousand baggage waggons; it had no more ammunition than would suffice for one engagement.  Kutusoff perhaps calculated the disproportion between his effective force and ours.  On this point, however, nothing but conjecture can be advanced, or he assigned purely military motives for his retreat.

So much is certain, that the old general deceived the governor to the very last moment.  He even swore to him “by his grey hair that he would perish with him before Moscow,” when all at once the governor was informed, that in a council of war held at night in the camp, it had been determined to abandon the capital without a battle.