To the last Rostopchin nursed the illusion of the citizens; he told them men were at work upon some wonderful military engine--a fire balloon--which would destroy the French army instantaneously. Meanwhile the Archbishop Augustine, who had ordered the procession through the town of the ikons of the Iberian Mother of God, the Virgin of Smolensk, was instructed to take the sacred treasures to Vladimir. Rostopchin had but one serious complaint against Kutuzov; he had asked for three days' notice if the town was to be abandoned, he got but twenty-four hours. Everything of value that could be removed was packed and sent away; there was a general exodus on the night of the 1st September (old style) and Rostopchin left with the Russian army, the rear-guard of which was quitting the city by the Preobrajenski suburb at the same time that the advance-guard of the French army entered it by the Dragomilov Zastava. Before he left Rostopchin opened the prisons, gave the lowest class the entry to the arsenal, and ordered the stores to be fired; also, he put to death one Vereshchagin, accused of publishing Napoleon's proclamation, a deed that was no less criminal because needless. And here Rostopchin's work ended; if he had received longer notice of Kutuzov's decision to abandon the town he would doubtless have saved more of the valuable portable property of state and church, and _might_ have destroyed the town. With reference to all the correspondence that ensued as to the party responsible for the firing of Moscow, it can be said only that Rostopchin and the Russians would like to have had the credit for making a so magnificent sacrifice, but it was of political expedience that the Russians should believe the destruction of the holy places and their revered city directly due to the invader. The apologists of Napoleon attribute his misconduct of the campaign to ill-health; as likely as not the thwarting of his plans by the enemy, his defeats and doubtful victories caused his illness. Whether his genius failed him or not, there can be no doubt of the magnitude of the conception and the utter ineptitude exhibited in its execution. After Borodino his generals lost faith in him; they remained taciturn and morose, until at two o'clock on the afternoon of September the 2nd, the staff obtained their first view of Moscow from the summit of the Poklonnaya Hill, the "salutation" point of the Sparrow Hills. In the bright sunlight of the early autumn, the city, resplendent with gold domes and glittering crosses, seemed the fitting goal for their long deferred hopes and they of one accord raised a joyful shout, "_Moscou! à Moscou!_"