Although officially forbidden, pillaging continued. Very strict orders, threatening the execution of all mutineers, were necessary to produce any effect. But the harm done was immense and irreparable. Thirteen thousand eight hundred houses, to say nothing of palaces, had been reduced to ashes. The shops of six thousand tradesmen, forming in themselves a small town, had disappeared. Huge warehouses had also been burned. When the inhabitants ventured to leave their cellars, they failed to recognize the city. They only found isolated houses standing in the midst of ruins. Piles of burned rubbish marked where the streets had stood, and the ruins were encumbered with the bodies of men and animals. Several men were to be seen still hanging; these were the incendiaries, real or suspected, who had first been shot and then strung up. The soldiers passed by these ghastly trophies with complete indifference. The army had wine and sugar in abundance, but neither bread nor meat. In vain were detachments sent into the forests where the peasantry were concealed with their cattle:—the men returned empty-handed. “If, from the beginning,” says the Abbé Surrugues, whom I have already quoted, “the authorities had seized the store-houses containing flour, wine, and brandy, and established a certain order in the distribution of the provisions, there is no doubt that Moscow might have been preserved from want during the whole winter.... The result of the pillaging was that at the approach of the frost, the prime necessaries of life were wanting.” The peasants of the village of Ostankino came indeed to Moscow with thirty cart-loads of oats and flour which were duly bought and paid for. Having received their money they left, with the injunction to come again as soon as possible. But scarcely had they left Moscow than they were assaulted, beaten, and compelled to return to the city, where they were put to forced labour. Two other peasants who had sold their wares to the French were robbed, and one of them was killed. From that time forth no one had any desire to deal with the soldiers or the army, and, in spite of all their efforts, de Lesseps, the former Consul-General, who had been appointed Civil Governor of Moscow, and his Russian assistants, could not succeed in establishing an open and well-supplied market.