Chapter IV: The Crimean War (2)

At these sounds you will experience a strange feeling of mingled
pleasure and fear. At the moment you know the shot is flying
towards you, you are sure to imagine that this shot will kill you,
but a feeling of pride will support you and no one will know of the
knife that is cutting your heart. But when the shot has flown past
and has not hit you, you revive, and, though only for a moment, a
glad, inexpressibly joyous feeling seizes you, so that you feel
some peculiar delight in the danger--in this game of life and
death--and wish that bombs and balls would fall nearer and nearer
to you.

But again the sentinel, in his loud, thick voice, shouts 'Mortar!'
again a whistle, a fall, an explosion; and mingled with the last
you are startled by the groans of a man. You approach the wounded
man just as the stretchers are brought. Covered with blood and dirt
he presents a strange, not human, appearance. Part of the sailor's
breast has been torn away....

'That's the way with seven or eight every day,' the naval officer
remarks to you, answering the look of horror on your face, and he
yawns as he rolls another yellow cigarette.

As the siege progressed, things became worse, and in the last part of _Sevastopol_ Tolstoy, after telling how one of the characters felt satisfied with himself, continues:

This feeling, however, was quickly shaken by a sight he came upon
in the twilight while looking for the Commander of the bastion.
Four sailors stood by the breastwork holding by its arms and legs
the bloody corpse of a man without boots or coat, swinging it
before heaving it over. (It was found impossible in some parts to
clear away the corpses from the bastions, and they were, therefore,
thrown out into the ditch, so as not to be in the way at the
batteries.) Volódya felt stunned for a moment when he saw the body
bump on the top of the breastwork and then roll down into the
ditch, but luckily for him the Commander of the bastion met him
just then and gave him his orders, as well as a guide to show him
the way to the battery and to the bomb-proof assigned to his men.
We will not speak of all the dangers and disenchantments our hero
lived through that evening; how--instead of the firing he was used
to, amid conditions of perfect exactitude and order which he had
expected to meet with here also,--he found two injured mortars,
one with its mouth battered in by a ball, the other standing on
the splinters of its shattered platform; how he could not get
workmen to mend the platform till the morning; how not a single
charge was of the weight specified in the Handbook; how two of the
men under him were wounded, and how he was twenty times within a
hair's-breadth of death. Fortunately a gigantic gunner, a seaman
who had served with the mortars since the commencement of the
siege, had been appointed to assist Volódya, and convinced him of
the possibility of using the mortars. By the light of a lantern,
this gunner showed him all over the battery as he might have shown
him over his own kitchen-garden, and undertook to have everything
right by the morning. The bomb-proof to which his guide led him
was an oblong hole dug in the rocky ground, 25 cubic yards in size
and covered with oak beams nearly 2-1/2 feet thick. He and all his
soldiers installed themselves in it.

It was during one of his sojourns in the Fourth Bastion, that Tolstoy noted down in his Diary the following prayer:

Lord, I thank Thee for Thy continual protection. How surely Thou
leadest me to what is good. What an insignificant creature should
I be, if Thou abandoned me! Leave me not, Lord; give me what is
necessary, not for the satisfaction of my poor aspirations, but
that I may attain to the eternal, vast, unknown aim of existence,
which lies beyond my ken.

It was due to Tolstoy's own choice that he was exposed to the rough life of the bastion, for Prince Gortchakóf, at whose house he was a constant visitor, had offered him an appointment on his staff. This offer, which at Silistria he had so ardently desired, Tolstoy declined, having come to the conclusion, subsequently expressed in his writings, that the influence exercised by the staff on the conduct of a war is always pernicious! This opinion not only influenced his conduct, and expressed itself in his novels, but fitted into a general view of life he ultimately arrived at, a view the consequences of which must be dealt with in the sequel to this work. For the moment, let it suffice to mention that whereas he shows a keen appreciation of Admiral Kornílof's achievement in rousing the spirit of the garrison, he nowhere praises Todleben's achievement in organising the defence of the town and improvising that 'labyrinth of batteries' in which Tolstoy used constantly to lose his way. He says, for instance:

Now you have seen the defenders of Sevastopol.... The principal,
joyous thought you have brought away is a conviction of the
strength of the Russian people; and this conviction you gained,
not by looking at all these traverses, breastworks, cunningly
interlaced trenches, mines and cannon, one on top of another,
of which you could make nothing; but from the eyes, words and
actions--in short, from seeing what is called the 'spirit' of the
defenders of Sevastopol.

