The burning of Moscow as accident or extension of purposeful war of attrition.
Was it Alexander, Kutuzov, or Rostopchin?
How is it viewed? As cowardice? As failure? As necessary sacrifice?
No word for privacy in Russian.
“The Grande Armée won the battle against the Imperial Russian Army with casualties in a ratio 3:4, but failed to gain a decisive victory.”
“The Russians and French fight a decisive battle at Borodino, where the smaller Russian army inexplicably defeats the French forces, much to Napoleon’s dismay.”
“Tolstoy portrays the decision-making after Borodino in the first four chapters of book 11 of War and Peace. This opens with an essay on the difficulty, or maybe even the impossibility, or determining cause and effect in history. He attacks, in particular, the 'great man' theory of history, which says that events can be explained by "the actions of some one man – a king or a commander": that Kutuzov, for example, gave the order for the army to abandon Moscow to the French, and therefore they did so.”
“Napoleon blamed Moscow’s Governor-General Fyodor Rostopchin for the apparent sabotage. Some Russians historians believe the fires may have started accidentally – as people desperately fled the city.”