A World Ablaze

Two hundred years ago today, an arsonist changed the course of history. That's not a fact likely to appear on the back of a matchbox any time soon, but still, we should all take a moment at some point in our busy schedules this Friday to thank the nameless Russian who decided to play with fire, and thus toppled an empire.

To understand how some Slavic pyromaniac saved the world, you first have to understand the situation in September 1812. It started with a man named Napoleon, whose hobbies and ambitions, sadly, extended far beyond urging people to "vote for Pedro". In fact, this Napoleon would have been far more likely to conscript Pedro, stick a musket in his hands, and send him marching across Europe beneath an Imperial eagle chanting "vive l'Empereur". There just weren't the job opportunities for young people back then.

It had long been a fantasy of the rulers of France, beginning with the Bourbon kings, to consider their nation the new Rome. In this role-play, they saw Britain as a modern Carthage: a country of vulgar, stupid, backward, uncultured, uncivilised barbarians (a notion which, thankfully, we have since disabused them of. I suspect exporting Mr Bean to them may have been the clinching factor). Napoleon resurrected this national ideal from the ashes of the Revolution, and persuaded the population that trampling an entire continent beneath their boots is totally what liberty, equality and fraternity is all about.

For many years, it looked like the dream was inexorable. French armies crushed all opposition, giving Bonaparte triumph after triumph. They even kicked the shit out of the Germans, who were presumably having an off-day. But when all other adversaries had been toppled, Britain remained a thorn in the Emperor's side, achieving naval superiority at Trafalgar in 1805, and then opening a front on the Iberian peninsula in 1809. For three years, the Duke of Wellington's operations in Spain and Portugal were necessarily cautious, cut-and-thrust affairs against an enemy superior in numbers. Each great victory for the Anglo-Portuguese forces was inevitably followed by a retreat back to the fortifications outside Lisbon, as the blue-coated columns came in search of vengeance.

But as that campaign unfolded, Napoleon was elsewhere, with far bigger fish to poach in white wine and serve with a Roquefort sauce. Russia, formerly his ally, was acting with increasing distrust and aggression towards an expansionist France now at its own border. To take that vast Eurasian empire out of the equation would enable Bonaparte to concentrate the entire manpower of a united Europe against France's pesky island neighbour. It was too good an opportunity to miss. On the 24th of June 1812, the largest army hitherto assembled in European history crossed the River Neman and advanced into the Tsar's territory. Which is not what you want to see over your bowl of morning caviar.

As you may have inferred from the fact that we're not all sat around listening to accordion music and watching arthouse cinema, things did not go according to Bonaparte's plan. The photograph above is of Charles Minard's graph showing the route of French advance into Russia in beige, and the dwindling strength of the Imperial forces as they progressed. Like a river running dry, battle, disease and desertion eroded the French forces even as they stormed towards Moscow. The pyrrhic battle of Borodino on the 7th of September left the Grande Armee ragged and disarrayed. And on the 14th of September, they arrived in Moscow eagerly anticipating the food and shelter they'd find.

What they actually found was a ghost city; stripped of all resources, deserted by troops and citizens alike, with criminals set free from the prisons to harass and murder French troops, and every cupboard bare. And that's when the fire started.

Within hours, three quarters of Moscow were burning. No-one knows who or what sparked it. Count Rostopchin had ordered the Kremlin blown up after Russian withdrawal, but that alone doesn't account for the scale of destruction across the city. Tolstoy blamed French troops trying to build cooking fires, and I suppose that is possible, but that thesis presumes that these men - who'd had years of practice at such a craft - suddenly turned into 19th century Frank Spencers at the one point when a bit of fire safety precaution would have come in handy.

No, given that the local villains had been let out of nick, I reckon it's far more likely that Moscow's answer to Arthur Brown was running around having the night of his life. And in one city-wide blaze that lasted for four days and nights, he dealt a bigger blow to Napoleon than any that Wellington or Kutuzov had yet managed. The city was rendered uninhabitable. Which, from a French perspective, was all a bit merde.

By October, it had become clear that retreat was the only option. On Minard's graph, the course of that withdrawal is marked by a trickle of black. Staggering along quagmire roads, with no supplies, harrassed by guerrilla forces and Russian troops, the Grande Armee was bled white. Eyewitness reports tell of the survivors resorting to cannibalism, although being French, they no doubt found a way to make feasting on human flesh sound amazingly classy (the officers' menu probably boasted entrecote d'homme, avec creme du sang glacy). But regardless of the harsh conditions, and the fact that they'd lasted the previous few weeks on a strict diet of Jean-Pierre the drummer boy, the remnants of Europe's biggest ever army finally escaped from Russian territory on the 14th of December 1812. Hot on their heels were a lot of angry Slavs. And in Spain, Wellington was filling up his diary for 1813 with all sorts of interesting ideas. The tide had finally turned.

The events of September 1812 echo through later history. In Russia, Europe's last feudal society, the unprecedented experiences of the aristocracy marching and fighting alongside conscripted serfs led to a series of revolutionary attempts to modernise and liberalise the country, even as the war itself came to be a catalyst for the golden era of Russian culture. Taking such a glorious victory as inspiration, no-one dared to say "Look, Tolstoy, people prefer shorter novels nowadays," or "Cannons and church bells?! Tchaikovsky, you're off your fucking tits." Furthermore, the narrative of this First Great Patriotic War wove itself into Russian national consciousness to the extent that when Hitler decided to do a massive historical re-enactment of it some 129 years later, Stalin's best weapon was to invoke the suppressed ideas of "holy motherland" and declare a Second Great Patriotic War. Those of us in England glad to still be speaking our own language should be grateful twice over that Russians have a tendency to go ever so slightly mental whenever anyone goes stomping across their border en masse.

So, when you get a moment, I'd like you to thank whatever wide-eyed, flame-gazing barmpot left the chip-pan on in Solyanka Street that cold night two centuries ago. He may have made the world safe for democracy. And since that is not something you historically associate with either arsonists or Russians, this bloke deserves all the praise that can be heaped on him.