Author: piercey

(The following paragraphs would go with the historical inaccuracies of Tolstoy)

At the time of writing War and Peace, it would have been impossible for Tolstoy to know the cause behind Typhus, which is a bacterium spread through the body and feces of body lice (not to be confused with Typhoid Fever). However, while the cause of Typhus was not well known until 1911, by 1835, its name and symptoms were accurately listed by a French hospital chief, way soon enough for Tolstoy to have encountered the phenomenon (Roberts, 589). **correction** although estimates of Typhus’ death toll are inexact, by the end of his Russian campaign, roughly one quarter of Napoleon’s army had been killed from Typhus, and many, including Napoleon himself, contracted Typhus at some point along the campaign.

A fascinating fact Tolstoy confusingly overlooks (as he could’ve used it to further his own denouncement of Napoleon and his point on the uselessness of leaders is that on the march from the Niemen to Moscow, during the hot, dry, and stifling summer months, most of the army had thrown all their winter clothing to the side of the road. Nor does the Russian winter (the popular understanding of Napoleon’s failure) have no mention in War and Peace. While Napoleon had apparently researched the previous twenty winters of Russia and concluded that sub-zero temperatures start in November, and remain mild until December, in 1812 late October saw a temperature of -4º C, and by November 7th, Napoleon’s army was experiencing -30º (-22ºF).

“A man without convictions, without customs, without traditions, without a name, not even a Frenchman, seemingly by the strangest chances, moves among all the parties stirring up France, and, without attaching himself to any of them, is borne up to a conspicuous place.” (1133)

Without further ado, I give you Tolstoy’s Napoleon! War and Peace, written in 1965 by a Russian, it is very unsurprising that Napoleon is the ultimate archenemy of Tolstoy the author at the very least, if not the archenemy of the entire book.  From his first physical entrance into the book after the battle of Austerlitz, when he is described by Andrei as “a small, insignificant man,” (291), Tolstoy starts his crusade against Napoleon and his status (by few Europeans at the time) as a great man. Over the course of the book, Napoleon is depicted as fat, tactless, childlike, obese, cold, manipulative, husky, short (of course), and ultimately useless to the actions of the French. And while some of these are true, Tolstoy goes a bit overboard with his depiction of Napoleon, and Tolstoy also warps more than a few historical details to further his denouncement of Napoleon.

Tolstoy describes Napoleon as fat four times in two paragraphs (619), and goes on later that page to describe him as exceedingly shallow and self-obsessed: “It was very clear that only was went on in his soul was of interest to him. Everything that was outside him had no meaning for him, because everything in the world, as it seemed to him, depended only upon him” (619). This is obviously untrue, as Napoleon was quite an effective statesman as well as general, and even during campaigns, Napoleon would have correspondence with Paris to make sure things were managed well, and often some were trivial. [More on Tolstoy’s semi-ridiculous description of Napoleon]

As far as history goes, Tolstoy is far too biased a person in this subject to be taken at face value. Not once in the 1138 pages I have read thus far have I seen the slightest mention of Typhus fever, which took roughly 20% of Napoleon’s army out of commission from the crossing of the Neiman to Moscow. Additionally, Tolstoy never gives the burning of Moscow a proper allotment as a death-blow to the French army, until he came to the fire itself, he completely ignored its presence in history, skipping right from the Battle of Borodino (which, granted was a somewhat Pyrrhic victory…) to the retreat from Moscow. Nobody can argue that Napoleon wasn’t reckless in his 1812 campaign. He is quoted as saying, “1813 will see us in Moscow, 1814 at Petersburg. The Russian war is a war of three years” (Roberts, 595). Another interesting fact that Tolstoy doesn’t mention is that on average “1,000 horses were to die for every day of the 175 days the Grand Armée spent in Russia”. (Roberts, 587). [More historical inaccuracies]

[Tolstoy’s potential reasonings for denouncing Napoleon: Russian patriotism, patronage, pacifism]

[Comments on how much Tolstoy’s Napoleon can be trusted]

[Final conclusions?]

