After the bloody but indecisive Battle of Borodino, Napoleon pushed on to Moscow only to find the city abandoned by its governor and set ablaze by retreating Russians. He waited five weeks in the smoldering capital for peace terms that never arrived, a fatal delay that doomed his invasion as winter closed in.
Napoleon expected the fall of Moscow to end the war. Instead, he found a ghost city: nearly three-quarters of its 250,000 residents had fled, and within a day fires—set by Russian agents under Governor Fyodor Rostopchin—began consuming the wooden capital. By the time flames subsided, roughly two-thirds of Moscow lay in ashes.
Napoleon settled into the Kremlin, sending repeated overtures to Tsar Alexander I for a negotiated peace. None came. He lingered for 35 days, an uncharacteristic hesitation from a commander famous for speed, as his supply lines grew thinner and the Russian countryside emptied of forage.
On October 19 he finally ordered retreat, too late to beat the brutal Russian winter. Of the roughly 600,000 troops who had crossed into Russia that summer, only a fraction returned. The empty, burning city he entered in triumph became, in hindsight, the beginning of his empire's collapse.