Chapter II
The Novel
Война и миръ · 1869
What Is It?
War and Peace is not a novel. Or rather, it is not only a novel. It is a hybrid work — part fiction, part history, part philosophical essay — that covers the period from 1805 to 1820 and follows the lives of several aristocratic Russian families through the Napoleonic Wars. It runs to roughly 1,200 pages in standard English translation, with over 500 characters, dozens of battle scenes, and extended essays on the philosophy of history. Tolstoy himself didn't know what to call it. “It is not a novel,” he wrote, “still less an epic poem, still less a historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it was expressed.”
Structure
The novel is divided into four volumes (or “books”), each containing multiple parts. Volumes I and II cover 1805–1807 — the campaigns of Austerlitz and Friedland, the Treaty of Tilsit, and the years of peace that followed. Volumes III and IV cover 1812 — Napoleon's invasion, the Battle of Borodino, the abandonment and burning of Moscow, the Great Retreat, and the Russian pursuit. An epilogue carries the story to 1820 and includes Tolstoy's extended philosophical argument about history.
Within this framework, Tolstoy alternates between two registers: peace — scenes of salon life, balls, hunts, family dinners, courtship, and country estates — and war — battles, campaigns, military councils, field hospitals, and the chaos of combat. The genius of the novel lies in how these two registers interpenetrate. Characters who danced at a ball in Volume I lie dying on a battlefield in Volume III. The gossip of a Moscow drawing room is given the same weight as a cavalry charge. Tolstoy insists that both are equally real, equally important, equally part of what it means to be alive.
The Two Halves
1805–1807 · The Years of Illusion
The first half of the novel introduces the main characters at a time when Russia is fighting Napoleon as part of the Third and Fourth Coalitions. The Battle of Austerlitz (December 1805) is the first great set-piece of the novel — a disastrous defeat for Russia and Austria, and the moment when Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, lying wounded on the battlefield, looks up at the “lofty, infinite sky” and realizes that all his ambitions are meaningless. The Treaty of Tilsit (1807) brings an uneasy alliance between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I, and the novel shifts to peacetime: balls, hunts, love affairs, and the slow fermentation of domestic drama.
1812 · The Year of Fire
The second half is a different book — darker, faster, more desperate. Napoleon invades Russia in June 1812 with 600,000 men. The Battle of Borodino (September 7) is the bloodiest day of the Napoleonic Wars — 70,000 casualties in a single day — and the centerpiece of the novel. Moscow is abandoned and burns. Pierre Bezukhov, wandering through the burning city, is arrested by the French and nearly executed. The French retreat in October, destroyed by hunger, cold, and Cossack attacks. By December, the Grande Armée has ceased to exist. The survivors return to a Russia that will never be the same.
The Historical Essays
Throughout the novel — and especially in the second epilogue — Tolstoy interrupts the story to argue with historians. His thesis is provocative: that history is not made by great men (Napoleon, Alexander, generals, tsars) but by the collective, unconscious actions of millions of people. Napoleon did not decide to invade Russia; he was carried along by forces he did not understand. Kutuzov did not winthe war by genius; he won by doing nothing — by allowing the French to destroy themselves. The “great man” theory of history, Tolstoy argues, is an illusion. Power is a swarm, not a scepter.
“To study the laws of history, we must entirely change the object of observation, must leave kings, ministers, and generals alone, and study the homogeneous, infinitesimal elements that influence the masses.”
— From the novel
These essays frustrated many contemporary critics, who found them naive or digressive. But they are not detachable from the novel. They are the novel's reason for existing. Tolstoy wrote War and Peace to answer a question: How does history actually happen? The characters and plot are the evidence; the essays are the verdict.