For 1000 pages, I have read Tolstoy’s writing, wondering here and there (most often whenever his book turned to Napoleon or to military science/genius) how I was to reconcile his ideas with my own. Tolstoy gives very convincing arguments for why military genius doesn’t exist; his descriptions of battlefield chaos are very realistic, no doubt heavily influenced by his own experience in the Crimean War. While I have no doubt much of his battlefield descriptions are well researched and represent the truth fairly accurately, I hesitate to fully trust Tolstoy’s viewpoint on basically everything now. My hesitation comes from a pet-peeve of mine that I find ridiculous in the majority of people and unforgivable in any historian or historical work: the inability to qualify legitimate counterpoints.

On page 1000, Tolstoy, when talking about a skirmish between the French and Russians during Napoleon’s wintering (which Tolstoy names “the French army’s inactivity” that signifies its impending doom (990)), Tolstoy goes into a rant on his laws of history (which he always compares to the laws of science or mathematics): “If in the descriptions of historians, French historians in particular, we find that their wars and battles were carried out according to a predetermined plan, the only conclusion we can draw from that is that these descriptions are not correct.” Tolstoy demonstrates the all-too infuriating quality of absolutely rejecting any points or evidence counter to their own beliefs found in the worst of conversation partners.

Nevermind the fact that Napoleon was involved in sixty some-odd major battles and lost fewer than ten (if my memory serves me right, he waged 63 major battles and lost 8), and took over the largest portion of Europe since Charlemagne almost 1000 years before him. All of Napoleon’s victories and triumphs had nothing to do with him, and clearly Napoleon was not the true orchestrator of the wars, campaigns, and battles, but it was just an inevitable result of the will of the people. (If it is not clear, this paragraph is highly sarcastic…)

Tolstoy has had a fair few ideas which I have always wanted to question, such as the inevitable doom of the French army after the Battle of Borodino, the inexinstance of military science, or the hindrance of leadership. I am sure that Tolstoy’s ideas all have elements of truth in them, perhaps more than I accredit them, but without qualifications in his points (“… under these circumstances…” or “… an exception to the rule…”), Tolstoy the historian has lost my trust, and I have come to see his “history” as more Russian propaganda hogwash than historical fact.

War and Peace is a fantastic work of fiction, and it is often important to remember that War and Peace is just that: fiction. While Tolstoy the author crafts brilliant sentences, and Tolstoy the essayist makes compelling arguments for his ideas, Tolstoy the historian is a bit of a flop. The most likely reason for his historical inaccuracies are that Tolstoy was creating a work of fiction and wanted to bend reality to make a better story, but it is also possible that he had patriotic motivations or that much like the rest of Europe, Tolstoy was simply on the we-hate-Napoleon train and bought into the warped historical perspectives of the time.

Tolstoy has made a stunning number of accurate historical allusions, such as Napoleon and his favourite chess metaphor for battle (801),which he used during the Battle of Borodino), the painting of The King of Rome brought to Napoleon’s tent on the eve of the battle (778-780), or even Napoleon waking up at 3 in the morning right before the Battle of Borodino drinking punch and talking about fickle Fortune (786-788); however, Tolstoy the historian has made a fair amount of incorrect implications in his writing that seem to exist only to help him further his own anti-Napoleon crusade. During the Battle of Borodino, many of Napoleon’s generals came up to him and begged for reinforcements from the only all-French division, the Young Guard, and this is an event Tolstoy depicts when Napoleon is faced with a request for reinforcements three times in a row (801-802); however, Tolstoy’s narrative deviates from historical record when Napoleon gives into the demand and sends a division out as reinforcements when in reality, Napoleon never gave in, supposedly having claimed of the Young Guard, “I do not wish to see it destroyed. I am sure to gain the battle without it taking part,” (Roberts, 606). Additionally, when Tolstoy has Kutuzov claim prematurely without full knowledge of his army that they would attack the next day (807-808) – an unlikely action for a commander in chief of an army– Tolstoy then “forgets” to mention how the Russian casualties was around one-and-a-half times the casualty count of the French, and how the Russians retreated from the French during the night right after the Battle of Borodino.