To everything a man can do off his own bat and by his own effort, Tolstoy is keenly alive and sympathetic; but when it comes to a complex, co-ordinated plan, involving the subordination of many parts to one whole, he is suspicious or even hostile. Had he remained a subordinate officer, or even a novelist, it would not have been specially necessary to draw attention to this peculiarity; but that we may understand his later teachings, it is important to note all the roots of feeling from which they grew, and this one among the rest.

To get on however with our tale. One evening, while Tolstoy was sitting with the adjutants of Count Osten-Sáken, Commander of the Garrison, Prince S. S. Ouroúsof, a brave officer and first-rate chess player (he took part in the International Chess Tournament of 1862, in London) and a friend of Tolstoy's, entered the room and wished to speak to the General. An adjutant took him to Osten-Sáken's room, and ten minutes later Ouroúsof passed out again, looking very glum. After he had gone, the adjutant explained that Ouroúsof had come to suggest that a challenge should be sent to the English to play a game of chess for the foremost trench in front of the Fifth Bastion: a trench that had changed hands several times and had already cost some hundreds of lives. Osten-Sáken had naturally refused to issue the challenge.

On 16th August Tolstoy took part in the battle of the Tchérnaya (Black River) in which the Sardinian contingent, which had arrived in May to reinforce the Allies, much distinguished itself. This last attempt to relieve Sevastopol failed, as its forerunners had done. Three days later Tolstoy wrote to his brother saying that he had not been hurt, and that 'I did nothing, as my mountain artillery was not called on to fire.'

The end of the siege was now approaching, and on 8th September Tolstoy, having volunteered for service in Sevastopol, reached the Star Fort on the North Side of the Roadstead just in time to witness the capture of the Maláhof by the French, as he has described in _Sevastopol in August_.[21]

[21] The _8th September_, new style, was _24th August_, old
style.

On the North Side of the Roadstead, at the Star Fort, near noon,
two sailors stood on the 'telegraph' mound; one of them, an
officer, was looking at Sevastopol through the fixed telescope.
Another officer, accompanied by a Cossack, had just ridden up
to join him at the big Signal-post.... Along the whole line of
fortifications, but especially on the high ground on the left side,
appeared, several at a time, with lightnings that at times flashed
bright even in the noonday sun, puffs of thick, dense, white smoke,
that grew, taking various shapes and appearing darker against the
sky. These clouds, showing now here now there, appeared on the
hills, on the enemy's batteries, in the town, and high up in the
sky. The reports of explosions never ceased, but rolled together
and rent the air.

Towards noon the puffs appeared more and more rarely, and the air
vibrated less with the booming.

'I say, the Second Bastion does not reply at all now!' said the
officer on horseback; 'it is quite knocked to pieces. Terrible!'

'Yes, and the Maláhof, too, sends hardly one shot in reply to three
of theirs,' said he who was looking through the telescope. 'Their
silence provokes me! They are shooting straight into the Kornílof
Battery, and it does not reply.'

'But look there! I told you that they always cease the bombardment
about noon. It's the same to-day. Come, let's go to lunch; they'll
be waiting for us already. What's the good of looking?'

'Wait a bit!' answered the one who had possession of the telescope,
looking very eagerly towards Sevastopol.

'What is it? What?'

'A movement in the entrenchments, thick columns advancing.'

'Yes! They can be seen even without a glass, marching in columns.
The alarm must be given,' said the seaman.

'Look! look! They've left the trenches!'

And, really, with the naked eye one could see what looked like
dark spots moving down the hill from the French batteries across
the valley to the bastions. In front of these spots dark stripes
were already visibly approaching our line. On the bastions white
cloudlets burst in succession as if chasing one another. The wind
brought a sound of rapid small-arm firing, like the beating of
rain against a window. The dark stripes were moving in the midst
of the smoke and came nearer and nearer. The sounds of firing,
growing stronger and stronger, mingled in a prolonged, rumbling
peal. Puffs of smoke rose more and more often, spread rapidly along
the line, and at last formed one lilac cloud (dotted here and there
with little faint lights and black spots) which kept curling and
uncurling; and all the sounds blent into one tremendous clatter.

