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The Battle of Borodino is a key
moment in Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
In his account, it is the chaos of battle,
rather than the orders of leaders, which
decide the conflict’s outcome.which more than 25,000 men were
killed in a single day. He presents
the thoughts and actions of real-life
characters, such as Napoleon and
his Russian counterpart Kutusov,
alongside those of imagined
characters like Andrei and Pierre,
allowing readers to see the chaos
and brutal truth of war from every
perspective. The battle—which
was an indecisive victory for the
French—marks the turning point
of the war.
While life for St. Petersburg’s
aristocrats continues almost
unaffected, Moscow is sacked and
burned by Napoleon’s Grand Armée
before it retreats. Napoleon’s forces
suffer enormous hardships as they
withdraw: facing freezing conditions
and starvation, they are slaughtered
in their thousands by the Russians.
In the book’s two-part epilogue,
Tolstoy tells of life in 1813 and
beyond, after Napoleon’s armyhas fled and the war is over, with
peace finally restored to Russia
and her people.The small actions of many
After finishing the stories of his
fictional characters, Tolstoy
reappraises the historical roles
played by Napoleon and Tsar
Alexander. He concludes that
history is not driven by the actions
of great leaders, but by many, small
and ordinary events: “History is
the life of nations and of humanity.”
In War and Peace that vast scale
is finely observed, and Tolstoy’s
penetrating vision into everyday
truths makes the book the vast,
grand work that it is.
War and Peace captured the
essence of an era. In 1875, it was
described by the Russian novelist
Ivan Turgenev as “the vast picture
of the whole nation’s life.” A century
after its publication, Ernest
Hemingway declared that it was
from Tolstoy that he had learned to
write about war, for no one wrote
“about war better than Tolstoy did.”
Nor indeed, have many written
better on peace. ■DEPICTING REAL LIFE
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy was born near
Moscow in 1828 to a noble
Russian family. After leaving
Kazan University early, Tolstoy
led a dissolute life in Moscow
and St. Petersburg, running up
significant gambling debts.
He toured Europe in 1860–61,
meeting the novelist Victor
Hugo and the political thinker
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Both
inspired Tolstoy to return to
Russia to write and educate
the impoverished serfs. In
1862, Tolstoy married Sophia
Andreevna Behrs with whom
he had 13 children. Sophia
took care of their financial
matters, although their
marriage became increasingly
unhappy. After completing
War and Peace and Anna
Karenina, Tolstoy sought
spiritual and moral truth
through his Christianity and
by espousing pacifism,
influencing figures such as
Gandhi and Martin Luther
King. He died of pneumonia
in 1910 at 82.Other key works1875–77 Anna Karenina
1879 A Confession
1886 The Death of Ivan Ilyich
1893 The Kingdom of God
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