When Personal Interests Trump History — War and Peace

It is natural, Tolstoy writes, for those who were not living in 1812 to imagine that when half Russia had been conquered, all Russians from the greatest to the least were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves or weeping over the fatherland. The tales of that time speak only of self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion, and heroism. It was not really so. Personal interests of the moment so much transcend general interests that they prevent the public interest from being felt. Most people paid no attention to the general progress of events and were guided only by private concerns, and they were the very people whose activities were most useful. Those who tried to understand the course of events and take part by heroism were the most useless: they saw everything upside down. Pierre's and Mamonov's regiments looted Russian villages; the lint young ladies prepared never reached the wounded. Only unconscious action bears fruit. He who plays a part in a historic event never understands its significance. The closer a man was to what was happening, the less he realised it. In Petersburg and the distant provinces, ladies and gentlemen in militia uniforms wept for Moscow; in the army that retired beyond the city there was little talk of it, only of the next pay, the next quarters, and Matreshka the vivandiere.

Nicholas Rostov took a close part in the defence of his country, but casually, without any aim at self-sacrifice, and therefore without despair. If asked what he thought of the state of Russia he would have said it was not his business, that Kutuzov and others were there for that, and that he might command a regiment in a couple of years. So when he was sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his division, a few days before Borodino, he felt not regret but the greatest pleasure, which his comrades fully understood. Only a man who has lived months in the atmosphere of campaigning can understand his delight when, free of soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of camp, he saw villages, cattle, and posthouses as if for the first time, and women who were pleased that a passing officer should joke with them.

He arrived at night at a hotel in Voronezh, ordered things long denied him in camp, and next day, clean-shaven and in full-dress uniform, presented himself to the authorities. The civilian general commanding the militia received him brusquely, imagining that to be military; Nicholas was only amused. The governor, a brisk little man, indicated stud farms, a horse dealer, and a landowner fourteen miles out, and invited him for Thursday, today, quite informally, because his wife had been a friend of Countess Rostova. Nicholas hired post horses, bought seventeen picked stallions for six thousand rubles as samples, dined too well on Hungarian wine, and galloped back for the governor's party. It was not a ball, but Catherine Petrovna would play valses and the ecossaise, so everyone had come as to a ball. Provincial life in 1812 was livelier for the wealthy Moscow families who had arrived, and the talk turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon. Among the men was an Italian prisoner of the French army; Nicholas felt him as a war trophy that enhanced his own standing as a Russian hero. In hussar uniform, fragrant of perfume and wine, he became at once the universal favourite. He danced with a freedom that would have seemed bad form in Moscow and paid attention all evening to a blue-eyed, plump little blonde, the wife of a provincial official, treating her husband as a fellow conspirator. The husband's face grew more melancholy as his wife's grew more flushed, as if there were only a given amount of animation between them.