The year is 1812 and we’re in Russia. Napoleon, the man, the myth, the legend, is facing off against General Winter. Here to guide us through the chaos—to lend us eyes that we can see with—is Count Leo Tolstoy with his historical-based novel, War and Peace.
How long is War and Peace? Well, when you’re scrolling through the table of contents and you see “First Epilogue: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc.,” then you know that you’re talking about a long book. Page and font sizes vary, and if you’re reading digitally you may never even see a page number, but by comparison, War and Peace is definitely shorter than Les Miserables, and I think a little longer than The Count of Monte Cristo or Little Dorrit.
I’d put the age at 17+. The language is simple, but the overall style of the book is not likely to be interesting to younger children and the Russian names are a bit of a speed bump. Also, some of the characters are engaged in immoral behavior, which, although it’s not talked about in an inappropriate way, is not something 13– need to be reading about.
Feel free to skip to the end for my three sentence conclusion on the book, and then come back up for more details if you need them!
The Plot [spoilers ahead!]
War and Peace is more than a love triangle—it’s a love hexagon at least, maybe an octagon. There are too many characters to introduce into a brief summary, but the story revolves around two brother-sister pairs in fairly high society and a fifth character—probably the main character—Pierre. Set during the era of Napoleon, the plot walks through the Napoleonic wars in relation to Russia (1805-1812; mostly 1812, and with a brief recap of the rest of Napoleon’s career). I am fairly familiar with the Napoleonic wars so I had no trouble following the sequence of events; but I suspect that if you haven’t already studied the subject you’ll miss some of the references and be a little confused by battle names. For me, it was very interesting to get a Russian perspective on the war (as opposed to the English perspective).
I’ll start with the character the book starts with, Pierre. As a young man, he unexpectedly inherits a large estate, and being rather naïve, easygoing, and a bit foolish, is trapped into a marriage with the daughter of the prince who had been hoping he would get the estate himself. As the daughter married Pierre purely for his money, and he married her decidedly against his better judgement, their marriage has some issues. Pierre, jealous and also sick and tired, separates from his wife. Searching for the meaning to life, he becomes a Mason (apparently this was a big thing in Russia at the time) and throws himself heart and soul into philanthropy. He’s much too naïve for that, though, and mostly just gets manipulated by his steward. (In the end, he doesn’t find much satisfaction in Masonry; instead he finds high ideals that no one in the order seems to live up to.)
Meanwhile the war is going on, and off, and then on again when Napoleon invades Russia. The brothers of the brother-sister pairs I mentioned earlier, Nicolas and Andrew, are off to the wars. Andrew’s sister Mary stays home taking care of her irascible father while Andrew, disappointed in his love for Nicolas’ sister Natasha, goes to the war with a heavy heart and is wounded (of course, we all saw that coming from a mile away). On the point of death, he is dragged to Moscow as the army retreats. Oh yes, Natasha is in Moscow. And her family opens their house to the wounded. And when they leave Moscow the wounded come along, Prince Andrew among them. It couldn’t happen any other way could it?
While Moscow faces the trauma of being abandoned to the French, Nicolas the gallant Hussar captain saves Mary, whose father just died, from her rebellions peasants (who are unwilling to give her the horses and carts she needs to escape the oncoming French army). Incidentally, Mary is a rich princess while Nicolas’ family (though well-born) are poor. All things seem to be falling right into place… but there is a problem.
I see I shall have to introduce Sonya after all. Nicolas and Sonya (who by the way is not rich, but perfectly broke) have been lovers since the beginning of the book, and engaged for a good part of it already. However, Nicolas is a little lukewarm about it, considering moreover how helpful it would be for his deeply indebted family if he could marry Princess Mary. When Sonya sends him a letter releasing him from his promise, he takes it as a virtual sign from heaven.
Here comes an interesting Russian Orthodox rule: apparently you’re not allowed to marry your brother-in-law or sister-in-law’s siblings. In other words two siblings can’t marry two siblings. This seems quite strange to me, but it explains Sonya’s behavior. Pestered by Nicolas’ mother, Sonya decides to write the letter, pinning her hopes on Prince Andrew’s recovery and his marriage to Natasha (oh yes, they made up—I forgot to mention that earlier, but it did seem obvious).
