A few fanatics, clinging to the tradition that the Kremlin was impregnable, idly sought to defend it; but troops, officials, nobles, merchants, and the great mass of the people were gone, and the military stores had been burnt or removed.
Rostopchin, the governor, had released the prisoners and broken the fire engines.

Flames speedily burst forth, and Bausset, the Prefect of Napoleon's Palace, affirms that while looking forth from the Kremlin he saw the flames burst forth in several districts in quick succession; and that a careful examination of cellars often proved them to be stored with combustibles, vitriol in one case being swallowed by a French soldier who took it for brandy! If all this be true, it proves that the Muscovites were determined to fire their capital.

But their writers have as stoutly affirmed that the fires were caused by French and Polish plunderers.[268] Three days later, the powers of the air and the demons of drink and frenzy raged uncontrolled; and Napoleon himself barely escaped from the whirlwinds of flame that enveloped the Kremlin and nearly scorched to death the last members of his staff.

For several hours the conflagration was fanned by an equinoctial gale, and when, on the 20th, it died down, convicts or plunderers kindled it anew.
Yet the army did not want for shelter, and, as Sergeant Bourgogne remarks, if every house had been gutted there were still the caves and cellars that promised protection from the cold of winter.

The real problem was now, as ever, the food-supply.