A beautiful world made ugly by war

War and Peace Week 5: Book 1 Part 2 Chapter 4 – 10

Welcome to week five of War and Peace 2024. This week we have read Book 1, Part 2, Chapters 4–10. Everything you need for this read-along and book group can be found on the main War and Peace page of Footnotes and Tangents. There you will find:

• The reading schedule with links to daily chat threads for each chapter.

• Weekly updates like this one.

• Plot summaries for each character

• All Tolstoy’s parties (for paying subscribers)

Almost all of this content is free. However, I am currently working full-time running this book group and its companion group, Wolf Crawl. Right now, paid subscriptions cover 81% of my work, and I am enormously grateful for that support! If you are enjoying these read-alongs and would like to support me, I am running a 30%-off discount on subscriptions until Wednesday.

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This week’s characters

These are the principal characters, in the order they are mentioned:
Nikolai Rostov • Lavrushka • Vaska Denisov • Lieutenant Telyanin • Zherkov • Nesvitsky • Prince Bagration • Prince Andrei • Mortier • Schmidt • Dokhturov • Murat • Bilibin

Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx by Joachim Patinir. Source.

This week’s theme: A beautiful world made ugly by war

We're a long way from the gossip of Anna Pavlovna's reception rooms, and dancing the Daniel Cooper with Count Rostov. We’re far from Bald Hills and the old prince, at work alone at his lathe.

We’re at war, and it is hell.

And yet we are surrounded by beauty. Tolstoy takes us over hills and valleys, through forests and across the rivers that feed the Danube. We see the great sky, the sun breaking through clouds, and we feel the warm autumn rain.

In stark contrast, the war is in all ways ugly and wretched.

From bleeding feet in worn-out boots to drunken, thieving hussars, raiding the country as they go. From officers up above with pies and liquor, joking of rape and pillage. To terror down below as men pray to cross a bridge alive.

Lies maintained and lives wasted so honour can be kept and won.

Tolstoy leads us into this hell through the eyes of two men: Nikolai Rostov and Andrei Bolkonsky. In their own different ways, they romanticise what it means to fight. And for both of them, reality comes to rob them of their dreams.

On paper, the war is going very badly for the coalition formed against Napoleon. Austria has lost its army, its capital and its best general. The Russians are retreating, the French at their heels.

But this story is not about nations and armies.

It is about people and their worlds within. And this week, inside Nikolai and inside Andrei, we hear the first shots fired, and the first bridges burned, in an inner war that will overturn the order of the soul.

Leo Tolstoy in his artillery officer’s uniform in 1854. Source.

Chapter 4: ‘Long live the whole world!’

Our story moves to the Pavlograd hussars, a regiment of light cavalry stationed near the main army at Braunau. We meet a new main character: Nikolai’s captain, the red-faced Denisov with sparkling eyes and an endearing speech impediment. Lieutenant Telyanin steals Denisov’s purse, and Rostov handles the situation the only way he knows how: badly.

• What are your first impressions of Denisov?

Footnote: Tolstoy goes to war

Nikolai Rostov’s reality check is drawn from Leo Tolstoy’s own experience of army life. In his early twenties, Tolstoy was a lacklustre law student, a libertine with a weakness for drinking, gambling, hunting and gipsy women. Like Pierre Bezukhov, he was aware of his own wretched state and lack of purpose, frequently resolving to reform himself, but always falling back into his bad ways.

At twenty-three, he joined his brother Nikolai with the army in the Caucasus. Like Andrei, he hoped he might find a peace he could not find at home. Like Nikolai Rostov, he dreamed of heroism and glory on the battlefield. The reality was far less glamorous and much more sobering. It didn’t cure him of his vices, but it did expose him to the horrors of war. His experiences led to his later pacifism, as well as giving him the material for his realistic account of army life in War and Peace.

A hussar officer. Source.

Chapter 5: Mother truth

It went from bad to worse for Nikolai Rostov. He complained to their commander about Telyanin, and the colonel dismissed the complaint to protect the honour of the Pavlograd hussars. Nikolai would challenge the colonel to a duel over it, and the staff-captain explains to him why he will do no such thing. A fine mess. But here’s Zherkov with news that “we’re going into action”.

