"The circumstances which gave rise to the errors concerning the burning of Moscow, were these:—It is a city of four hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, in circular form, occupying a large space, five miles across. There the winters are six months long, and the custom was, and still is, to lay up supplies of provisions and wood to last six months of severe cold weather. To prevent these gigantic supplies from encumbering the heart of the city, and yet render them as convenient as practicable to every locality, a row of wood houses was constructed to circle completely round the city, and outside of these was a row of granaries, and in these were deposited the whole of the supplies. Napoleon had entered the city with his army, and was himself occupying the palace of the Kremlin, when, one night, by order of the Russian governor, every wood house and every granary simultaneously burst into a blaze. All efforts to extinguish them were vain, and Napoleon found himself compelled to march his army through the fire. Retiring to an eminence he saw the whole city enveloped in vast sheets of flame, and clouds of smoke, and apparently all on fire. And far as he was concerned it might as well have been, for though houses enough were left to supply every soldier with a room, yet without provisions or fuel, and a Russian army to cut off supplies, he and his army could not subsist there. During the fire some houses were probably burnt, but the city was not. In the Kremlin a magazine blew up, cracking the church of Ivan more than a hundred feet up, but setting nothing on fire. "Mr. Douglas saw the fire-marks around the city, where wood houses and granaries for winter supplies now stand as of old; but there appears no marks of conflagration within the city."