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War, the Hero and the Will

Hardy, Tolstoy and the Napoleonic Wars

Sussex Academic Press

Masterpieces in the Making

In this chapter I explore the many and varied influences which motivated Thomas Hardy and Leo Tolstoy to produce works concerned with events occurring at the beginning of the century in which they were living, the lengthy processes involved in the production of their masterpieces, and the difficulties critics experienced in allocating them to a particular genre.

Early Influences

Tolstoy, who was born twelve years earlier than Hardy in 1828, was closer in time to the events of the Napoleonic Wars and his father, Nikolay Ilyich Tolstoy, actually took part in the campaigns of 1813 when the Russian army marched through Europe towards Paris. Hardy's paternal grandmother, Mary Head Hardy, was in her thirties when the southern coast of England was under constant threat of invasion by Napoleon's forces and her husband was a private with the Puddletown Volunteer Light Infantry. She was an important influence in Hardy's early life and told him many stories of events occurring in Dorset and further afield during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite being further removed chronologically from events, Hardy had more reminders of Napoleon's threatened invasion in his immediate surroundings than Tolstoy, who grew up in the vast rural area south of Moscow untouched by Napoleon's army as it advanced and retreated in 1812. Hardy was very familiar with the countryside surrounding his home in Higher Bockhampton and would have climbed to the top of Rainbarrow, an ancient burial mound, on which a beacon was kept ready to be lit in the event of an invasion by Napoleon. In The Dynasts he shows two beacon-keepers on Rainbarrow Beacon who mistakenly light the beacon on receiving a false invasion alarm. The beacon-keepers look westward from Rainbarrow to the beacon on Blackdown and it is here that the monument to Thomas Masterman Hardy, Nelson's flag-captain at Trafalgar, now stands. Millgate notes that Hardy liked to believe that he was distantly related to Captain Hardy but Hardy is a common name in Dorset and there is no evidence of a direct relationship. In a footnote to this scene he notes that 'the remains of the lonely hut occupied by the beacon-keepers ... are still visible on the elevated spot referred to'. In his Preface to The Trumpet Major Hardy mentions other relics to be found:

worm-eaten shafts and iron heads of pikes for the use of those who had no better weapons, ridges on the down thrown up during the encampment, fragments of volunteer uniform, and other such lingering remains, brought to my imagination in early childhood the state of affairs at the date of the war more vividly than volumes of history could have done.

Tolstoy would not have seen such physical reminders of the Napoleonic wars during his childhood in Yasnaya Polyana, for even if these had existed his family circumstances would have made it very unlikely that he would have wandered freely in the surrounding countryside as Hardy did. Henri Troyat in his biography of Tolstoy points out that the grounds of his family estate 'were so vast that the children found some new corner to explore every day', and he was educated by a tutor at home. His ancestors had been ennobled by Peter the Great and were connected to the leading families of the Russian aristocracy. His maternal grandfather had been an officer in the army in the years leading up to the Napoleonic invasion and there were many family connections to men who held high positions in the army. The physical objects which stimulated Hardy's imagination may have been absent, but Tolstoy must have been aware from an early age of the events in which his family and his country had been engaged less than twenty years before his birth. He was certainly aware of his position in society and 'the fact that he was born and grew up on an estate where for generations his ancestors had been the only people of importance'. In a forward to one of the many draft versions of War and Peace, Tolstoy says:

... I say boldly that I am an aristocrat by birth, by habits and by position. I am an aristocrat because I am not only not ashamed, but positively glad to remember my ancestors – fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers. I am an aristocrat because I was brought up from childhood in love and respect for the highest orders of society ...

Elsewhere in this passage Tolstoy attempts to justify his dislike of the merchant classes and peasantry, claiming that their lives are boring, monotonous and ugly and not worthy to be included in his writing. These views changed somewhat later in life when he attempted to emulate the way of life of the peasants, seeing them as representing the 'spirit' of Russia, and indeed in War and Peace he portrays the Russian people as the true heroes of the war against Napoleon.

Many of the opinions expressed by Tolstoy on 'the orders of society' arise from his immersion in the rigid Russian class system and he would almost certainly have considered Hardy to be a peasant, a view interestingly echoed by many members of the establishment in Britain. George Gissing, a London-based writer, wrote of Hardy 'born a peasant, he yet retains much of the peasant's views of life', an attitude obviously related to Hardy's rural origins and his descent from generations of masons and bricklayers.

