Infinite sky

War and Peace Week 9: Book 1 Part 3 Chapters 11 – 17

Welcome to week nine of War and Peace 2024. This week, we read Book 1, Part 3, Chapters 11 – 17. 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

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This week’s characters

Explore background and plot summaries for all this week’s characters:
Andrei Bolkonsky • Tsar Alexander • Dolgorukov • Kutuzov • Bilibin • Weyrother • Bagration • Napoleon • Nikolai Rostov • Boris • Berg • Count Tolstoy • Miloradovich • Dokhturov • Arakcheev • Maximilian von Wimpffen • Louis Alexandre Andrault de Langeron • Prince of Liechtenstein • Friedrich Karl Wilhelm, Fürst zu Hohenlohe • Buxhoeveden

Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz by François Gérard. Source.

This week’s theme: Infinite sky

“The mind’s game of chess goes on independently of life, and life of it,” Tolstoy wrote in his diary in 1863. So it is with his characters’ every intellectual conviction and rational intention. Whether in the ballroom or on the battlefield, as soon as they come into contact with real life, their ideas and plans disintegrate like so much meteor dust.
— Andrew K Kaufman in Give War and Peace A Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times

Andrei had a plan. Sick of society, with all its vanity and falsehood, he'd join the army. He'd go fight Napoleon. The great tactician. The man with the plan. He'd beat him on the battlefield. He'd outsmart, outflank, out-scheme the great usurper. Enemy of Mankind.

Austerlitz would be his Toulon. The siege of '93 when Napoleon was just an artillery captain with a canny plan and bags of ambition.

Meanwhile, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army sleeps. His one good eye: tight shut. Because there's no use arguing with the generals and emperors who want to fight. The enemy is afraid, they say. He's running away, they say.

Let's go, they say.

And as the plan is put into motion, and the wheels begin to turn. And as the machinery of war, man and horse, swing into action. And as the fog descends. Up on a hill in sunlight, a man in a blue coat removes a white glove.

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

Andrei had a plan. He ran and ran and ran. Somewhere in this world are meaning and truth. He'd find it and fill his soul with it. When all was lost he'd keep his head. Take the flag. Hold it up. Lead and be loved for it. Win and be rewarded for it.

We all want to be loved and admired for who we are and what we do. We all make plans and steer our lives by uncertain stars.

Life's firmament of war and peace.

While above the battle and the ball, always and forever, blow clouds across a lofty sky.

"How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace."

Chapter 11: The dial of history

Andrei has a plan. Of course he does. But it doesn’t matter because the Council of War has already approved another. The whole army moves like clockwork towards its date with destiny, with Dolgorukov convinced of victory, and Kutuzov sure of defeat. It doesn’t matter, Bilibin quips, win or lose, the Russian army will remain glorious because all our leaders are foreigners.

Tangent: Clock towers

Just as in a clock the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French—all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm—was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors—that is to say, a slow movement of the hand of the dial of human history.

I love this quote. It sums up so much of what War and Peace is all about. Tolstoy zooms out to see the armies moving like clockwork, inexorably towards catastrophe. But folded into this smooth, mechanical movement are thousands of complicated lives, with hearts and minds racing in all directions.

Thank you

Mari, the Happy Wanderer

in the daily chat for bringing our attention to the medieval clock towers of Europe. She went and snapped some photos of the Zytglogge, the fifteenth-century astronomical clock in Bern, Switzerland. You can see the clock in action in this video:

Footnote: Cunctators

‘Believe me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than all the experience of old Cunctators.’

Dolgorukov has no time for Kutuzov, whose watchwords are time and patience. Cunctator was the nickname of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus during the Second Punic War. It means “the delayer” and was used initially as an insult to describe his then-novel tactic of targeting the enemy’s supply lines and avoiding pitch battles and frontal assaults against superior numbers.

Dolgorukov is insulting Kutuzov. But Fabius gave his name to the Fabian strategy of a war of attrition, scorched earth and guerilla warfare. This strategy was used successfully by George Washington, the “American Fabius”, and yes, you guessed it, by Mikhail Kutuzov, also known as the “Russian Fabius.”

Fabius Maximus also gives his name to the Fabian Society and Fabianism, the strategy of achieving democratic socialism by gradual reform rather than revolution. The logo of the Society is the tortoise that outruns the hare.

• Read more about Fabian strategy throughout history.

The Battle of Zama in the Second Punic War, 202 BC. Source.

