Tattered, hungry, and exhausted, as they were, and dwindled to one-third their original numbers, the French soldiers yet entered Moscow in good discipline. It was a harassed and exhausted, yet still active and menacing army. But it was an army only up to the moment when the soldiers of the army dispersed all over the town. As soon as the soldiers began to disperse about the wealthy, deserted houses, the army was lost for ever, and in its place was a multitude of men, neither citizens nor soldiers, but something nondescript between, known as marauders. When five weeks later these same men set out from Moscow, they no longer made up an army. They were a mob of marauders, each of whom carried or dragged along with him a mass of objects he regarded as precious and useful. The aim of each of these men on leaving Moscow was not, as it had been, to fight as a soldier, but simply to keep the booty he had obtained. Like the ape, who slipping his hand into the narrow neck of a pitcher, and snatching up a handful of nuts inside it, will not open his fist for fear of losing his prize, even to his own ruin, the French on leaving Moscow were inevitably bound to come to ruin, because they dragged their plunder along with them, and it seemed as impossible to them to fling away their booty as it seems to the ape to let go of the nuts. Ten minutes after the several French regiments had dispersed about the various quarters of Moscow, not a soldier nor an officer was left among them. At the windows of the houses men could be seen in military coats and Hessian boots, laughing and strolling through the rooms. In the cellars, in the storerooms similar men were busily looking after the provisions; in the courtyards they were unlocking or breaking open the doors of sheds and stables; in the kitchens they were ****** up fires, and with bare arms mixing, kneading, and baking, and frightening, or trying to coax and amuse, women and children. Men there were in plenty everywhere, in all the shops and houses; but the army was no more.
That day one order after another was issued by the French commanders forbidding the troops to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding violence to the inhabitants, and pillaging, and proclaiming that a general roll-call was to take place that evening. But in spite of all such measures the men, who had made up an army, flowed about the wealthy, deserted city, so richly provided with luxuries and comforts. Like a starved herd, that keeps together crossing a barren plain, but at once on reaching rich pastures inevitably strays apart and scatters over them, the army was irresistibly lured into scattering over the wealthy town.