On September 14, 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte (the French emperor who had conquered most of Europe) rode through the gates of the Moscow Kremlin at the head of the largest army the continent had ever seen. Six hundred thousand soldiers had crossed into Russia that summer. City after city had fallen. Now the prize was his. Napoleon settled into Tsar Alexander's own chambers and waited for the surrender he was certain would come.
It never came.
That same night, fires broke out across Moscow — not one fire, but hundreds, all at once. Governor Rostopchin (Moscow's ruthless military governor) had ordered the city burned rather than let the French have it. Within days, three-quarters of Moscow was ash and ember. The Kremlin itself was surrounded by a wall of fire so intense the stone walls radiated heat.
Napoleon was nearly trapped inside. Embers rained into the Kremlin courtyards. The wooden sections caught fire. His marshals begged him to flee. At the last possible moment, Napoleon escaped through a back gate and a tunnel to the Moskva River. He watched his great conquest burn from the safety of a suburban palace, choking on the smoke of a city that preferred death to submission.
They say pride goeth before destruction — and Napoleon's pride had marched him a thousand miles into a trap. For thirty-five days he sat in the ruins, sending peace envoys to Tsar Alexander I (the quiet monarch who simply refused to negotiate) one after another. The Tsar rejected every message. The Russian winter — the one that kills even wolves — was weeks away. Supply lines stretched across a thousand miles of hostile territory.
On October 19, Napoleon ordered the retreat. But first, in a final act of spite, he ordered the Kremlin destroyed. French engineers packed explosives beneath the walls, towers, and cathedrals — centuries of Russian history rigged to blow.
Then came what Russians call a miracle. As the fuses burned toward the charges, a sudden rainstorm erupted — unusual for late October. The rain snuffed out most of the fuses. Some charges went off, damaging two towers and part of the wall. But the heart of the Kremlin survived. Even the sky, it seemed, had chosen a side.
Of the 600,000 soldiers who marched into Russia, fewer than 100,000 stumbled home. Napoleon's empire crumbled within two years. The Russians rebuilt the damaged towers within a decade. Above the restored Nikolskaya Tower, they placed an icon of Saint Nicholas — which, they noticed with quiet wonder, had survived the explosion without a scratch.