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WARRING_PIECES
February 14, 2005
WAR_AND_PEACE
Quoting from Tolstoy's
"War and Peace" (1865-1869): One of his main themes,
against the romantic
idea of the hero,
against the Great Man
theory of history.
The ancients have left us model
heroic poems in which the heroes
furnish the whole interest of the
story, and we are still unable to
accustom ourselves to the fact that
for our epoch histories of that kind
are meaningless.
Book X, Chapter XIX p.459 (WC)
Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that
the Massacre of St. Batholomew was not due to Charles
IX's will, though he gave the order for it and thought
it was done as a result of that order; and strange as
it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of eighty
thousand men at Borodino' was not due to Napoleon's
will, though he ordered the commencement and conduct
of the battle and thought it was done because he
ordered it; strange as these suppositions appear, yet
human dignity -- which tells me that each of us is, if
not more, at least not less a man than the great
Napoleon -- demands the acceptance of that solution of
the question, and historic investigation abundantly
confirms it.
At the battle of Borodino' Napoleon shot at no one and
killed no one. That was all done by the soldiers.
Therefore it was not he who killed people. ...
Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the Russians,
they would have killed him and have proceeded to fight
the Russians because it was inevitable.
Book X, Chapter XXVIII, p. 498 (WC)
Even before he gave that order the thing he did not
desire, and for which he only gave the order because he
thought it was expected of him, was being done. And he
fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary
greatness, and again -- as a horse walking a treadmill
thinks it is doing something for itself -- he
submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy, and
inhuman role predestined for him.
And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and
conscience of this man darkened on whom the
responsibility for what was happening lay more than on
all the others who took part in it. Never to the end
of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or
truth, or the significance of his actions, which were
too contrary to goodness and truth, too remote from
everything human, for him ever to be able to grasp
their meaning. He could not disavow his actions,
belauded as they were by half the world, and so he had
to repudiate truth, goodness, and all humanity.
Book X, Chapter XXXVIII, p. 540 (WC)
About Napoleon. (Reminiscent of Bush Jr?)
To study the skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and
his army from the time it entered Moscow till it was
destroyed, is like studying the dying leaps and
shudders of a mortally wounded animal. ...
During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to
us to have been the leader of all those movements -- as
the figurehead of a ship may seem to a savage to guide
the vessel -- acted like a child who, holding a couple
of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving it.
Book XIII, Chapter X, p. 253 (WC)
... in 1812, the French gain a victory near
Moscow. Moscow is taken and after that, with no
further battles, it is not Russia that ceases to
exist, but the French army of six hundred
thousand, and then Napoleonic France itself.
[...]
The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle
of Borodino' to the expulsion of the French proved
that the winning of a battle does not produce a
conquest and is not even an invariable indication
of conquest, it proved that the force which
decides the fate of peoples lies not in the
conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in
something else.
The French historians, describing the condition of
the French army before it left Moscow, affirm that
all was in order in the Grand Army, except the
cavalry, the artillery, and the transport -- there
was no forage for the horses or the cattle. That
was a misfortune no one could remedy, for the
peasants of the district burnt their hay rather
than let the French have it.
The victory gained did not bring the usual results
because the peasants ... did not bring their hay
to Moscow for the high price offered them, but
burnt it instead.
Book XIV, Chapter I, p286
And it is well for a people who do not -- as the
French did in 1813 -- salute according to all the
rules of art, and presenting the hilt of their
rapier gracefully and politely hand it to their
magnanimous conqueror, but at the moment of
trial, without asking what rules others have
adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick
up the first cudgel that comes to hand, and strike
with it till the feeling of resentment and revenge
in their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and
compassion.
Book XIV, Chapter I, p287
... it is unintelligible why the defeat of an
army -- a hundredth part of a nation -- should
oblige that whole nation to submit.
Book XIV, Chapter I, p285
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