'An assault!' said the naval officer, turning pale and letting the
seaman look through the telescope.

Cossacks galloped along the road, some officers rode by, the
Commander-in-Chief passed in a carriage with his suite. Every face
showed painful excitement and expectation.

'It's impossible they can have taken it,' said the mounted officer.

'By God, a standard!... Look! look!' said the other, panting,
and he walked away from the telescope: 'A French standard on the
Maláhof!'

The point from which the officer in the story, and Tolstoy himself in reality, watched the assault through a telescope is the spot marked 'a' on the map on page 112.

The loss of the Maláhof rendered the further defence of the town impossible, and the following night the Russians blew up and destroyed such munitions of war as they could not remove from the bastions. Tolstoy was deputed to clear the Fifth and Sixth Bastions before they were abandoned to the Allies. When telling me this he added, 'The non-commissioned officers could have done the work just as well without me.' While the destruction was proceeding, the Russian forces crossed the Roadstead by a pontoon bridge which had been constructed during the siege. The town south of the Roadstead was abandoned, and the defenders established themselves on the North Side, where they remained till peace was concluded in February 1856.

After the retreat, Tolstoy was given the task of collating the twenty or more reports of the action from the Artillery Commanders. This experience of how war is recorded produced in him that supreme contempt for detailed military histories which he so often expressed in later years. He says:

I regret that I did not keep a copy of those reports. They were
an excellent example of that naïve, inevitable kind of military
falsehood, out of which descriptions are compiled. I think many of
those comrades of mine who drew up those reports, will laugh on
reading these lines, remembering how, by order of their Commander,
they wrote what they could not know.

Carrying among other despatches the report he had himself compiled, Tolstoy was sent as Courier to Petersburg; and this terminated his personal experience of war. He was still only Sub-Lieutenant, his hopes of promotion had come to nothing in consequence of a suspicion that he was the author of some soldiers' songs which were sung throughout the army at this time. No translation can do justice to these slangy, topical satires; but that the reader may have some idea of them, my wife has put into English the following stanzas:

In September, the eighth day,[22]
From the French we ran away,
For our Faith and Tsar!
For our Faith and Tsar!

Admiral Alexander,[23] he
Sank our vessels in the sea
In the waters deep,
In the waters deep.

'Luck to all I wish,' he said then.
To Baktchiseráy[24] he sped then;
'May you all be blowed!
'May you all be blowed!'

Saint Arnaud[25] got out of sight;
And in manner most polite,
Came round to our back,
Came round to our back.

And on Tuesday, I'm afraid
Had no saint come to our aid,
He'd have bagged us all,
He'd have bagged us all.

Our Liprandi, it is true
Captured 'trenchments not a few,
But to no avail!
But to no avail!

Out of Kishinéf a force
Was expected: Foot and Horse,
And at last they came,
And at last they came.

Dannenberg was in command:
Strictly told to understand
Not to spare his men,
Not to spare his men.

* * * * *

Two Grand Dukes a visit paid:
But the French, quite undismayed,
Blazed away with shells,
Blazed away with shells.

Some ten thousand men were shot:
From the Tsar _they_ never got
Any great reward!
Any great reward!

Then the Prince[26] in anger spoke:
'Oh! our men are wretched folk:
'Why, they've turned their backs!
'Why, they've turned their backs!'

And in this great battle's flare
Heroes only two there were:
The two Royal Dukes!
The two Royal Dukes!

George's Crosses they were given
And to Petersburg were driven
To be fêted there!
To be fêted there!

All the priests with heads bent down
Prayed our God the French to drown,
And there came a storm,
And there came a storm!

There arose a dreadful gale,
But the French just shortened sail,
And remained afloat!
And remained afloat!

Winter came. Sorties we made;
Many soldiers low were laid,
Near those bags of sand,
Near those bags of sand.[27]

For re'nforcements Ménshik prayed;
But the Tsar sent to his aid
Only Osten-Sáken,
Only Osten-Sáken.[28]

Ménshik, Admiral so wise,
To the Tsar writes and replies:
'Oh, dear Father Tsar,
'Oh, dear Father Tsar.

