The Great Moscow Fire

The entirety of Moscow appeared as a single enormous blaze, under clouds of thick smoke. Wooden building simply disappeared; stone ones cracked and fell apart; iron parts and implements glowed red with heat, copper turned liquid. The roar of the storm, the crackle of the fire and the screams of people trapped in the blaze were repeatedly drowned out by the explosions of gunpowder that was stored in the Kremlin and other parts of the city. One ran for one's life; all possessions, whether earned virtuously or through vice, perished: the tsar's rooms, the treasury, icons, ancient scrolls, precious swords, even the remains of saints were turned to ash. The Metropolitan remained in the Cathedral of the Dormition, praying, even though he was almost unable to breathe because of the smoke. Someone forced him to leave and people wanted to lower him from a secret passage to the river bank on a rope – but he fell, was severely injured, and was taken to Novospassky Monastery, barely alive...

 

By night, the storm let up, and by about three in the morning the fire went out, but the ruins were hot and smoking for several days... People with their hair burned off, their faces blackened by the soot, wandered like shadows among the horrors of the vast decimated desert: they went looking for their children, parents, whatever was left of their home--and howled like animals when they found nothing.