The Patriotic War of 1812 was accompanied, and could not be otherwise, with the massive plunder of Russian property in the territories occupied by Napoleon's troops. In addition to the fact that the emperor was already carrying with him an impressive treasury, which was supposed to be enough to meet the needs of a huge army, his subordinates plundered old Russian cities. The number of trophies increased in proportion to the rate of advance of the Napoleonic army to the east. Especially famously the French profited from Russian property during their stay in Moscow.
But the triumph of the victorious march was replaced by the bitterness of a hasty flight. "General Frost", famine, the Russian partisans did their job - the Napoleonic army began a rapid retreat to Europe. It was accompanied by colossal losses of the French troops. For the retreating French army, wagons with looted riches were also drawn. But the farther the French retreated, the more difficult it was to drag along numerous trophies, even if they were very expensive.
Napoleon Bonaparte's army returned to France without treasures. Tormented, hungry and frostbitten. But where did the countless riches that the French managed to seize in Russia go to? The fate of Napoleon's hoard still excites the minds of both historians and people far from historical science. After all, we are talking about colossal wealth, the real value of which is difficult to imagine. The significance of these treasures for historical science is in general priceless.
The most common version of the fate of the Napoleonic hoard says that it was laid to rest in Lake Semlevskoe near Vyazma. At the origins of this version is the personal adjutant of Napoleon Bonaparte Philippe-Paul de Segur. In his memoirs, the French general wrote:
We had to abandon the booty taken from Moscow in Lake Semlevskoye: cannons, ancient weapons, Kremlin decorations and the cross of Ivan the Great. Trophies began to weigh on us.
The French army, hastily retreating from the "terrible and incomprehensible" Russia, had no choice but to quickly get rid of the numerous goods captured in the occupied cities. De Segur's version of the treasure in Lake Semlev is also confirmed by another French general, Louis-Joseph Vionne, who participated in the Russian campaign of 1812 with the rank of major in the Napoleonic army.
In his memoirs, Vyonne recalls:
Napoleon's army collected all diamonds, pearls, gold and silver from Moscow cathedrals.
Thus, the two French officers who took part in the campaign to Russia admit both the very fact of the plunder of Russian cities and the fact that the treasures were taken out by the retreating French army. By order of Napoleon, the riches from the Moscow churches during the retreat were packed and placed on transports that moved west. Both French generals agree that the trophies were thrown into Lake Semlev. According to preliminary estimates of modern historians, the total weight of the exported treasures reached at least 80 tons.
Naturally, rumors about the untold wealth that the retreating French buried somewhere began to spread almost immediately after the departure of the Napoleonic army from Russia. A little later, the first attempts at an organized treasure hunt began. In 1836, the Smolensk governor Nikolai Khmelnitsky organized special engineering work on Lake Semlevskoye in order to find the treasures thrown into the lake. But this event was not crowned with success. Despite the large funds spent on organizing the work and a thorough approach to the search, nothing was found.
Around the same time, a landowner from the Mogilev province of Gurko, who had a chance to visit Paris, met there with the French statesman Tuno, who participated in the Russian campaign of 1812 as a lieutenant in the Napoleonic army. Chuno shared his own version of the fate of the stolen treasures. According to him, they were thrown by the French into another lake, and into which one, the minister found it difficult to answer. But he remembered that the lake was between Smolensk and Orsha or Orsha and Borisov. The landowner Gurko spared no expense and effort. He organized a whole expedition that examined all the lakes along the Smolensk - Orsha - Borisov road.
But even these searches did not give any results to the treasure hunters. The treasures of the Napoleonic army were never found. Of course, history is silent about the “artisanal” treasure hunt, which in any case was undertaken by local residents and all kinds of adventurers throughout the 19th century. But if even the generously sponsored searches for the governor of Khmelnitsky and the landowner Gurko did not yield any results, then what could be expected from some artisanal actions?
In 1911, archaeologist Ekaterina Kletnova again attempted to find Napoleonic treasures. To begin with, she drew attention to the fact that there were two lakes in Semlev. Kletnova said that the baggage train with the looted property could have been flooded in a dam or in the Osma River, but the search again yielded no results. Even when the dammed lake was lowered, nothing was found at its bottom.
Semlevskoe lake
A number of media outlets published a version of a certain Orest Petrovich Nikitin from Krasnoyarsk, who lived in the Smolensk region during the Great Patriotic War. As Nikitin said, 40 kilometers from Semlev, near the village of Voznesenie, in the 19th century, the Kurganniki cemetery arose, where the French soldiers who remained in the village after the retreat of the Napoleonic army were buried. One of these soldiers married a local peasant woman, but died a few years later and was buried in this cemetery. The widow erected a monument to him.
The wife herself outlived her deceased husband much and died at the age of 100, having told the neighbors before her death that allegedly next to her husband's grave, on which she had installed a large stone, the treasures taken by Napoleon Bonaparte were hidden. But the villagers, due to the very respectable age of the granny, did not believe her. They decided that the elderly woman had simply fallen into insanity and was talking nonsense.