'Sáken is not worth a grain,
And your Royal youngsters twain[29]
They're no good at all!
They're no good at all!'

Royal wrath on Ménshik fell,
And the Tsar felt quite unwell
At the next review,
At the next review.

Straight to heaven he did fare
(Seems they wanted him up there)
Not a whit too soon,
Not a whit too soon!

As on his deathbed he lay;
To his son[30] he this did say:
'Now just you look out,
'Now just you look out!'

And the son to Ménshik wrote:
'My dear Admiral, please note,
You may go to hell,
You may go to hell!'

'And in place of you I'll name
Gortchakóf, you know, the same
Who fought 'gainst the Turks!
Who fought 'gainst the Turks!'

'With few troops he'll go ahead,
And a pair of breeches red
Shall be his reward,
Shall be his reward!'

[22] The Battle of Alma, fought on 8th September, old style =
20th September, new style.

[23] Prince Alexander Ménshikof, who was Commander-in-Chief
in the Crimea till replaced by Gortchakóf. Besides being
diplomatist and General, he was also an Admiral. In the other
verses he is nicknamed 'Ménshik.'

[24] After the Battle of Alma, Ménshikof retreated northward
to Baktchiseráy, almost abandoning Sevastopol.

[25] Saint Arnaud, the French Commander-in-Chief.

[26] Prince Alexander Ménshikof.

[27] Bags of sand were used as temporary protection from
behind which to fire.

[28] Count Osten-Sáken was sent to advise Ménshikof and to
report to the Tsar on his operations.

[29] The Grand Dukes alluded to above.

[30] Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I on 2nd March
(n.s.) 1855.

As a matter of fact the responsibility for these songs, which gave satirical expression to the discontent then very generally felt, was not entirely Tolstoy's. They originated with a group of officers on the staff of Kryzhanóvsky, Commander of the Artillery, and some others (including Tolstoy) who used to meet at Kryzhanóvsky's rooms almost daily. One of this company used to preside at the piano, while the others stood round and improvised couplets. In such cases some one has usually to pay the piper, and that this one should have been Tolstoy, was a natural result both of the fact that he seems to have been the chief culprit, and of the attention his literary work was attracting at this time.

Another matter which appears to have done Tolstoy no good in the eyes of his superiors, was his refusal to fall in with a reprehensible practice which by long usage had become as well established as, for instance, among ourselves, is the purchase of peerages by contributions to Party funds.

Those in command of various divisions of the army, including the Commanders of Batteries, used to pay for various things, such as shoes for the horses, medicine, office expenses, and certain extras for the soldiers, for which no official allowance was made; and the way the money for this was obtained was by overestimating the cost and quantity of stores, and of the fodder required for the horses. The difference between the actual and estimated cost supplied a revenue which different Commanders used in different ways. Some spent it all for the good of the service, though in a manner not shown in the accounts; others did not scruple to make private profit of it. Tolstoy, during his command of a battery, refused to take a balance of cash which had accumulated, and insisted on showing it in the accounts. He thereby evoked the displeasure of less scrupulous Commanders and called down upon himself a rebuke from General Kryzhanóvsky, who did not consider that it lay with a Sub-Lieutenant in temporary command, to attempt to upset so well-established a custom. From his letters and memoirs we get clear indications of Tolstoy's feelings towards his brother officers; his distaste for the common run of them, and his preference for those who were gentlemanly. Here and there, in memoirs and magazine articles, one finds records of the impression he in his turn produced on his companions. One of them relates:

How Tolstoy woke us all up in those hard times of war, with his
stories and his hastily composed couplets! He was really the soul
of our battery. When he was with us we did not notice how time
flew, and there was no end to the general gaiety.... When the Count
was away, when he trotted off to Simferópol, we all hung our heads.
He would vanish for one, two or three days.... At last he would
return--the very picture of a prodigal son! sombre, worn out, and
dissatisfied with himself.... Then he would take me aside, quite
apart, and would begin his confessions. He would tell me all: how
he had caroused, gambled, and where he had spent his days and
nights; and all the time, if you will believe me, he would condemn
himself and suffer as though he were a real criminal. He was so
distressed that it was pitiful to see him. That's the sort of man
he was. In a word, a queer fellow, and, to tell the truth, one I
could not quite understand. He was however a rare comrade, a most
honourable fellow, and a man one can never forget!

