The Moscow Kremlin

This guide to the Moscow Kremlin turns on October 1812, when Napoleon, retreating from a city he could not hold, sent a single coded order to Paris: blow up the Kremlin before the army marched west. You'll hear how French engineers spent three days laying mines under these walls and towers, and what happened to their fuses on the night they were lit. It's a story about how close the citadel came to vanishing, and what a rainstorm had to do with it.