18 January] 1826) was a Russian statesman and General of the Infantry who served as the Governor-General of Moscow during the French invasion of Russia.

Rostopchin was born in the Kosmodemyanskoe village (modern-day Livensky District, Oryol Oblast of Russia) into a Russian noble family, the son of Vasily Fyodorovich Rostopchin (1733–1802), a landlord and former army major, and Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Rostopchina (née Kryukova) who died shortly after giving birth to his younger brother Peter.

[2][3][1] In Part 2 of the All-Russian Armorials of Noble Houses he named some Boris Davydovich nicknamed Rostopcha (from Russian rastopcha which means scatterbrain, blockhead[4]) who arrived to Moscow to serve Vasili III of Russia, while in Part 4 his name changed to Boris Fyodorovich and later official encyclopedias renamed him to Mikhail Davydovich.

[5][6][7] His descendants supposedly served in Moscow, Tver, Klin and Rzhev at various army and state positions, yet none of them left any trace in Russian history, and some modern historians consider it to be a mystification.

Rostopchin had left a small detachment of police, whom he charged with burning his house and the city to the ground, given that most buildings were made from wood.

[14] According to Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace, Rostopchin was overwhelmed by events, and believed until the last moment that Moscow would not go down without a fight.

Why were thousands of inhabitants deceived into believing that Moscow would not be given up—and thereby ruined?” “To preserve the tranquillity of the city,” explains Count Rostopchín.

“Why were bundles of useless papers from the government offices, and Leppich’s balloon and other articles removed?” “To leave the town empty,” explains Count Rostopchín.

One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification.Tolstoi also attributes the Fire of Moscow to the constitution of the city and not to Rostopchin: The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme féroce de Rostopchíne (To Rostopchín’s ferocious patriotism), the Russians to the barbarity of the French.

A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes without conflagrations when the house owners are in residence and a police force is present, cannot help burning when its inhabitants have left it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves meals twice a day.In 1814 the Rostopchine family left Russia, going first to the Duchy of Warsaw, then to the German Confederation, Vienna, the Italian peninsula and finally in 1817 to France under the Bourbon Restoration.

He claimed innocence against the charge of arson, and had a pamphlet printed and distributed in Paris proclaiming so in 1823, but subsequently admitted to his role in ordering the city's destruction.