One of the most striking hiccups of Tolstoy the historian is the convenient lack of attribution of the fire of Moscow to Napoleon’s downfall. In one of Tolstoy’s historical interludes, he gives us the future of the French campaign: “… the French reach Moscow and stop there. During the five weeks after that, there is not a single battle. The French do not move. LIke a mortally wounded beast, which, losing blood, licks its wounds, they remain in Moscow for five weeks without undertaking anything, and suddenly, with no new cause, flee back:” (824)
While at first I was fairly frustrated with Tolstoy for his seemingly intentional avoidance of large factors contributing to Napoleon’s failed Russian campaign (such as Typhus fever, which killed roughly 1/5 of his whole army), I’ve grown to just find them an amusing trait that one tolerates to be polite, such as when talking to a fairly rambly grandparent who doesn’t quite get all the facts right.

As Tolstoy’s anti-war message becomes more and more overt, I was stunned by the sentiments he put down. Tolstoy writes on the idea that war is a relatively pointless activity, waged by the leaders of a country for their own personal benefit, but this is an idea that I had always associated with the First World War.

After the chaos and carnage seen at the Battle of Borodino, Tolstoy describes the mental state of the footsoldiers on both sides of the war:

“Exhausted men on both sides, without food and rest, began alike to doubt whether they had to go on exterminating each other, hesitation was seen on all faces, and in every soul. Alike the question arose: ‘Why, for whom, should I kill and be killed? You kill whomever you like, do whatever you like, but I don’t want any more of it!’ Towards evening, this thought ripened alike in each man’s soul. At any moment all these men might become horrified at what they were doing, drop everything, and run away wherever their legs took them.”    (818)

Soldiers on both sides cannot quite understand why they are being subjected to such horrendous carnage. It would seem that in the trenches, everyone is fed up with how willing their leaders are to put them on the line for personal benefit (mostly praise and honor). In fact, Tolstoy through Andrei, prefaced the general atmosphere of disdain for war with Andrei’s rather large outburst on war on pages 775 and 776.

The quote that most struck me was in the middle of Andrei’s outburst, when he contrasts the reason war is waged against the reason war should be waged: “If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we’d go to it only herein it was worth going to certain death, as now. Then there would be no war because Pavel Ivanych offended Mikhail Ivanych” (775). This sentiment reminded me of when I read All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel written by a World War One veteran on the German trenches. The protagonists, common soldiers, often discuss how they are just pawns that Germany is willing to throw away to assuage her honor. The whole war got as big as it did because Russia, Germany, France, and Great Britain all felt the need to maintain their honor by fulfilling alliance promises (among many many many other factors, such as… Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination, the massive land-grab going on in Africa, etc.).

As I read Tolstoy’s semi-hidden anti-war essays, I was surprised at how his sentiments mirrored those of soldiers in World War One, fifty years ahead of him, and how well he lays out his points; however, considering his involvement in the Crimean War (quite possibly the biggest crapfest before World War One), his ideas and depictions of war scenes surprises me a lot less.

The Battle of Borodino stands today as the bloodiest one-day battle in history, tying the Battle of Cannae and the first day of the Somme Offensive.

On August 2, 216 BCE, the Carthaginian general Hannibal carried out the deadliest battles of the Ancient World: the Battle of Cannae. After luring the Romans into a battle, Hannibal set up his troops in such a manner that the Roman army pushed the center of Hannibal’s line in, but the sides were kept steady, effectively making a circle of Carthaginian troops around the Roman army which Hannibal used to slaughter the Romans. Historians estimate that around 6,000 Carthaginian died, and between 55,000 and 70,000 Romans died, and an estimated 30,000 gallons of blood were spilled as Hannibal proved his military superiority over the Romans.

World War I is infamous for its heavy death toll, especially on the Western Front with the use of trench warfare. One offensive, the Somme Offensive, stands out above all others as the bloodiest of them all, where the 141 day offensive resulted in over one million casualties. On July 1, 1916, the first day of the offensive, there were around 70,000 casualties, as British and French troops ran headlong into German machine gun fire, resulting in an Anglo-French gain of 16 miles.

