A small book "Memoirs of an eyewitness ..." was published in 1862, "half a century", in the words of its author, from the day the French entered Moscow. But his name was not on the cover. And then years passed - more than one hundred and fifty - now, thanks to scientists, we know that it was written by the Moscow bourgeois A. Ryazantsev, who in 1812 studied at the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy, and he was then 14 years old. The goals and objectives that Ryazantsev set himself before creating this book, he himself clearly outlined in the preface, is impossible to say better. One can only add - of all the books of memoirs of those who remained in Moscow and survived the French occupation, this is the most extensive, truly small encyclopedia of that life, filled with both tragic and comic. It is interesting that Leo Tolstoy himself used it when writing War and Peace, borrowing for his novel one of the most striking events mentioned in it. Be that as it may, written in the colorful language of that era, and besides by the most curious adventures that happened to the author, this book, of course, will not let go of the one who discovered it until the very end.