Focus: pride and honour

‘I’m not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken in front of them, but I am not a diplomatist. That’s why I joined the hussars, thinking that here no one needs diplomacy—so let him give me satisfaction…’

Do you remember Natasha calling Boris “a diplomat” back in week two? The word was “in vogue among the children” and had a special meaning to them. Natasha and Nikolai cannot hide their emotions and reprove those who can. “I am no use anywhere except in the army”, Nikolai tells his father, “I am not a diplomat nor a government clerk.—I don’t know how to hide what I feel.”

But the army is not as simple and straightforward as he expects. Personal pride runs into conflict with the regiment’s honour – and truth is the first casualty. If Nikolai wants to remain in the army, he must learn these unwritten rules. But grumpy Denisov shows him that, even if he learns them, he doesn’t have to like them.

I think the reader and Nikolai are on a similar journey here. Going into the first “war” section, we might expect the war to be about the confrontation between enemies across a battlefield. But there are many battlefields and many wars. Some conflicts separate allies, comrades and friends. Others are fought within ourselves against rules we barely understand.

• Have you ever had to swallow your pride?

Admont Abbey on the River Enns, Austria. Source.

Chapter 6: Pies and pillage

A short chapter, full of chilling contrast. Prince Nesvitsky and other officers are up on a hill, as down below, troops file over the bridge across the River Enns. The whole army is falling back towards Vienna as the French advance. The officers eat pies, admire the view and joke about rape and pillage. The first shots in this story are fired and, appropriately enough, fall short of their target.

• Can you tell what Tolstoy thinks of Nesvitsky here? Does it matter if we can’t?

Background: the Hussars

The Hussars were light cavalry, famous for their splendid uniforms and a reputation for adventure. The word hussar has its origins in medieval Hungary, and by the eighteenth century, most major European armies had hussar regiments. As the fastest military unit, their roles involved outmanoeuvring heavy artillery, reconnaissance, skirmishing and commandeering local food supplies for the army. This last responsibility led to the harassing and pillaging of local populations.

Tangent: Reading up on the history of hussars led me down the rabbit hole of the legendary winged hussars of Poland. You can read more about them here.

The Barque of Dante by Eugène Delacroix. Source.

Chapter 7: River of men

We follow Nesvitsky down to the bridge to see a river of men pass over a river of water. Again, we witness what a fearful place this is to be a woman. And we get a sense of how the cavalry and infantry regard each other, as a scented Denisov wades back into the story.

Prince Nesvitsky saw the rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying round the piles of the bridge chased each other along. Looking on the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder-straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and under the shakos faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions, and feet that moved through sticky mud that covered the planks of the bridge.

Tangent: Crossing the river into hell

I find it striking that Tolstoy gives this poetic moment of reflection to the shallow Nesvitsky, who moments earlier was wiping moist pie crumbs from his lips and making crude jokes about nuns. But that’s Tolstoy for you: people are never quite who you think they are.

You can take this river metaphor in so many different directions. It seems to speak of the inevitability of events, human bodies flowing uniformly to their death in war. It is also a halfway point between the panoramic view of the army in the previous chapter, and the following close-up shots of infantry and cavalry conversation. Tolstoy’s telescope, zooming in on the flow of humanity.

But I also thought about the rivers in Greek mythology. The Styx and the Acheron, and the boatman Charon ferrying dead souls across to the Underworld. It’s a journey we must all take, and now we readers join the men on the bridge, crossing into a new stage of the story, from which there is no going back.

• Have you ever ‘burned your bridges’?

1912 postcard depicting Pavlograd Hussars setting fire to a bridge. Source.

Chapter 8: Grapehot in sunshine

Nikolai Rostov comes under fire for the first time, shattering his romanticised expectations of battle. It’s “nasty work”, says Denisov, as two men fall. Meanwhile, officers Zherkov and Nesvitsky stand out of range, waiting for their promotions.

There are at least two great images in this chapter. The first is the “boundary line which resembles the line dividing the living from the dead”. The second is Nikolai noticing a blue calm and deep sky. I’ll focus on that second image here.

