On Sept. 14, Napoleon and his weary army--many thousands had been stationed at various places along the route--entered Moscow. Here they hoped for food and rest. They found the great city deserted. Powder had been placed under the Kremlin, and shells under the larger palaces, where Napoleon and his officers would be apt to lodge; water-pipes had been cut, fountains destroyed; and, the day after Napoleon's arrival, the whole city was set on fire by Russians detailed for that purpose. No wonder Napoleon said, years later, of this terrible destruction of a great city, "It was the most grand, the most sublime, the most terrific sight the world ever beheld!" Napoleon wrote to the Tsar proposing peace; but no answer was ever returned, though he waited some weeks in Moscow, hoping to hear favorably. The more intelligent serfs offered to rise against their masters, and aid Napoleon, but he did not desire civil war. On Oct. 19, 1812, the Grand Army of France, one hundred thousand strong, commenced its heart-breaking retreat. Deep snow had already come, earlier than usual. Kutusof, the Russian general, moved his army parallel to the French, and fought them at every available point. Marshal Ney covered the rear, and made for himself an immortal record. Napoleon rightly called him "The Bravest of the Brave." When they reached Borodino they sadly turned their heads away from the battle-fields where the bodies of thirty thousand men were half devoured by wolves. The cold became intense. Horses slipped and fell on the icy ground. Artillery and baggage were abandoned. There was no food in the devastated country. Where Napoleon had left provisions on his way to Moscow the enemy had destroyed them. Men ate their horses for food. They lay down at night on the snow to sleep, and never rose. "Every morning," says Marbot, "we left thousands of dead in our bivouacs.... So intense was the cold that we could see a kind of vapor rising from men's ears and eyes. Condensing, on contact with the air, this vapor fell back on our persons with a rattle such as grains of millet might have made. We had often to halt and clear away from the horses' bits the icicles formed by their frozen breath.... Many soldiers of all ranks blew out their brains to put an end to their misery.... All ranks were confounded; there were no arms, no military bearings; soldiers, officers, generals, were clad in rags, and for boots had nothing but strips of leather or cloth, hardly fastened together with a string." The Emperor himself was grave, calm, and self-controlled, with no diminution of courage. The soldiers of the allies of Napoleon, Austria, Prussia, Spain, and others, deserted by the thousands, the Russians having sent proclamations in various languages into the camps, telling them they should be returned to their homes.