Author: andrewk2019

Introduction

The military is an instition that allows governments to use force and intimidation for peace keeping or war. From the oldest militaries to the modern military, leadership have been at the core at running these institutions. With a very clear hierachal order, military leaders must be effective in order to accomplish their objectives. In War and Peace, Tolstoy uses Napoleon and Kutuzov to demonstrate how different leadership styles affect their prospective military campagins. These two generals are very different from one another, and I will attempt to distinguish the two real-life characters through their leadership methods in a time of war. Furthermore, I will discuss what it really means to be a leader on a battlefield, since Tolstoy seems to have strong opinions on both characters. My final goal is to write a takeaway from the novel and the historical figures. I will explore some lessons learned from Tolstoy’s commentaries and historical accounts regarding both Napoleon and Kutuzov.

A Difference in Leadership

Tolstoy’s national allegiance to Russia may have clouded his judgements on Napoleon throughout the novel, but it is clear that he believes the French general never deserved the fame and acclaim that he received.

While reading this book, all of the different military leaders were really interesting to me. They all had different leadership styles, and Tolstoy’s occasional commentaries on his philosophy on wars were thought provoking. I want to write my final paper on the role of military leaders on war and use both Tolstoy’s commentaries and research some history. I will have a thesis and use the novel’s characters and history as case studies for my paper. I want to focus on writing on what it means to be a leader on the battlefied, and what it means for the people fighting wars.

One of the main reasons why I am writing a this is twofold. First, I will be attending Annapolis next fall, where I will be training the next four years to commission as an officer in the Navy. Knowing that military leadership will be part of my career path, I want to get inside the heads of those who have gone before me, like Napoleon and Kutuzov. Second, I actually do have some experience with military leadership, as a cadet in the US Naval Sea Cadet Corps. I want to tie in my personal experience at the end of the paper, and write about what I could learn from military leadership in the future. It will be like a literary/research paper with personal commentary at the end.

Throughout the novel, there have been many characters who have “fallen in love”. Oftentimes, their “love” ends up being temporary. Helene and Pierre, Natasha and Anatole, and Dolokhov and Helene. In my opinion, Andrei seems to be the most consistent character throughout the novel.

In the earlier parts of the novel, Andrei is written as someone who did not have much foresight for his own life. This was highlighted during the Battle of Austerlitz when he attempted to rush through the battlefield with a flag. He had no regard for his own life, but was rather motivated by his own desires for personal glory and high status.

It is important to also note that Andrei was someone who was disillusioned with married life. He left his pregnant wife to go fight a war, only to find out later that his wife had died in childbirth. Lisa’s death left Andrei in deep grief. He would begin to spend more time with his young son, taking more time at his estate. Then, when Napoleon invaded, Andrei would eventually join the war effort again, until he is wounded at the Battle of Borodino. In between his time with his son and the war, Andrei would fall in love again with Natasha.

I believe that Andrei’s love for Natasha was what brought him back out of his own grief. This is what makes me think that his love for her was genuine and why he was so hurt when Natasha did not stay loyal to him. He had even been willing to stay with her for a whole year before marriage. Throughout the novel, Andrei is one of the few characters who went through serious trauma in his personal relationships, and it never seems like he was ever able to fully recover from them.

His story arc makes him a very complicated character, but it also makes him the most human out of all the characters. Hardly anything works out for him in the story. His own dreams of personal glory, romance and family life are always cut short by an unpredictable tragedy. His ability to intellectually think through his own failures and bounce back from them makes his story a very human experience. Humans are nowhere near perfect, and so is Andrei’s story.

The capture-the-flag game that we played was both exciting and boring at the same time. Just like how the war was described by Tolstoy, our game was largely in stalemate because players were more willing to defend than attack. It was almost as if people did not want confrontation because they were either afraid of going to jail or because they did not know how to capture the flag without being noticed.

As a member of team Russia, I have to give credit to the French team for being able to choose and defend their flag really well. It was placed in an area that was impossible to reach without being noticed. To work around this obstacle, a teammate and I were forced to sign out of school and run around the block. We then snuck through some neighbors’ backyards in order to try to climb down over the hills stealthily. Unfortunately our plan failed miserably, and I only ended up getting my khakis and socks soaked in mud and water. The last forty-five minutes of the game was spent with a stalemate at the Russian flag when several members of the French team attempted a steal. It was the most boring cat and mouse game ever. The most fun I had was the adrenaline rush of sneaking through neighbors’ yards.

The real Battle of Borodino went through nearly the same sequence of events. Early Russian skirmishes and attacks against the French made Napoleon see an opportunity to launch a full attack. Then as the Russians retreated to Borodino, they decided to fortify themselves in a standoff. The French attempted win a decisive victory and Borodino, but they also suffered heavy losses, forcing both sides to withdraw from more fighting. It was a stalemate, but it also defeated morale on both sides from heavy losses.

As Tolstoy believes, war is not a fight between strategy, but rather the courage and spirit of those who fight it. In our own game of capture-the-flag, strategies on both sides seemed to also fail. It seemed that the only way to win was to just launch a mindless, full-scale charge towards the other team’s flag. Perhaps that is the only way to win real wars.

Last week, I wrote about Kutuzov’s military genius and what his role was for the eventual Russian victory in the French invasion of Moscow. This time, I will be writing about why Tolstoy doesn’t believe that wars can be won by strategy. From pages 783 to 785, Tolstoy writes that Napoleon was not necessarily a competent military leader, but rather a figurehead who motivated troops to win battles. Of course, this plays right into his blind patriotism, but perhaps there is some truth in the fictional Napoleon.