One who entered the battery just after Tolstoy left it, says he was remembered there as an excellent rider, first-rate company, and an athlete who, lying on the floor, could let a man weighing thirteen stone be placed on his hands, and could lift him up by straightening his arms. At a tug-of-war (played not with a rope, but with a stick) no one could beat him; and he left behind him the recollection of many witty anecdotes told in that masterly style of which he never lost the knack.

His private Diary bears witness to the constantly renewed struggle that went on within him, as well as to his profound dissatisfaction with himself. Here, for instance, is an estimate entered in his Diary at the commencement of the war, while he was still at Silistria:

I have no modesty. That is my great defect. What am I? One of four
sons of a retired lieutenant-colonel, left at seven years of age
an orphan under the guardianship of women and strangers; having
neither a social nor a scholarly education, and becoming my own
master at seventeen; with no large means, no social position,
and, above all, without principle; a man who has disorganised
his own affairs to the last extremity, and has passed the best
years of his life without aim or pleasure; and finally who having
banished himself to the Caucasus to escape his debts and more
especially his bad habits--and having there availed himself of some
connection that had existed between his father and the general
in command--passed to the army of the Danube at twenty-six, as
a Sub-Lieutenant almost without means except his pay (for what
means he has he ought to employ to pay what he still owes) without
influential friends, ignorant of how to live in society, ignorant
of the service, lacking practical capacity, but with immense
self-esteem--such is my social position. Let us see what I myself
am like.

I am ugly, awkward, uncleanly, and lack society education. I
am irritable, a bore to others, not modest, intolerant, and as
shame-faced as a child. I am almost an ignoramus. What I do know,
I have learned anyhow, by myself, in snatches, without sequence,
without a plan, and it amounts to very little. I am incontinent,
undecided, inconstant and stupidly vain and vehement, like all
characterless people. I am not brave. I am not methodical in life,
and am so lazy that idleness has become an almost unconquerable
habit of mine.

I am clever, but my cleverness has as yet not been thoroughly
tested on anything; I have neither practical nor social nor
business ability.

I am honest, that is to say, I love goodness, and have formed a
habit of loving it, and when I swerve from it I am dissatisfied
with myself and return to it gladly; but there is a thing I love
more than goodness, and that is fame. I am so ambitious, and so
little has this feeling been gratified, that should I have to
choose between fame and goodness, I fear I may often choose the
former.

Yes, I am not modest, and therefore I am proud at heart, though
shame-faced and shy in society.

That is a grossly unfair estimate of himself, but shows just that sort of eager injustice to any one who fails to reach the high standard he sets up, that has always characterised him. His account is inaccurate in details. For instance, he was not seven, but nearly nine when his father died. He had not wrecked his affairs to the extent he suggests. Though his studies had been desultory, he had read widely, with a quick understanding and a retentive memory. He was master of the Russian, French and German languages, besides having some knowledge of English, Latin, Arabic, and Turco-Tartar. (Later in life he added a knowledge of Italian, Greek and Hebrew.) As for not yet having tested his cleverness: he had published stories for which the editor of the best Russian magazine paid him the rate accorded to the best-known writers; while his awkwardness in society did not depend on ignorance; on the contrary, he had grown up among people who paid much attention to manners, and he was himself gifted with social tact, which became plainly apparent as soon as he attained self-confidence. Any defect in his manners must have been merely a result of that nervous shyness natural to highly-strung, sensitive natures, conscious of powers of a kind society recognises but scantily. Yet, when all is said, his description gets home: over-emphatic and unfair, like much of his other writing, it still leaves you in no doubt as to what he meant, and hits the real points of weakness in the victim he is flaying.

On 5th March 1855 (old style) when he was just recovering from that fit of depression at Belbék which, as already mentioned, drove him to gamble, he writes in his Diary:

A conversation about Divinity and Faith has suggested to me a
great, a stupendous idea, to the realisation of which I feel
myself capable of devoting my life. This idea is the founding of
a new religion corresponding to the present state of mankind: the
religion of Christianity, but purged of dogmas and mysticism: a
practical religion, not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on
earth. I understand that to accomplish this the conscious labour of
generations will be needed. One generation will bequeath the idea
to the next, and some day fanaticism or reason will accomplish it.
_Deliberately_ to promote the union of mankind by religion--that is
the basic thought which, I hope, will dominate me.

