French occupation and the fire of Moscow

After the Battle of Borodino, Russian troops and most remaining civilians left Moscow on 14 September 1812, just ahead of Napoleon's entering troops. The city was mostly deserted compared with its normal population: a contemporary police survey counted about 270,184 inhabitants at the beginning of 1812, yet only somewhere between 6,200 and 10,000 civilians stayed after the French arrived, in addition to between 10,000 and 15,000 sick or wounded Russian soldiers. During the French occupation a fire persisted from 14 to 18 September 1812 and destroyed the city. The supplied sources do not attribute the fire to orders from Fyodor Rostopchin, so that attribution remains disputed.