So whilst rank and file caroused, the small beginnings of the great conflagration were neglected and men were powerless to cope with the later developments, though some worked like Trojans. The stores of oil, of spirits, the inflammable wares in the Gostinnoi Dvor were ignited, and although Marshal Mortier worked well to extinguish the fires near the Kremlin, the lack of engines and the continuous outbursts of fresh fires, made complete success impossible. The looting of the town commenced at once; soon the greedy soldiers left their partly cooked rations to search for valuables, even the sentinels forsook their posts and they fought with the rabble from the prisons for such goods as seemed most easily removed. In time, not content with such as had been abandoned, they commenced to rob from the person; women were spoiled of head-dresses and gowns, the men fought with each other for the temporary possession of pelf. The only lights for this unholy work were the torches all carried and the fires the looters set ablaze in order that they might see. When Napoleon thought the conflagration was the result of a preconcerted scheme he ordered all incendiaries to be shot, and then none durst carry a light by night without risk of being there and then shot by some predatory soldier on his own initiative, or, not less surely executed in due form after a mock court-martial at dawn of day. Discipline was lax; among the soldiery of the army of occupation, many bold souls did just as they wished, and of their enormities, their cruelties and shameful orgies, nothing need be written. Others had leave of absence--a licence to pilfer. They not only ransacked the occupied houses, but dragged people from their hiding places, harnessed them to carts, with bayonet and worse urged them on, heavily laden, through burning streets, and saving themselves from the crumbling walls and roofs, saw their miserable captives crushed, buried, or struggling among the burning debris, and abandoned to their fate. In the immediate neighbourhood of the Kremlin the pilfering was official; in the Cathedral of the Assumption, great scales and steelyards were set up, and outside two furnaces, one for gold the other for silver, were kept ever burning to melt down the settings torn from the sacred pictures, the church vessels, the gilt ornaments, aye, even the decorations on the priests' robes. Horses were stabled in the cathedrals and churches; Marshal Davoust slept in the sanctuary with sentinels on both sides of the "royal doors" of the ikonostas. "Destroy that mosque," was Napoleon's peremptory order to one of his generals with reference to the Church of the Protection of the Virgin, but he delayed executing the order finding this cathedral convenient as a stable and storehouse. At first the fire was most severe in the warehouses flanking the Grand Square and along the quays. It spread most rapidly amidst the great stores on the south side of the river. The Balchoog was a sea of flame