IN this brief analysis a com-
plete picture of internal conditions in Russia during
the invasion is impossible. We shall, however, devote a
few pages to the attitude of the various classes among
the Russian people towards the event. Let us begin
with the peasant serfs.

At first glance, we are confronted by a paradox; the
peasants who loathed their servitude, who protested by
murders of landowners recorded in annual statistics,
and by revolts, which had, only 37 years before, im-
periled the entire feudal order by the Pugachev insur-
rection--the same peasants met Napoleon as a fierce
enemy, fighting with all their strength, as no other
peasants had fought him except those of Spain. They
refused to trade with the enemy, burned their grain
and hay, even their huts, particularly if there were any
French foragers inside; and actively assisted the guer-
rillas.

And yet there is definite evidence that as early as
1805-7, and at the beginning of the invasion of 1812,

-256-