While it is certainly true that military strategy plays a large role in the book, with all of the nobility being higher-level officers, Andrei often disagrees with some of their methods. On page 775, Andrei explains to Pierre that war is not a civil game, but rather a chaotic pit of emotions. He argues that battles are not won with brilliant strategists. Instead, the key to winning wars is high morale amongst the soldiers who fight them. “‘I would not take prisoners. What are prisoners? It’s chivalry. The French devastated my home…They’re my enemies, they’re all criminals, to my mind’” (774).

I had initially disagreed with Andrei. To me, it seemed that war was a strategic match between two forces. But Tolstoy makes a good argument: war is not honorable or glorious. “The aim of war is killing, the instruments of war are espionage, treason” (775). Through Andrei’s point of view as an officer with the ground troops, he witnesses the bloodshed and unnecessary killing. Even Pierre eventually realizes the true nature of war (797). Andrei’s motivations to fight the war harder was a result of the French invading his own homeland.

Tolstoy’s arguments are actually still valid today in modern warfare. For example, the Pearl Harbor attacks in World War 2 was the catalyst that united Americans and pushed them into war in the Pacific. On the other hand, American involvement in Vietnam had a lot of pushback from the public and its troops. Service members were not sure why they were fighting a war that seemed meaningless, and eventually American policymakers succumbed to pressures from the public. As cliche as it sounds, perhaps wars really are won by “winning the hearts and minds”.

Tolstoy depicts General Kutuzov as a larger-than-life figure, with his abilities to draw attention and authority in a room full of military officers. Prince Andrei was fascinated with Kutuzov’s leadership: “Prince Andrei followed attentively the expression of the commander in chief’s face” (742). According to Russian history, Kutuzov is one of the most celebrated heroes in the books. And while it is certainly true that Kutuzov’s leadership had helped the Russians drive the French out, Tolstoy seems to exaggerate some of his own capabilities. “What the general on duty was saying was still more practical and intelligent, but it was obvious that Kutuzov despised both knowledge and intelligence…He despised them with his old age, with his experience of life” (742).

Russian history books call the general “One-eyed Kutuzov”, after his eye was shot out during battle. He was known for leading from the front lines of battle, unlike many other high-ranking officers. He would eventually be shot through the temple of his head again. This reputation of a fearless military hero is what Tolstoy may be trying to capture in the novel. He writes that the general did not like planning for battles; he liked to fight the enemy using his “experience” instead.

While it would be amazing if someone could really win wars with improvised tactics, Kutuzov was better known for his military strategy. In the French invasion of Russia, the general learned that he was not able to fight Napoleon’s army in a large battle. His own army was too small for a head-on match. So instead, he devised a strategy to fight the outskirts of the French army in small skirmishes. His long term plan was to stall the French army from moving forward and to break morale. He wanted to wait until the winter to fight large battles. This strategy worked especially well when the French invaded Moscow in September of 1812. Napoleon could not move his army, as provisions were getting low. Upon learning this, Kutuzov decided to engage the French in small skirmishes. Eventually, December rolled around, and the cold winter forced Napoleon to retreat. This would later become a defining moment in Russian history and a source of national pride for driving away Napoleon.

General Kutuzov was a brilliant strategist who actually wanted to be practical and intelligent about fighting wars, unlike Tolstoy’s fictional claims. Through Prince Andrei’s perspective, Kutuzov was a herculean figure, and it went well with the plot of the story. Even with the historical inaccuracies, Tolstoy’s version of Kutuzov is better anyways.

Sources: warfarehistorynetwork.com, Wikipedia

“On all sides one saw wet, sad-faced officers, who seemed to be looking for something, and soldiers, who were dragging doors, benches, and fences from the village.”

The 19th century Russian military was broken up into two parts: the Imperial Russian Army and the Imperial Russian Navy. As the fight against Napoleon was mostly dictated over land, the Imperial Army saw most of the combat throughout the war. Tostoy often depicts the Russian army as a borderline dysfuntional group of men whose officers are indifferent to the various sufferings caused by their subordinates: “Several battalions of soldiers in nothing but their shirts, despite the cold wind, were swarming like white ants over this fortification” (174). In contrast, Napoleon’s army is often described as a highly organized and well trained. Oftentimes, this makes Russian victories seem more heroic and extraordinary.

Unfortunately, this was not the case in the French invasion of Russia. The Imperial Army was one of the strongest and well-maintained armies in Europe from the early 18th century to the mid-19th century. During his rule, Peter the Great was responsible for many of the changes that resulted in one of the most fiercest fighting forces ever assembled in European history. By law, peasants are conscripted into the military whose service obligation was 25 years. This was essentially a lifetime commitment, and as the Russian population grew rapidly in the early 1800s, it created a massive professional fighting force. Furthermore, the average soldier would be totally isolated from his hometown and the general population during war. This was an unusual standard for its time, and helped soldiers focus on the fighting. If they were awarded for their efforts in service, soldiers would be promised to have a chance at the ranks of petty officaldom. As you can tell, the Russian army was actually a formidable fighting force and was certainly not an easy opponent for Napoleon.

Unlike his counterparts, Napoleon refused to exact high standards in his own army. His personal philosophy was strength in numbers. Many historians believe that this may be why he had conscripted soldiers from multiple European nations, from Austria to Italy. At one point, his standing army numbered 680,000 soldiers. To put that in context, that is larger than the population of Oakland. He would eventually expend up to 1.5 million soliders throughout his campaigns in Europe. Due to this, his army was often dysfunctional, as the multinational, conscipted soldiers had little loyalty to the French cause.

While the defeat of Napoleon was certainly impressive, sometimes its takes more than just numbers to be strong. As history dictates otherwise, Tolstoy may have exaggerated some of the smaller details to stir up Russian pride.

Sources: Napoleon.org, Wikipedia