Chapter 12: The fog descends

Weyrother drones through the dispositions for tomorrow’s battle. Kutuzov sees there is nothing to do but sleep. Andrei is left with the uneasy feeling he and tens of thousands will die because the emperor would not listen to Kutuzov. However dreadful it seems to him, Andrei realises he will sacrifice everything for the love of men he does not know.

Theme: The map is not the territory

Hovering self-assuredly over a great map spread out before the council, the Austrian general Weyrother intones for an hour, in nauseating detail (and in German), his written “disposition for the attack on the enemy’s position.” Alas, unlike the map so beautifully illuminated by candlelight the evening before, the actual battlefield the next morning is shrouded in a fog that prevents the attacking army from seeing where in the hell they’re going!

— Andrew K Kaufman in Give War and Peace A Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times

All smiles: French royalist Count Langeron. Source.

Tangent: Battle of smiles

The reading of the disposition: I have a fantasy of gathering a Zoomful of people to act out the scene. I can do the “significant gaze, which signified nothing.”
— Yiyun Li in Tolstoy Together

Thank you

Dylan Reid

in the daily chat for drawing our attention to the “battle of smiles” at the council of war. Count Langeron’s “subtle smile that never left his typically southern French face” meets Weyrother’s “smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of a case.” These generals clearly hate each other, but the occasion requires a certain kind of diplomacy at the corner of the mouth. No wonder Andrei feels disillusioned and out of his depth.

As Yiyun Li observes, Tolstoy’s extraordinary events are described in a way instantly recognisable to anyone who has sat through a tedious committee meeting or an interminable PowerPoint presentation. We are all one with Kutuzov when he decides to call it a night.

Chapter 13: Sleepless in Austerlitz

Rostov obviously hasn’t heard Kutuzov’s advice about getting a good night’s sleep before battle. He falls asleep in the saddle with thoughts of home and Natasha and the emperor becoming confused in his head. He volunteers to scout the enemy positions and ignores instructions not to cross the stream. The French fire at him, and he retreats. He asks Bagration to serve at his side tomorrow, and the general agrees.

Troopers of the French 1st Hussars in 1812, showing how the sabretache was attached to the sword belt. Source.

Footnote: Sabretache

‘But that’s nonsense, the chief thing is not to foget the important thing I was thinking of. Yes, Nat-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes! That’s right!’

When Nikolai’s guard is down, running for his life at Schöngrabern, or falling asleep at Austerlitz, he sees his family. His mother. His sister. And how we want to pick him up and take him away from this place!

A sabretache is a flat bag or pouch worn by a hussar on his belt beside his sabre. Hussars needed a hand bag because their tight fitting uniforms had no room for pockets. They were decorated with the badge or emblem of their regiment.

It’s style over substance here on the battlefield. The important thing Rostov is thinking about is not his fine sabretache, or meeting the emperor. It is his black-eyed sister, Natasha.

Napoleon with his troops on the eve of battle. Painting by Louis-François. Source.

Chapter 14: Above the clouds

Before dawn, the army marches into battle, believing the French to be far ahead of them. They descend into the valley towards the ponds and lakes. The Russians blame the Germans, while up above the fog, Napoleon watches the mistake unfold. With a sign of his hand, he orders the action to begin.

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

Footnote: ‘The sun of Austerlitz’

It was nine o’clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above him was a clear blue sky, and the sun’s vast orb quivered like a huge, hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist.

Someone said this week that the mist deserves its own page in the list of characters. As perhaps does the sky and the sun. The ‘sun of Austerlitz’ became legendary among the French, bursting through the mist as they marched on the Russian line. A good omen, tactical brilliance, or just a stroke of luck?

Napoleon to his marshals: "One sharp blow and the war is over."

While Tolstoy is dismissive of Napoleon’s historical significance, he makes sure to give the emperor some of the most cinematic moments: he removes his glove and makes a small sign to order the attack. It’s great stuff, but perhaps almost overly dramatic, a performance by someone who knows history is watching him.

Tangent: Into the valley of death

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
— from The Charge of the Light Brigade by Lord Alfred Tennyson

Many people in this week’s chat were reminded of Tennyson’s poem, as soldiers followed orders and marched to their deaths. That poem recounts events at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854 during the Crimean War. During the charge, Lord Cardigan’s light cavalry brigade attacked and defeated Russian gunners, but were then outnumbered 11-1 by a Russian counter-attack that killed 469 of the 664 British cavalrymen. There are ongoing debates about what went wrong at Balaclava and whether it could have turned out differently.

But once the most devastating weapon on the battlefield, the cavalry charge became less effective in the nineteenth century as artillery grew more lethal. First used by the Normans in the eleventh century, the last successful cavalry charge was carried out by the Polish army at the Battle of Schoenfeld in 1945.

