The magazines were mostly stone buildings, on account
of the danger of fire. At that time the Russian nobility had not yet
accustomed itself to consider St. Petersburg the capital, they were
obstinate in the determination to come every winter to hold court in the
mother of Russian cities. The conflagration of 1812 broke this tradition.
The nobility, not willing or not being able to rebuild their houses, rented
the ground to citizens, and industry, prodigiously developing since then,
has taken possession of Moscow. This is how the city has lost its floating
population of noblemen and serfs, which amounted to 100 thousand souls,
and how the aristocratic city has become an industrial one. It is a new
city, but the fire of 1812, from the ashes of which it has risen, has
left impressions on the monuments. Step by step in the Kremlin and in
the city proper are found souvenirs of the patriotic war. You enter the
Kremlin which Napoleon tried to explode, and which has been restored,
you visit there the church of the Annunciation, and you will be told
that the French soldiers had stabled their horses on the pavement
of agate; you visit the church of the Assumption and you will be shown the
treasures which, on the approach of the French, had been taken to places of
safety; you raise your eye to the summit of the tower of Ivan and you learn
that the cross had been removed by the invaders and found in the baggage of
the Grand Army. The door of St. Nicholas has an inscription recalling the
miracle by which this door was saved in 1812.
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