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 when cold weather first begins. All these pale