In that passage one has, quite clearly stated before he was twenty-seven, the main idea which actuated Tolstoy from the age of fifty onwards. Already by the literary work he accomplished amid the bustle and excitement of the siege, he was half consciously moving in the direction that allured him. During the three months that elapsed between leaving Bucharest and reaching Sevastopol, he wrote part of _The Wood-Felling_; a sketch of an expedition such as he had taken part in the Caucasus; and during the siege of Sevastopol he wrote the first two parts of _Sevastopol_ and began _Youth_, a sequel to _Childhood_ and _Boyhood_.

1855

It was _Sevastopol_ that first brought European fame to Tolstoy. When, as already mentioned, _Sevastopol in December_ appeared in the June _Contemporary_, the Emperor ordered it to be translated into French. That same month Tolstoy completed and despatched _The Wood-Felling_; in July he sent off _Sevastopol in May_. Here once again the Censor exercised his malignant power, and Panáef wrote to Tolstoy from Petersburg:

In my letter delivered to you by Stolýpin, I wrote that your
article has been passed by the Censor with unimportant alterations,
and begged you not to be angry with me that I was obliged to add
a few words at the end to soften.... 3000 copies of the article
had already been printed off, when the Censor suddenly demanded
it back, stopped the appearance of the number (so that our August
number only appeared in Petersburg on 18 August) and submitted
it to Poúshkin, President of the Committee of Censors. If you
know Poúshkin, you will be able partly to guess what followed. He
flew into a rage, was very angry with the Censor, and with me for
submitting such an article to the Censor, and altered it with his
own hand.... On seeing these alterations I was horror-struck, and
wished not to print the article at all, but Poúshkin explained to
me that I must print it in its present shape. There was no help for
it, and your mutilated article will appear in the September number,
but without your initials--which I could not bear to see attached
to it after that....

Now a word as to the impression your story produces on all to whom
I have read it in its original form. Every one thinks it stronger
than the first part, in its deep and delicate analysis of the
emotions and feelings of people constantly face to face with death,
and in the fidelity with which the types of the line-officers are
caught, their encounters with the aristocrats, and the mutual
relations of the two sets. In short, all is excellent, all is drawn
in masterly fashion; but it is all so overspread with bitterness,
is so keen, so venomous, so unsparing and so cheerless, that at the
present moment when the scene of the story is almost sacred ground,
it pains those who are at a distance from it; and the story may
even produce a very unpleasant impression.

_The Wood-Felling_, with its dedication to Tourgénef, will also
appear in September (Tourgénef begs me to thank you very, very
much for thinking of him and paying him this attention).... In
this story also (which passed three Censors: the Caucasian, the
Military, and our Civil Censor) the types of officers have been
tampered with, and unfortunately a little has been struck out.

Tolstoy's dedication of _The Wood-Felling_ to Tourgénef proceeded from his admiration for that writer's _A Sportsman's Sketches_, which to the present time he continues to value very highly, considering Tourgénef's descriptions of Nature in that book not merely excellent, but inimitable by any one else.

Nekrásof wrote to Tolstoy in September, about _Sevastopol in August_, saying:

The revolting mutilation of your article quite upset me. Even
now I cannot think of it without regret and rage. Your work
will, of course, not be lost ... it will always remain as proof
of a strength able to utter such profound and sober truth under
circumstances amid which few men would have retained it. It is
just what Russian society now needs: the truth--the truth, of
which, since Gógol's death, so little has remained in Russian
literature. You are right to value that side of your gifts most
of all. Truth--in such form as you have introduced it into our
literature--is something completely new among us. I do not know
another writer of to-day who so compels the reader to love him
and sympathise heartily with him, as he to whom I now write; and
I only fear lest time, the nastiness of life, and the deafness
and dumbness that surround us, should do to you what it has done
to most of us, and kill the energy without which there can be
no writer--none, at least, such as Russia needs. You are young:
changes are taking place which, let us hope, may end well, and
perhaps a wide field lies before you. You are beginning in a way
that compels the most cautious to let their expectations travel
far....

