The most magnificent trophy in this collection was the immense cross of the great Ivan.  It was necessary to demolish a part of the tower on which it stood in order to take it down, and it required stupendous efforts to break this vast mass of iron.  It was the Emperor’s intention to place it upon the dome of the Invalides, but it was sunk in the waters of Lake Semlewo.

The evening before the Emperor was to hold a review, the soldiers were busily employed polishing their arms and putting everything in order, to conceal as far as possible the destitute condition to which they were reduced.  The most imprudent had exchanged their winter clothing for provisions, many had worn out their shoes on the march, and yet each one made it a point of honor to make a good appearance on review; and when the glancing rays of the sun shone on the barrels of the well-polished guns, the Emperor felt again in witnessing this scene some slight return of the emotions with which his soul was filled on the glorious day of his departure for the campaign.

The Emperor left twelve hundred wounded at Moscow, four hundred of whom were removed by the last corps which quitted the city.  Marshal Mortier was the last to go.  At Feminskoe, ten leagues from Moscow, we heard the noise of a frightful explosion; it was the Kremlin which had been blown up by the Emperor’s orders.  A fuse was placed in the vaults of the palace, and everything arranged so that the explosion should not take place within a certain time.  Some Cossacks came to pillage the abandoned apartments, in ignorance that a fire was smoldering under their feet, and were thrown to a prodigious height in the air.  Thirty thousand guns were abandoned in the fortress.  In an instant part of the Kremlin was a mass of ruins.  A part was preserved, and a circumstance which contributed no little to enhance the credit of their great St. Nicholas with the Russians was that an image in stone of this saint remained uninjured by the explosion, in a spot where almost everything else was destroyed.  This fact was stated to me by a reliable person, who heard Count Rostopchin himself relate it during his stay in Paris.

On the 28th of October the Emperor retraced his way to Smolensk, and passed near the battle-field of Borodino.  About thirty thousand corpses had been left on this vast plain; and on our approach flocks of buzzards, whom an abundant harvest had attracted, flew away with horrible croakings.  These corpses of so many brave men presented a sickening spectacle, half consumed, and exhaling an odor which even the excessive cold could not neutralize.  The Emperor hastened past, and slept in the chateau of Oupinskoe which was almost in ruins; and the next day he visited a few wounded who had been left in an abbey.  These poor fellows seemed to recover their strength at the sight of the Emperor, and forgot their sufferings, which must have been very severe, as wounds are always much more painful