Moscow is invoked as a diplomatic stage where Raoul le Mouton de Boisdeffre’s public prominence and France’s strategic relationship with Russia become visible. The city is not developed through an extended scene; instead, two references to major ceremonies there give it a concentrated significance in the narrative: first as the setting of the Tsar’s coronation, then as the place from which Boisdeffre returns after Tsar Alexander III’s funeral.

Ceremonial Center of the Alliance

At the time of the coronation, Boisdeffre is head of the French delegation in Moscow. His appearance there is one among a series of widely reported engagements that have made him a familiar figure in the newspapers: the narrator also recalls his public encounters with the Tsarina and the Russian ambassador. Together, these appearances turn diplomatic alliance into spectacle. Russia dominates public discussion, and Boisdeffre’s role in the relationship is treated as a triumph of French diplomacy.

The narrator, however, distinguishes popular enthusiasm from private judgment. He acknowledges Boisdeffre’s celebrity but has reservations about fighting Germany alongside what he describes as an army of serfs. Moscow therefore carries two meanings at once: it is a place where the alliance is ceremonially affirmed and a reference point for the doubts that its celebration leaves unresolved.

The Funeral of Tsar Alexander III

Moscow recurs when Boisdeffre returns from the funeral of Tsar Alexander III. During a sequence of briefings, he listens courteously as Georges Picquart reports on the developing case against Alfred Dreyfus; the narrator imagines that Boisdeffre’s attention is still occupied by Russian affairs. The contrast is pointed: a senior military figure moves from a major imperial ceremony back into a domestic crisis whose evidence and handling will test the army’s authority.

The funeral reference also reinforces how closely Boisdeffre’s public identity is bound to the Franco-Russian connection. His Moscow engagements help account for his prominence, while the narrative sets that prominence beside Picquart’s increasingly urgent reports and the political tensions surrounding the Dreyfus case.

Narrative Significance

Because Moscow appears only through references to ceremonies and their aftermath, its significance lies in what those references disclose about power at a distance. The city signals the reach and prestige of Boisdeffre’s diplomatic role without becoming the setting for a fully narrated episode. Its coronation and funeral frame the Russian alliance as both a public achievement and a persistent preoccupation for France’s military leadership.

The two appearances also create a contrast between official ceremony and unresolved domestic business. Moscow stands for the alliance’s highly visible pageantry; Picquart’s briefings, by contrast, bring attention back to the secret evidence and institutional decisions surrounding Dreyfus. The city’s narrative function is thus compact but consequential: it helps establish the international stature against which the internal crisis unfolds.