their garments and linen dyed with blood; their most
powerful nobles struck and overthrown like the rest: all this was a
novel and alarming sight to a city which had for such a length of time
been exempt from the horrors of war. The police redoubled their
activity; but the terror which they excited could not long make head
against a still greater terror.

Rostopchin once more addressed the people. He declared that "he would
defend Moscow to the last extremity; that the courts 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 wheat." 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. The next day," he added, "he should repair to
Kutusoff, to take final measures for exterminating the enemy."

The Russian army, in their position in front of Moscow, numbered
ninety-one thousand men, six thousand of whom were Cossacks,[139]
sixty-five thousand veteran troops (the remnant of one hundred and
twenty-one thousand engaged at the Moskwa),[140] 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 joined 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-wagons: 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, for he assigned purely military motives for his
retreat.

Thus much is certain, that Kutusoff deceived Rostopchin to the very last
moment. He even swore to him "by his gray 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 withou