Tolstoy

The Russian forces now began their retreat towards the Russian border, and Tolstoy initially returned to Bucharest, taking with him positive impressions of the Bulgarians he had met in Silistra. It was in Bucharest that a letter sent to him by Nekrasov back in July finally caught up with Tolstoy. Nekrasov was full of praise for the manuscript of Boyhood, which greatly raised his spirits, but in August he lost another 3,000 roubles gambling.⁶⁶ In early September Tolstoy also headed back to Russia, learning on the way that he was to be promoted to sub-lieutenant. He was stationed at the army’s new headquarters in Kishinyov, capital of Bessarabia, where once again he had plenty of time for reading and for music: he had a nice flat with a piano.⁶⁷ At this point he was reading George Sand and Uncle Tom’s Cabin in German translation. He also had time to put together a proposal with some of his fellow officers to launch a weekly forces newspaper. He was greatly excited by this project, and as soon as he heard his brother-in-law had sold the Yasnaya Polyana house that autumn, he wrote to ask him for 1,500 roubles so he could invest in taking the project further.⁶⁸ The Yasnaya Polyana house had been sold for 5,000 roubles to a local landowner who dismantled it and rebuilt it on his own estate. Tolstoy’s brother-in-law rightly had grave misgivings about releasing the funds.⁶⁹ Meanwhile, the proposal for the forces newspaper was taken to St Petersburg for Nicholas I to consider.

Russia had suffered heavy losses in the war with the allied forces that autumn. The allies had won major battles at Alma, and in September 1854 besieged Sebastopol, Russia’s main naval base on the Black Sea. While the Russians started scuttling some of their ships and using the cannons of others to back up their artillery, the allies built trenches and gun redoubts in the south of the city, and were ready for the battle by the middle of October. On the first day of bombardment, on 17 October, a British attack set off the ammunition store on the Malakoff redoubt and killed Admiral Kornilov, but Russian artillery also destroyed a French magazine. Four days earlier, at the end of the Battle of Balaclava, Raglan’s Light Brigade had charged into the ‘valley of death’, and the Russians saw their capture of the British redoubts as a victory. The Battle of Inkerman on 24 October crushed Russian hopes, however, and made it clear that the rest of the war would be fought at Sebastopol.

In Kishinyov, meanwhile, balls were being thrown for two visiting grand dukes, which left a bad taste in Tolstoy’s mouth. He began petitioning to be transferred to Sebastopol. First of all he wanted to see the action for himself, but mostly he was driven by his feelings of patriotism, particularly when he learned that the 12th Artillery Brigade he had served with briefly had taken part in the Battle of Balaclava. The Russian military headquarters in St Petersburg finally began sending reinforcements down to the Crimea, and Tolstoy arrived around the same time as the 10th and 11th divisions. By early November he was in Odessa, and a week later he was in the Crimea. He might have arrived earlier, but kissing a pretty young ukrainian girl through a window in a town south of Kherson led him to spending the night with her.⁷⁰ When he arrived in Sebastopol, Tolstoy was assigned to the 3rd Battery of the 14th Light Artillery Brigade.⁷¹ He was not mobilised to be on active duty at this point, but he remained in the besieged city for nine days, during which time he was able to assess for himself exactly what was going on, by visiting the Russian fortifications and talking to soldiers and officers. He wrote to tell Sergey the harrowing stories he had heard from a wounded soldier who told him about how the taking of a French battery at Inkerman had come to nought, as reinforcements never arrived, and how 160 men in one brigade had valiantly remained at the front, even though they were wounded. Then there were the sailors who had withstood thirty days of constant bombing, and refused to be relieved from their duties. He saw priests with crosses walking along the bastions and saying prayers under fire, and heard about displays of heroism greater than in ancient Greece when Vice Admiral Kornilov had asked the Russian forces if they were prepared to die.⁷² There were some 35,000 Russian troops stationed in Sebastopol at this point; 13,000 of them would not return home (French and British losses were almost as heavy).⁷³