Napoleon Bonaparte receiving the keys of Vienna at the Schloss Schonbrunn , 13th November 1805. (1808)
Anne-Louise Girodet de Roussey-Trioson (1767-1824)
When Napoleon defeated his enemies in battle he expected the vanquished to concede and hand the keys of their capital cities to him. This occurred in Vienna (twice), Berlin and Madrid in the early years of the 19th Century. The picture above shows the scene in Vienna in 1805, but pictures can be found showing similar ceremonies elsewhere.
When he arrived at the walls of Moscow in September 1812, after the inconclusive battle of Borodino, Napoleon expected the same treatment. The French Emperor waited for twenty four hours in the hills to the west of the city, while some of his generals were sent to find suitably important people formally to cede the city to him.
He waited in vain. Much to his irritation and the embarrassment of his suite, no one came, apart from a few French emigres and one or two people of little significance. This was the first indication that the occupation of Moscow was going to be very different from his Austrian, Prussian and Spanish experiences.
Losing patience, Napoleon finally entered Moscow. As the French troops marched through the streets, they realized that the city was almost entirely deserted. The Russian army had, as agreed, passed straight through the city and anyone who was anyone, including the Governor of the City, Rostopchin, had gone, taking government employees, fire fighting equipment and the police force with them.
The Emperor of France set himself up in the Kremlin, and quickly appointed his own officials to govern the city. His suite was said to have found the ancient fortress surprisingly shabby, not at all the luxurious palace that they had expected. They possibly didn’t realise that the place had hardly been used since the time of Peter the Great, one hundred years earlier.
Napoleon, unable to believe that Alexander the First had given up the city without a fight, waited in vain for his offer of negotiations. Soon he decided that he must take the initiative himself and write to the Russian Emperor. By this time a devastating fire had broken out in the city, destroying much of it, and in the resulting chaos it was difficult to find any Russian of standing prepared to take his message. Eventually State Councillor Tutolmin, the superintendent of the Moscow Foundling Home containing 600 children under eleven years old, agreed to send Rykhin, one of his employees with a letter to Alexander and also to the Emperor’s mother, Maria Feodorovna, who was the patron of the orphanage.
The unfortunate young man’s journey to Saint Petersburg was not without incident, at one stage he was almost murdered by suspicious peasants, but he did finally manage to deliver his message. This was one of at least two dispatches that Napoleon sent to Alexander, but no answer was received. Alexander realised that winter was coming on and that all he needed to do to rid the city of the French invader was to wait. In the end Napoleon spent a little over five weeks among the ruins of burnt-out Moscow before embarking on his disastrous retreat back to Europe. It turned out to be the beginning of the end.
This incident features in my current work in progress, In the Shadow of the Flames (working title), which is set in 1812, and centres around the Moscow Foundling Home. There are articles about this extraordinary institution on this blog in June 2021 and July 2024.