• Read more about Tennyson’s poem here and listen to it here.

The situation of the battle at 9 am. French in blue, Allied in red. Source.

Chapter 15: The horse and his emperor

Up on the Pratzen heights, Kutuzov and Andrei are unaware that Napoleon has their position in his sights. Andrei eyes up each passing standard in anticipation of his moment of glory. The emperor, young and bushy-tailed, rides up and demands that Kutuzov advance. Underneath him, the emperor’s horse knows nothing of what is to come.

Napoleon on the Bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet. Source.

Footnote: His bridge of Arcole

He was firmly convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his bridge of Arcole. How it would come about he did not know, but he felt sure it would do so.

We have mentioned the Siege of Toulon in previous weeks, the battle that made Napoleon’s career. The bridge of Arcole refers to a moment in 1796 when Napoleon inspired his soldiers by grabbing a flag and standing in the line of fire. His aide-de-camp was killed, but Napoleon survived. Arcole was a French victory over the Austrians, and I can’t help but notice that a certain General Weyrother was in charge of the Austrian battle plans. He was also the tactical genius behind defeats at the Battle of Rivoli the following year and the Battle of Hohenlinden near Munich in 1800.

Tangent: A nonhuman point-of-view

The Emperor’s horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot and pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the Tsarytsin Field, not understanding the significance of the firing, nor of the nearness of the Emperor Francis’s black cob, nor of all that was being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.

In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy memorably dips into the thought stream of Levin’s dog Laska. On a few occasions in War and Peace, he shows us the world from a nonhuman point-of-view. We need this equine perspective in the Napoleonic Wars. Between 1805 and 1812, in the French armies alone, a quarter of a million horses died on campaign. They were a bigger target than humans and often lacked proper food and care.

More recently, Michael Morpurgo told the story of the First World War from the perspective of a horse in War Horse, adapted for stage in 2007 and turned into a film in 2011. The stage version featured life-size horse puppets and won several awards.

• Read more about Michael Morpurgo’s book and the story behind it here.

Life-size puppet horses for War Horse. Source.

Chapter 16: The lofty sky

Less than half a mile along the road, the fog clears, and they see the French directly in front of them. Chaos ensues. The men panic. Kutuzov is wounded. Andrei sees their standard fall to the ground and picks it up. “Here it is,” he thinks. The troops rush forward, and Andrei focuses on a struggle at the battery. He does not see how it ends. He is injured and on the ground, looking up at the lofty infinite sky. “How happy I am to have found it at last!”

Capture of a French standard by the cavalry of the Russian guard, by Bogdan Willewalde. Source.

Tangent: What is success?

Like Andrei, we frequently misunderstand the true nature of reality. Life, Tolstoy says, isn’t a fast elevator shooting us up to the top floor, but a continuous river of individual moments flowing endlessly into one another. The battle of Austerlitz, which would go down in history as a terrible loss for Russia, is one of the greatest moments of Prince Andrei’s life, but not for the reasons he might have thought. The majesty of battle would seem to be his for the taking (or at least the taking in), when wham!—life, in the form of a soldier’s musket, hits him over the head and knocks him into a new consciousness. Through the haze of his blurred vision, he sees clearly for the first time the immensity of the universe, indifferent to his worldly plans and ambitions. And for a brief moment he gets it.
— Andrew K Kaufman in Give War and Peace A Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times.

Chapter 17: All will be well

Bagration does not want to attack, so he sends someone to Kutuzov for further instructions, knowing the messenger will probably not make it. That someone is Nikolai Rostov. He sets off happy. But he gradually realises that everything is going wrong. He bumps into Boris and Berg, and where Kutuzov should be, there are French troops and French cannons.

Tangent: So fast and so slow

As

Tom P

says in today’s chat, “what a journey in three pages!” Five paragraphs to take Nikolai from his belief that “everything is possible” to his disbelief in the impossible coming true. Others disagree and feel nothing is happening in this chapter, or he isn’t waking up to reality quickly enough. Life is so fast and so slow.

Tolstoy shows that we do have moments of great realisation, and reality is constantly altering our understanding of the world and ourselves. But no one changes completely in the space of a chapter. And reading chapter-a-day accentuates this realism. We see the characters change in the same way we see ourselves change, over weeks and months, or years and a lifetime.

Thank you for reading

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Remember that there are only six chapters next week. On Tuesday we finish Book One of War and Peace and on Wednesday we take a breather. So have a great week, and I’ll see everyone here next Sunday for week ten of War and Peace 2024.