However, as the same Orest Nikitin recalled, during the Great Patriotic War, when the Nazi invaders invaded the Smolensk region, a detachment of the Gestapo appeared in the Ascension area. The German officer Moser, who allegedly headed it, visited the house where Nikitin's family lived at that time, and boasted that his subordinates had found Napoleon's treasures.
According to Nikitin's recollections, he saw some of the treasures found - golden cups, bowls, etc. - personally. And this circumstance gave Orest Nikitin grounds to assert that since 1942 there are no longer Napoleonic treasures in the Smolensk region - they were supposedly simply taken to Germany by the Nazis. By the way, shortly before the start of the war, the Gestapo officer Moser was hanging out in the Smolensk region, posing as a sales representative of the Singer firm. It is possible that he specially explored the places of possible burial of the Napoleonic treasure, interviewing local residents.
Nevertheless, the idea of discovering Napoleonic treasures in Lake Semlevskoye was not given up even in Soviet times. Since the 1960s, archaeologists have again become frequent visitors, but their searches have remained unsuccessful. The French delegation, which visited the Smolensk region in the early 2000s, did not find anything either. But even now Russian and foreign historians continue to build their versions of where the treasures of Napoleon Bonaparte could have gone. So, according to one version, Eugene Beauharnais, the stepson of the French emperor and the viceroy of Italy, who enjoyed the boundless trust of Napoleon Bonaparte, could have been involved in the disappearance of the treasure. It is not excluded that it was to him that the emperor could entrust the mission of burying the stolen treasures. Well, Beauharnais disposed of them at his own discretion.
The modern researcher Vyacheslav Ryzhkov presented to the Rabochy Put newspaper his own version of events, according to which the French army was concentrated not near Semlev, but near the town of Rudnya, located 200 kilometers from it. Now it is the border with Belarus. Although the historian does not deny the version of the treasure in Lake Semlevskoye, he is convinced that the main treasures are still located elsewhere.
If we consider that the treasures could indeed have been hidden elsewhere, then the whole meaning of the story of Napoleon's adjutant Philippe-Paul de Segur also changes. Then the words of the French general may be an outright lie, uttered in order to divert attention from the true burial place of the treasure. According to Ryzhkov, in an effort to divert attention from the treasure burial procedure, which would have attracted undue attention of local residents, Napoleon developed a whole plan.
To take the treasure out of Moscow, the French collected 400 carts, which were guarded by a convoy of 500 cavalrymen and 5 artillery pieces. Another 250 soldiers and officers were in the personal protection of Napoleon Bonaparte himself. On the night of September 28, 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte with a train of treasures and guards left Moscow and headed west. Since the flight of Napoleon was kept in deep secrecy, his double remained in Moscow, who carried out the instructions of the emperor. It was he who was supposed to lead the false treasure train, which then left Moscow and headed west along the Old Smolensk road.
A few days later, a French detachment organized a fake burial procedure for valuables in Lake Semlevskoye. In fact, a false convoy led by Napoleon's double went to Lake Semlevskoye, which did not transport any valuables. But the locals, who saw the congestion of the French by the lake, remembered this moment.
Therefore, when the French general de Segur left memories that the treasure was dumped into Lake Semlev, no one questioned his version - this was evidenced by numerous local stories that the French army really stopped in these places and fiddled on the lake shore.
As for the real treasures of Napoleon, they, together with the emperor himself and the guards accompanying him, moved west along a different road. Ultimately, they stopped in the area of the town of Rudnya, in the south-west of the Smolensk region. Here it was decided to bury the wealth looted in Moscow and other cities.
Lake Bolshaya Rutavech
On October 11, 1812, the convoy approached the western shore of Lake Bolshaya Rutavech, located 12 km north of Rudnya. A camp was set up on the shore of the lake, after which the construction of a special embankment across the lake towards its eastern shore began. The embankment ended with a large mound 50 meters away from the shore. The mound was about one meter above the water level. For three years, the mound was eroded, but even now its remains, according to the historian, can be found under water. Even earlier than the mound, the road to it was washed out.
According to the sounded version, then Napoleon moved towards Smolensk. And the treasures remained in the lake Bolshaya Rutavech. An argument in favor of this version can be considered the fact that back in 1989, a chemical analysis of the water in Lake Bolshaya Rutavech was carried out, which showed the presence of silver ions in it in a concentration exceeding the natural level.
However, we note that this is just one of the many versions about the fate of the innumerable riches taken out by Napoleon Bonaparte from Moscow. And it, like other versions, can only be confirmed if some specific, factual evidence is found that would testify to the burial of treasures precisely in Lake Bolshaya Rutavech.
In any case, given that the treasures have not surfaced anywhere in European cities, it is possible that they are still in some secret place in the Smolensk region. Finding them is a difficult task, but if it were fulfilled, not only would the national historical science be enriched, and museums would receive new artifacts, but historical justice would also be restored. It is useless for the treasures of the Russian land to go into another world after Napoleon.