But (much to my annoyance) Prince Andrew dies. Natasha and Mary are drawn to become good friends through their grief. To finish up with Mary all in one place, Nicolas marries her and they live happily ever after. This also annoys me. Sonya deserves better. In fact she would probably be my favorite character if it weren’t for the ridiculous way she ends (loving everybody in the family—like a cat!).
Back to Pierre—though not a soldier, he has managed to get himself captured by the French. Just in the nick of time, for his wife has sent him a letter (something about, she’s going to become Roman Catholic so she can get a divorce from the pope and would he please sign the papers) and, receiving no answer, commits suicide. No sympathy here. She was awful.
Pierre has been going through existential crises all book long. (Prince Andrew has some too, but he’s infinitely more sensible about them.) Captive, he’s firmly resolved that a simple life of freedom would make him happy forevermore. There are lots of reflections on fate and freedom and stuff like that in this part of the book, especially trying to find out why Napoleon (from a metaphysical perspective) did what he did, and so forth. Anyways, Pierre is finally freed as the French (defeated by the cold) retreat. He returns to Moscow and finds out that after all he can’t be happy unless he marries Natasha. So he does—and then they too live happily ever after.
To critique the plot line—Andrew’s death was annoying. Sure, it kind of had to happen for Pierre’s sake, but it just left me feeling like that wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Sonya also fell incredibly flat. After some rather heroic actions in the first 5/6ths of the book, to end her arc with Natasha reflecting, “Well, she just doesn’t feel these things the way I would,” is a sad let-down. For those two reasons, it’s hard to feel satisfied with the two book-ending marriages.
Also, the plot is somewhat predictable. Insofar as it is not predictable, it’s when you’re hoping for Andrew to live and marry Natasha and for—well, I never hugely wished for Nicolas to marry Sonya, because I didn’t like him all that much, but—that.
All things considered, I can’t give it more than a 5/10 for plot. Complicated enough, but with some annoying parts, some disagreeable parts, and not a whole lot of page-turning excitement. Enough to keep you going if you want to read the book, but not a plot that will suck you in whether or no.
The Point
If historiography fascinates you, you’ll enjoy reading Tolstoy’s critiques on the historiography of his day and his presentation of his own theories in War and Peace. If, on the other hand, you don’t know what historiography is, it’s safe to bet you’ll end up either confused, mind-boggled, or bored. (Not that Tolstoy mentions historiography by name; but if you know a bit about historiography, you’ll have a helpful frame of reference in which to place his theories.)
Having read Gordon Clark’s Historiography: Secular and Religious (which again, if you like historiography… but if not…) and a few other works on the subject, I was familiar with the debate arena and the general outlines. Also, I find historiography rather interesting (not quite my topic of choice, but it doesn’t bore me).
As to what historiography is: it’s the study of history—not studying history as in what happened, but studying what history is, what makes things happen, what makes an event part of history, why history is worth studying, whether or not history is meaningful, circular, purposeless, teleological (i.e. progressing towards some goal), etc.
I’m no expert on the subject and I only read War and Peace once over, but here is my take on Tolstoy’s thesis: to look at history as the story of the human race determined by the decisions taken by a few great men at its head is ridiculous. These “great men” are completely (or almost completely?) controlled by circumstances. This becomes especially clear in the case of a battle: the higher up an officer is in the chain of command, the more out of touch he is with what is actually going on in the field, and the more likely it is that his orders will be meaningless and therefore ignored. The merest private has more influence on the actual result of the battle than the Commander in Chief does. The same thing happens in history as a whole; no leader is able to take any step unless myriads of essential details have fallen into place. And once these essential details have fallen into place it is impossible (or almost impossible? this point didn’t seem quite clear to me) for that step not to happen. So, the leader is really nothing more than a pawn being pushed around—not by the collective, i.e. conscious, will of the people, but by the aggregate of each individual will, all aiming toward their own individual goals and only unconsciously helping to form the great result which is afterwards attributed to the “leader,” who in reality did nothing more than sanction the inevitable by his “commands.”
