From the History of Moscow

1. As far back as the twelfth century Moscow was known as a small estate of Prince Yuri Dolgoruky; in 1147 it became a town on the bank of the Moskva River, then an important trade route. Its economic and political development was largely due to its favourable geographical position.

2. The city was razed in the thirteenth century during the Tatar invasion, and for many years paid tribute to the Tatar khans, but toward the end of the fourteenth century it rose against these rulers, sometimes fighting, sometimes paying ransom. It gradually grew stronger and became the capital of the new state of Moscow.

3. By the end of the sixteenth century, during the reign of Boris Godunov, Moscow had three walls with towers and moats surrounding respectively the Kremlin, the Kitai-Gorod and the White City. From the Kremlin and the Red Square, then the centre, streets radiated to the outskirts whence they continued as trade roads. Foreigners who visited Moscow in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as trade representatives or entered the service of the tsars, as architects or military and industrial advises usually expressed their delight with the picturesqueness of the city but noted the dirty streets and wooden houses that they found on closer inspection.

4. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Peter the Great moved the capital to St. Petersburg which was founded by him, but Moscow continued to grow as a trading city. It remained too, the favourite city of the Russian nobility who liked to spend the winter in their Moscow mansions. With the invasion of Napoleon in 1812, four-fifth of Moscow was destroyed by fire, but it was soon rebuilt and trade and industry developed again. The city was at its height by the middle of the nineteenth century.