[127] Moskwa, Kologa: these and other Russian geographical names are variously spelled.
[128] Count Ségur was elected a member of the French Academy, and his history of the retreat has not only passed through many editions in France, but it has been translated into all the leading languages of Europe.
[129] The history of Napoleon after the Russian retreat will form the subject of a note at the close of Count Ségur's narrative.
NAPOLEON'S RETREAT FROM MOSCOW.
§ 1. Description of Moscow; arrival of the Czar.
The ancient capital of Russia, appropriately denominated by its poets "Moscow[130] with the gilded cupolas," was a vast and fantastic assemblage of two hundred and ninety-five churches, and fifteen hundred palaces, with their gardens and dependencies. These larger mansions of brick, and their parks, intermixed with neat houses of wood, and even thatched cottages, were spread over several square leagues of irregular ground. They were grouped round the Kremlin, a lofty triangular fortress. The vast double enclosure in which this was situated was about two miles in circuit. It contained, first, several palaces, some churches, and rocky and uncultivated spots, and secondly, a prodigious bazaar,—the town of the merchants and shopkeepers,—where was displayed the collected wealth of the four quarters of the globe.