French Army

The French Army appears in the poem’s historical note on Moscow, as the force accompanying Napoleon when he first saw the city from the Sparrow Hills. This brief reference places the army at the threshold of Moscow’s history, but the supplied passages provide no further account of its structure, campaigns, or role in the characters’ lives.

The Moscow Reference

The note describes the view of Moscow from the Sparrow Hills, a low range beside the Moskva River, as distinctive and splendid. It calls attention to the city’s gilded domes and roughly twelve hundred spires, which at sunset seem tipped with flame, before recalling that Napoleon and the French Army first glimpsed the city from that vantage point. The army is therefore identified through a single historical circumstance: its approach brought it within sight of the city whose appearance the poem has just evoked.

Scope and Significance

The reference gives the panoramic description a historical edge. Moscow is presented not only as a city of churches and gold-crowned towers, but also as a place seen by an invading army. The note supplies no account of what the French Army did after that first sight, and the excerpt does not connect it to the poem’s personal plot. Its significance here lies in the contrast between the city’s visual grandeur and the military force approaching it.