The Great White Army

I, Janil de Constant, remember very well the moment when we first beheld the glorious city of Moscow, which we had marched twelve thousand leagues to take.

It would have been the fourteenth day of September. The sun shone fiercely upon our splendid cavalcade, and even in the forests, which we now quitted very willingly, there were oases of light like golden lakes in a wonderland.

It was half-past three o'clock when I myself reached the Mont du Salut, a hill from whose summit the traveller first looks down upon the city.

And what a spectacle to see! What domes and minarets and mighty towers! What a mingling of East and West, of Oriental beauty and the stately splendour of a European capital! You will not wonder that our men drew rein to gaze with awe upon so transcendent a spectacle. This was Mecca truly. Here they would end their labours and here lay their reward.

We thought, with reason surely, that there would be no more talk of war. The Russians had learned their lesson at Borodino, and all that remained for the Russian Tsar to do was to make peace with our Emperor. Meanwhile there would be many days of holiday such as we had not known since we left France. The riches of this city passed the fables, they told us. You will imagine with what feelings the advance posts of the Guard set out to descend the hill and take up their quarters in the governor's palace.

I had hoped to enter Moscow with my nephew Léon, who is one of the Vélites of the Guard. I wished to be near that young man at so critical a moment. Even old soldiers lose their heads when they enter an enemy's city, and what could one expect of the young ones? Léon, however, had ridden on with Major Pavart, of thechasseurs à cheval, and so it was with old Sergeant Bourgogne, of the Vélites, that I entered Moscow and began to think of quarters.

We heard some shots as we went down into the town, and when we came to that broad street which leads to the Place du Gouvernement, a soldier of the line told us that the governor had released the convicts and that they were holding the palace against our outposts. We thought very little of the matter at the time, and were more concerned to admire the magnificence of the street and the beauty of many of its houses. These, it appeared, belonged to the nobility, but we began to perceive that none of the princely owners had remained in Moscow, and that only a few servants occupied these mansions. Many of the latter watched us as we rode by, and at the corner of the great square one of them, a dandy fellow with mincing gait, had the temerity to catch my horse by the bridle and to hold him while he told me that his name was Heriot, and that he had left Paris with the Count of Provence in the year 1790.