The General immediately called for the sappers to try to cut the fire off, but it was impossible. We had no pumps, and not even any water. Directly afterwards we saw several men, some of them with torches still burning, come out from under the great staircase, by some subterranean way, and try to go quietly off. We ran after them and stopped them; there were twenty-one of them, and eleven others were arrested on the other side. These were not seen coming out of the palace, and nothing about them showed that they were incendiaries. More than half of them, however, were evidently convicts.
The utmost we could do was to save some pictures and a few other valuables, amongst which were Imperial ornaments, velvet mantles lined with ermine, besides many other precious things which we afterwards had to leave behind. About half an hour after the fire broke out, a furious wind got up, and in less than ten minutes we were hemmed in by the fire, and could neither advance nor retreat. Several men were hurt by falling pieces of burning timber. It was two o'clock in the morning before we could get out of this hell, and we then found that the fire had spread for more than half a league all round—for the whole of this quarter was built of wood, and was very beautiful.
We set out again to return towards the Kremlin, taking with us our prisoners, thirty-two in number. I was put in command of the rear-guard, and the escort of the prisoners, with orders to bayonet those who tried to run away or refused to follow.
Two-thirds of these wretches were convicts, with sinister faces; the others were middle-class citizens and Russian police, recognised by their uniform.
As we went along, I noticed amongst the prisoners one who was muffled up in a fairly clean green cloak, crying like a child, and saying repeatedly in good French:
'Mon Dieu! I have lost my wife and my son in the fire!'
He seemed very unhappy, so I asked him who he was. He told me that he was Swiss, and came from near Zurich, and that for seventeen years he had been at Moscow teaching German and French. He then began again to cry out in despair, always repeating:
'My dear son! my poor son!'
I was very sorry for the poor fellow. I tried to comfort him, telling him that very likely he would find them; and, as I knew that he would be condemned to die with the others, I determined to save him. Two men walked near him arm-in-arm, one young, and the other middle-aged. I asked the Swiss who they were; he told me they were tailors, a father and son.
'But,' he said, 'the father is happier than I; he is not separated from his son, and they can die together.'