_The Wood-Felling_ has passed the Censor pretty fairly, though from
it also some valuable touches have disappeared. ...In that sketch
there are many astonishingly acute remarks, and it is all _new_,
interesting, and to the point. Do not neglect such sketches. Of
the common soldier our literature has as yet not spoken, except
frivolously.

Tourgénef, writing from his estate at Spássky to Panáef, said:

Tolstoy's article about Sevastopol is wonderful! Tears came into my
eyes as I read it, and I shouted, Hurrah! I am greatly flattered by
his wish to dedicate his new tale to me.... Here his article has
produced a general furore.

By the side of these contemporary estimates one may set Kropótkin's appreciation written fifty years later:

All his powers of observation and war-psychology, all his deep
comprehension of the Russian soldier, and especially of the plain
un-theatrical hero who really wins the battles, and a profound
understanding of that inner spirit of an army upon which depend
success and failure: everything, in short, which developed into
the beauty and the truthfulness of _War and Peace_, was already
manifested in these sketches, which undoubtedly represented a new
departure in war-literature the world over.

It is worth while to note the very different conclusions to which Kinglake, the historian of this war, and Tolstoy, its novelist, arrived. Kinglake holds the war to have been unnecessary, and attributes it chiefly to the unscrupulous ambition of Napoleon III; yet he blames the Peace Party very severely for protesting against it, for had they not done so Nicholas, he thinks, would not have dared to act aggressively. Kinglake feels that negotiations between rulers and diplomatists are important, and that anything that prevents a Government from speaking with authority, makes for confusion and disaster.

Tolstoy, on the other hand (if I may anticipate and speak of conclusions not definitely expressed by him till much later), regards all war and preparation for war as immoral, and wishes this conviction to become so strong and so general that it will be impossible for any future Napoleon to plunge five nations into war to gratify his own ambition.

Kinglake understands things as they are, and knows how easy it is to do harm with good intentions, but is somewhat blind to the trend of human progress, and as to what the aim before us should be. Tolstoy, on the contrary, is chiefly concerned about the ultimate aim, and about the state of mind of the individual. The actual working of our political system and international relations are things he ignores. The English writer sees clearly what is, and cares little about what should be; the Russian writer cares immensely about what should be, and rather forgets that it can only be approached by slow and difficult steps, to take which surefootedly, needs an appreciation of things as they are.

Neither of them manages to say the word which would synthesize their divergent views: namely, that no self-respecting people should support or tolerate as rulers, men who seek to gain national advantages by means not strictly fair, honest and even generous. That is the real key to the world's future peace. Kinglake's appeal to us not to hamper the government that represents us, and Tolstoy's appeal to us not to spend our lives in preparing to slay our fellow men, can both be met in that way, and, I think, in that way alone.

For an ambitious young officer actually engaged in a war, related to the Commander-in-Chief, and favourably noticed by the Emperor, even _partially_ to express disapproval of war, was difficult; and Tolstoy has told me that, contending with his desire to tell the truth about things as he saw it, he was at the same time aware of another feeling prompting him to say what was expected of him.

He, however, like the child in Andersen's story who sees that the king has nothing on, when every one else is in ecstasies over the magnificence of the monarch's robes, had the gift of seeing things with his own eyes, as well as a great gift of truthfulness. These were the qualities which ultimately made him the greatest literary power of his century; and in spite of his own hesitation and the Censor's mutilations, we may still read the description he then wrote of the truce in which the French and Russian soldiers hobnobbed together in friendship, a description closing with these words:

White flags are on the bastions and parallels; the flowery valley
is covered with corpses; the beautiful sun is sinking towards the
blue sea; and the undulating blue sea glitters in the golden rays
of the sun. Thousands of people crowd together, look at, speak to,
and smile at one another. And these people--Christians confessing
the one great law of love and self-sacrifice--seeing what they have
done, do not at once fall repentant on their knees before Him who
has given them life and laid in the soul of each a fear of death
and a love of goodness and of beauty, and do not embrace like
brothers with tears of joy and happiness.

