Tolstoy

Napoleon’s troops had been marching relentlessly on Moscow since invading Russian territory in June 1812, and the speed of the French army’s advance led Alexander I to appoint the venerable Prince kutuzov as his commander-in-chief just days before the historic battle, replacing General Count Barclay de Tolly. kutuzov was sixty-seven years old, but greatly revered by all ranks in the Russian army. unlike Barclay de Tolly, the Lutheran descendant of a Scottish family which had settled in the German Baltic province of Livonia in the seventeenth century, kutuzov was thoroughly Russian. He established his defence of Moscow in the village of Borodino, and it was here, at dawn on 7 September 1812,⁹⁰ that the two armies met for their bloody encounter. The fatalities were enormous, with the Russian army losing as many as 44,000 men, and the French 58,000. Technically the victory was Napoleon’s, as he was able to march on to Moscow after kutuzov withdrew, but his forces were fatally weakened. Tolstoy’s conclusion was that the Russians had scored a crucial moral victory at Borodino, the kind which ‘convinces the opponent of the moral superiority of his enemy, and of his own impotence’. He was unabashed about including in his novel authorial pronouncements to this effect:

The direct consequence of the Battle of Borodino was Napoleon’s groundless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the old Smolensk road, the defeat of the 500,000-strong invasion, and the defeat of Napoleonic France, on which had been laid for the first time the hand of an opponent whose spirit was stronger.⁹¹

Half a century later, when he came to visit the battleground, Tolstoy found accommodation in a local convent and spent two days wandering around the village and surrounding fields of Borodino, in the company of his brother-in-law Stepan Bers, then twelve years old, who was thrilled to be taken along. Tolstoy was disappointed not to be able to talk to a recently deceased veteran of the war who had worked as the custodian of the monument to the battle which stood in the middle of the field, but he used his eyes effectively instead. By sketching out a plan of the battlefield, and noting where the troops had been positioned, he was able to work out vital details such as exactly in whose eyes the sun had shone when it came up on that fateful day. Before heading back home, he got up at dawn and completed one last tour of the battlefield. Tolstoy’s skewed presentation of history in War and Peace has attracted criticism ever since it was published; indeed, some of his accounts of the battles in 1812 left some veterans apoplectic with rage at his manipulation of historical sources to suit his own artistic and ideological ends. There is nevertheless a general consensus on the authenticity of his portrayal of the events at Borodino.⁹²

After coming back from Borodino, Tolstoy finished the part of the novel which culminates with Natasha’s seduction by Anatole kuragin. This comes at the halfway mark in the final version of the novel, at the end of volume two. Tolstoy regarded this episode as the crux of the entire work, since it functions as a kind of mirror of Napoleon’s ‘violation’ of Russia, with which it coincides, and he found it extremely difficult to write. This was also perhaps partly because he was reflecting the recent experiences of his sister-in-law Tanya, who had gone through something similar with an inappropriate suitor.⁹³ At this point, Tolstoy decided it would be best to publish everything he had written so far rather than hold up publication until he had finished the next part (which covers the Battle of Borodino). The three volumes of the first book edition were accordingly published in December 1867, and sold for a price of seven roubles. One critic took exception to having to pay such an ‘indecent’ price for the three slim volumes with yellow covers which he claimed had a large typeface more suitable for old people and children. Nevertheless the books sold.⁹⁴ The next volume went on sale three months later in March 1868, with a cunning advertising ploy: those who bought the first four volumes would receive the fifth free, while those who waited until the edition was complete would have to pay more, since the price would then go up. The books sold so well, however, that a second edition, incorporating certain new revisions, appeared that autumn.⁹⁵ The Russian reading public was still relatively small, so this was no mean achievement.