Naturally, this leads into reflections on the free will of the leader. In fact, Tolstoy argues, he is not free (at least in his public actions). The higher he is in the chain of command, the more compulsion he is under, compulsion from the aggregate of all the millions of decisions his underlings have made. Because individual soldiers of Napoleon’s army made individual decisions to loot, plunder, and burn Moscow, and perhaps also because they individually grew tired and desirous of returning to France, Napoleon eventually had no choice but to issue the order for retreat. The interesting thing is that this is unintended and unconscious compulsion. No doubt at times “leaders” are aware of certain demands being placed upon them and they are, as we say, forced to make a certain decision or command which they do not actually think to be the best choice. But even when Napoleon thinks he is commanding his army to invade Russia (because he wants to invade Russia), yet he is only commanding the inevitable just far enough in advance for us to look back and make a causal connection (Napoleon commanded his army to invade; therefore they invaded) when in fact the connection is coincidental (out of thousands of different, sometimes contradictory, commands Napoleon gave, the command to invade Russia jibed with what his army was going to do anyways, and so in retrospect we remember that command and forget the others).
On the subject of free will Tolstoy has more to say which takes him farther from his original field of historiography. Essentially, whenever we use our reason to think about an event, we see that it was inevitable and determined (Tolstoy leaves open the question, by whom? or by what?). The circumstances surrounding the event (including the subjective state of the actor) make that act absolutely inevitable. But, whenever we think about ourselves and our own consciousness, we feel that we are free, that there is no compulsion acting upon us. Tolstoy’s contrast between this feeling and the deterministic conclusion our reason comes to seems to imply that a belief in free will is irrational (although also inevitable given the nature of our self-consciousness). To my mind, although the subject is certainly a confusing one, I have trouble seeing a contradiction between the felt freedom of a human’s consciousness and the predetermined nature of his action which his reason tells him of. To use an illustration, it’s like looking at a box from the outside, and looking at the same box from the inside. The same walls, and actually the same shape, but it looks incredibly different. So when we switch between an objective and a subjective view of human action we end up with two pictures that are confusing, hard to understand, possibly impossible to really grasp fully, but not contradictory. Part of the confusion also stems from the difficult-to-define nature of free will itself. (For more of my beliefs on the subject of free will, see The Bondage of Free Will Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)
Returning to the subject of historiography, here’s a brief critique of Tolstoy’s theory. He did historiography good service by pointing out the absurdity of reducing history to the tale of great leaders, to the exclusion of the common man. Undoubtedly, the circumstances that are created by the aggregate of the actions of every individual play a critical role in history. But I am by no means convinced that this concatenation of circumstances places an absolute necessity on the leader. It certainly restricts his actions; there are some commands which, if he were to make them, would be either silently ignored or else openly rebelled against (if he persists in trying to enforce them), but to suppose that his declared command is not actually the active cause of the movements of his followers is quite a leap and needs more proof, to say the least. Of course, it’s impossible to be dogmatic about the “what if’s” of history. But on face value, if Napoleon had not decided to invade Russia, it seems unreasonable to suppose that his army would have done so anyways (possibly overthrowing him in the process?).
However, though I don’t agree entirely with Tolstoy’s conclusions, and though he seems to lean pretty far over into fatalism, his literary analysis of history is worth reading if you are looking into different perspectives on the subject!
7/10 for point (as always, this reflects the depth and presentation of the point, rather than whether or not I agree with it).
The Style
War and Peace was, of course, originally written in Russian. I read a translation by Almer and Louise Maude. At first, the sentence structure seemed simple to me, but I got used to it as a continued reading and started to enjoy the clear style, uncluttered with flourishes or flounces.
Tolstoy has a great capacity for zooming in and out, moving seamlessly from broad historical overview to the personal feelings of one of his characters. His descriptions of battles are masterly and worth taking a close look at if you intend to write a battle scene anytime soon.
As mentioned earlier, the Russian names are hard to read. Not only that, but everyone seems to have three or four last names and two or three different ways to say their first name, besides a title or two. It’s all very well for a Russian history buff who understands the system, but a little rough on the rest of us.
Other than that, however, the writing style is one that is effortless to read. Not many wow moments over a brilliantly turned phrase, but also no head-scratching, wondering what on earth he meant.
9/10 for style.
Conclusion
7/10
Do you like long novels with the occasional metaphysical reflection getting in the way of the plot line? War and Peace will be your thing, especially if your metaphysical preferences lean towards the study of history or free will. If, on the other hand, you prefer a pleasant story that ends in a satisfying way, you’ll end up disappointed.
War and Peace is available free on www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600 in multiple e-reader formats.
Read War and Peace already? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below!
Geneva D 
What do you think?