The white flags are lowered, again the engines of death and
suffering are sounding, again innocent blood flows, and the air is
filled with moans and curses.

In _Sevastopol_, and in Tennyson's _Charge of the Light Brigade_ (with its rhymes about 'hundred' and 'thundered,' and its panegyric of those who knew it was not their business to think, and at whom 'all the world wondered'), we have two typical expressions of conflicting views on war: the view of a man who knew it from the classics and was Poet Laureate, and the view of a man who was in the thick of it, and whose eyes were connected with his brain.

Thirty-four years later Tolstoy wrote a Preface to a fellow-officer's _Recollections of Sevastopol_. It could not pass the Censor, but has been used as a Preface to his own sketches of war in the English version of _Sevastopol_, translated by my wife and myself, and I cannot conclude this chapter better than by quoting a few sentences from it.

Speaking of the position of a young officer engaged in the Crimean war, he says:

To the first question that suggests itself to every one, Why did
he do it? Why did he not cease, and go away?--the author does not
reply. He does not say, as men said in olden times when they hated
their enemies as the Jews hated the Philistines, that he hated the
Allies; on the contrary, he here and there shows his sympathy for
them as for brother men.

Nor does he speak of any passionate desire that the keys of the
Church at Jerusalem should be in our hands, or even that our fleet
should, or should not, exist. You feel as you read, that to him
the life and death of men are not commensurable with questions of
politics. And the reader feels that to the question: Why did the
author act as he did?--there is only one answer; It was because I
enlisted while still young, or before the war began, or because
owing to inexperience I chanced to slip into a position from which
I could not extricate myself without great effort. I was entrapped
into that position, and when they obliged me to do the most
unnatural actions in the world, to kill my brother men who had done
me no harm, I preferred to do this rather than to suffer punishment
and disgrace.... One feels that the author knows there is a law
of God: love thy neighbour, and therefore do not kill him,--a law
which cannot be repealed by any human artifice.

The merit of the book consists in that. It is a pity it is only
felt, and not plainly and clearly expressed. Sufferings and deaths
are described; but we are not told what caused them. Thirty-five
years ago--even that was well, but now something more is needed.
We should be told what it is that causes soldiers to suffer and to
die,--that we may know, and understand, and destroy these causes.

'War! How terrible,' people say, 'is war, with its wounds,
bloodshed, and deaths! We must organise a Red Cross Society to
alleviate the wounds, sufferings and pains of death.' But, truly,
what is dreadful in war is not the wounds, sufferings and deaths.
The human race that has always suffered and died, should by this
time be accustomed to suffering and death, and should not be aghast
at them. Without war people die by famine, by inundations, and by
epidemics. It is not suffering and death that are terrible, but it
is that which allows people to inflict suffering and death....

It is not the suffering and mutilation and death of man's body that
most needs to be diminished,--but it is the mutilation and death of
his soul. Not the _Red_ Cross is needed, but the simple cross of
Christ to destroy falsehood and deception....

I was finishing this Preface when a cadet from the Military College
came to see me. He told me that he was troubled by religious
doubts.... He had read nothing of mine. I spoke cautiously to him
of how to read the Gospels so as to find in them the answers to
life's problems. He listened and agreed. Towards the end of our
conversation I mention wine, and advised him not to drink. He
replied: 'but in military service it is sometimes necessary.' I
thought he meant necessary for health and strength, and I intended
triumphantly to overthrow him by proofs from experience and
science, but he continued: 'Why, at Geok-Tepe, for instance, when
Skóbelef had to massacre the inhabitants, the soldiers did not wish
to do it, but he had drink served out and then....' Here are all
the horrors of war--they are in this lad with his fresh young face,
his little shoulder-straps (under which the ends of his hood are so
neatly tucked), his well-cleaned boots, his naïve eyes, and with so
perverted a conception of life.

This is the real horror of war!

What millions of Red Cross workers could heal the wounds that swarm
in that remark--the result of a whole system of education!

CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER IV

Birukof.

Behrs.

Bitovt.

Nekrasof's letters to Tolstoy, _Niva_, February 1898.

Also, Tolstoy's _Sevastopol_, and his

Preface to Ershof's _Recollections of Sevastopol_.

Kropotkin, _Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature_: London, 1905.