Coming close to, but not quite matching the death toll of the Battle of Borodino is Napoleon’s most famous battle: the Battle of Waterloo. With 65,000 casualties from both sides, Napoleon’s last battle was also one of his narrowest defeats (one of eight in his military career, out of 63 total battles). 91 days into his return from exile, Napoleon had pushed the Seventh Coalition Army to Waterloo in modern-day Belgium, where he faced a 118,000 Allied Anglo-Prussian force against his 78,000 French army.

The Battle of Borodino was fought from sunrise to sunset between the weary, diseased, and demoralised French Army and the retreating Russians on September 7th, 1812, a mere 8 miles west of Moscow. Napoleon, wishing to win a decisive victory over the Russians, pursued the Russians as far as Moscow, where, after suffering 28,000 casualties in the Battle of Borodino (as opposed to the 43,000 casualties from the Russian side he planned to camp for the winter and resume the Russian campaign in the spring. At the end of the Battle, the casualties suffered on both sides were “the equivalent of a fully laden jumbo jet crashing into an area of 6 square miles every five minutes for the whole ten hours of the battle, killing or wounding everyone on board” (Roberts, 607).

Patriotic Russian fervor, however, led to inhabitants setting Moscow on fire after Napoleon had arrived, burning half of Moscow (along with much-needed food for the 100,000+ army Napoleon had). Instead of retreating from Moscow, Napoleon foolishly tried to stay in Moscow, despite imminent starvation.

“Battle of Borodino.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Borodino.

“Battle of Cannae.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae.

“First Day on the Somme.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 31 Jan. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_day_on_the_Somme.

Hunt, Patrick. Hannibal. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2018.

Roberts, Andrew. Napoleon: a Life. 2015.

The Russian strategy of avoiding the 615,000 man French army is not the only, or even first instance of a much smaller force defeating a bigger force by avoiding confrontation on home soil. Known as the “Fabian Strategy”, this tactic is named after the Roman General, Marcus Fabius Maximus (nicknamed “Cunctator” or “the Delayer”), who avoided battle with General Hannibal of Carthage until Hannibal’s forces were worn down by hunger, disease, and battles during the Second Punic War.

The Second Punic War (218 – 201 B.C.) was a war between the two great Mediterranean powers of the time: Carthage, the major naval power, located in modern-day Tunisia, and Rome, the major land power. The two powers had fought some twenty years earlier over the island of Sicily in the First Punic War, which the Romans won. The Second Punic War is the more famous of the two, involving Hannibal’s march from Spain over the Alps (yes, with elephants) into Italy. After a devastating defeat, the Romans put Fabius in charge of the Roman Republic as a dictator, and Fabius kept a constant strategy of avoiding a real engagement, choosing strategic ground to fence Hannibal into an area of evacuated and burned farms; when Fabius was temporarily relieved from duty, the Romans attacked Hannibal and lost in the Battle of Cannae. Fabius’ strategy was validated, and Fabius was placed back into command of the Republic’s army. Hannibal was effectively shunned in southern Italy for a decade, until the Romans won the war.

George Washington also employed the Fabian strategy during the American Revolution, hiding from the british army and avoiding an outright confrontation, but continuously harassing the British until the cost of the war exceeded the benefits for the British and conceded to the revolutionists’ demands.

Quite possibly more famous than Fabius’ own use of the Fabian Strategy is the use of the Fabian Strategy in Russia combined with the scorched earth policy. As the Russian forces were driven back by the sheer numbers of the French army (450,000 troops in the first wave of the invasion, with 165,000 in the second against 250,000 Russian troops spit into three armies), the Russian forces burned any towns or villages they left starting from Vilino.

The Fabian Strategy stretched Napoleon’s supply lines, much as they had in some of Napoleon’s earlier campaigns, but Napoleon’s determination to gain a decisive victory over the Russians drove him to pursue the Russian army all the way to Moscow, where the French Army could have wintered had the Muscovites not burned half of the city down, destroying precious food and lodging for the roughly 100,000 troops left.