Focus: the skies above

Nikolai Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the far away blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in mist to their summits … There was peace and happiness … ‘In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness but here … groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry … There—they are shouting again, and again they are all running back somewhere, and I will run with them, and it, death, is here and above me and around … Another instant and I will never again see the sun, this water, that gorge! …’

This might be my favourite passage of the book so far. It perfectly encapsulates Nikolai’s disorientation. Time slows; events become confused. And the fighting fades into the background, while Tolstoy draws together the vast and mysterious world beyond and the uncertain and vital world within. It’s all there. The beauty of life, the yearning to live, and the fear of death.

Skies have a large role to play in the story ahead of us. Different characters will notice different things in the heavens above. And I think it may be difficult to read War and Peace and not start looking at the sky in a different way.

• Is slow reading making you see the world differently?

Battle of Dürenstein. Source.

Chapter 9: Fantasy and reality

After the Austrian defeat, the Russian army falls back across the Danube, fighting rear-guard actions against a superior French army. A small victory is won, and an Austrian general is killed. Andrei takes the news to the Austrian Court at Brünn, where he is met with polite indifference.

The action that Andrei has just taken part in was the Battle of Dürenstein or Battle of Krems. You can read about it in more detail on Wikipedia, alongside further background on the War of the Third Coalition.

Post chaise passing a damaged gig. Source.

Tangent: Wounded pride and punctured dreams

Prince Andrei was galloping along in a post-chaise enjoying the feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a long-desired happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels and the sensation of victory.

Nikolai on the bridge felt like a “coward”. Andrei, riding away from battle, feels like a hero. Both, I think, are mistaken. Andrei’s happiness evaporates as soon as he delivers the news to the Minister of War, “the whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle seemed the memory of a remote event long past.” Rostov, looking around at his comrades, takes comfort in the fact “no one has noticed” how cowardly he behaved.

This is what it is like to be young and going out into the world. When we are full of ideals and romantic notions. And then life turns out to be messy, obtuse and indifferent to our dreams. We say we don’t care what others think, but find it impossible to do otherwise. We keep thinking we’ve found happiness and peace, but it is only a dose in a post-chaise.

• Who do you relate to more this week: Nikolai or Andrei?

Chapter 10: Words and wrinkles

Andrei is staying with his friend, the diplomat Bilibin. A man of fine words and many wrinkles. Bilibin explains to Andrei why his so-called victory is the worst news the Austrians could hear. He tells Andrei that Napoleon has taken Vienna and the war is over before it has even begun.

I don’t understand Tolstoy today. Bilibin is thirty-five and lives comfortable. Who loans him this face? — Yiyun Li, Tolstoy Together

Confession time: I love Bilibin. I don’t think he has prematurely aged or led a hard life: some people just have a creased expressive face. And after the Rostovs have been using “diplomat” as a term of abuse, here is a flesh-and-blood diplomat, all surface and wrinkles, not an authentic bone in his body. He’s vain and shallow and likes the sound of his own voice. But unlike Ippolit Kuragin, he is actually funny and intelligent, and his analysis is not wrong. He’s just what Andrei needs right now.

• What do you think of Bilibin, and how do you think he got those wrinkles?

Celebrating the daily chat

Finally, this week, I want to say thank you to everyone contributing to the daily chat threads. I am always a bit apprehensive when I create these spaces. I have no idea who is going to turn up and whether it is going to work.

But I have been delighted by how you have embraced the opportunity and engaged with the book and with each other. People have brought their personal experiences, insights, ideas and research to the discussion and really enriched the reading for everyone else.

There is so much to talk about from day to day that my weekly updates can only ever provide a snapshot of the week’s conversation. So whether you use the comments below, the daily chat, or your own buddy reads and book groups, I hope you’re able to find the space you need to delve deeper and explore wider. There is no limit to how far you can take a great book.

Thank you for reading

Like Andrei and Nikolai, I dreamed writing a weekly newsletter would bring me fame, glory, peace and purpose, but instead has burdened me with RSI and cascading deadlines. So, if you would like to restore my romanticised view of writing, please become a paying subscriber. Those already feeding my foolish fantasies can enjoy All Tolstoy’s parties, despatches from the drawing-rooms of War and Peace. There’s no despatch this week because … there have been no parties! But there is a 30%-off discount on subscriptions! Offer ends on Wednesday.

Next week, we stay with Andrei as he heads deeper into the war and further and further from his peace of mind. See you in the daily chats, and goodbye for now.