In addition to being influenced by their environment and their ancestry, both Hardy and Tolstoy were exposed to significant works of literature and history throughout their childhood. Hardy recalls that when he was about eight years old his mother gave him Dryden's Virgil and Johnson's Rasselas, but 'he also found in a closet A History of the Wars – a periodical in loose numbers of the war with Napoleon, which his grandfather had subscribed to at the time, having been himself a volunteer'. It seems clear that the pictures of 'serried ranks, crossed bayonets, huge knapsacks, and dead bodies' stimulated the young boy's imagination and 'set him on the train of ideas that led to The Trumpet Major and The Dynasts' (LW, 21). Millgate notes that a copy of Gifford's History of the Wars Occasioned by the French Revolution was also present in the Bockhampton cottage.

Tolstoy recollects that when he was about eight years old his father came into the room he shared with his brothers and made Leo recite some poems by Pushkin, including the poem 'Napoleon', which was written in 1821 after the death of Napoleon on St Helena. Like many other writers, including the English Romantic poets, Pushkin had initially expressed admiration for Napoleon, and in this poem remnants of this admiration can still be discerned. Napoleon is described as 'a majestic man', a 'hero, with whose bloodied story/ Long, long the earth will still resound'. The hope inspired by the rise of Napoleon is expressed in the fourth stanza:

When in the dawn of hope at last
The world from slavery awoke,
And when the idol of his past
The Gaul threw down with furious stroke, When on the place of riot lay
The royal dead of ancient name,
And the inevitable day,
The great, glad day of freedom came.

As the poem proceeds the reader is reminded of how 'new-born freedom ... fell straightway dumb and lost its force'. Pushkin exposes the lack of understanding of the Russian nation shown by Napoleon:

Throned in thy daring thoughts so high,
Couldst thou not read a Russian heart?
Unwarned of that great-hearted fire,
Thou still couldst idly calculate
That peace we want at thy desire
And learnest Russia all too late.

It is significant that towards the end of the poem, after recounting the extent of the suffering and horror brought about by Napoleon's wars in Europe, Pushkin can still show some sympathy for him and anticipate that:

And to the sultry prison isle
Comes some day one of northern race
And there in words that reconcile
A tribute to the rock shall trace.

In the last stanza he actually criticises the British for their treatment of Napoleon, and suggests that Napoleon's invasion may have stirred the Russian nation to carry out reforms:

Praise him! For he our people showed
How high the lot which ours should be,
And from his prison gloom bestowed
The gift of lasting liberty.

It seems extremely unlikely that the eight year old Tolstoy would have completely understood the sentiments expressed in this poem, but Aylmer Maude does note that in his Recollections Tolstoy says that he was fond of the poem and had learnt it by heart, and that his father 'was evidently struck by the feeling with which I recited the verses'.

In his teens living in Kazan Tolstoy read avidly and in addition to discovering writers such as Rousseau, Goethe and Dickens continued his reading of Russian poets particularly Pushkin and Lermontov. Although he was the writer of patriotic verses such as 'Borodino', Lermontov, like Pushkin, was captivated by the possibilities embodied in the figure of Napoleon. After Napoleon's death on St Helena, Lermontov speaks of 'our great hero – Napoleon!', and in his poem 'The Ghost Ship', written in 1840, he imagines Napoleon rising from his grave on St Helena and returning to France:

To France, his beloved, he hurries,
Again to his glory and throne,
Again to his son and his comrades,
Back home to the land of his own.

The young Hardy was also reading poetry, particularly that of the British contemporaries of Pushkin and Lermontov, namely Shelley and Byron. These four young poets writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century admired Napoleon for the ideas he represented even though they may have disliked his ruthless methods and his imperialistic ambition. Paul Stock, commenting on the relationship between Napoleon and the Romantic poets, suggests that Napoleon was used 'as an ideological symbol: the instrument and representative of a changing society, less an autonomous person than the tool of broad historical forces'. Shelley, described by Hardy as 'the poet he loved' (LW, 134), describes the French Revolution as 'the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and degradation', and laments the restoration of the Bourbons after Napoleon's defeat, as Hardy was later to do in The Dynasts.

Hardy's fascination with the times of Napoleon did not blind him to the realities of Napoleon's power hungry march across Europe, but many years later he could still demonstrate a romantic attachment to the 'idea' of Napoleon in his poem 'The Bridge of Lodi', which was inspired by a tune of that name in his father's music book and commemorated a famous victory of Napoleon against the Austrians, 'when like a god he/ bent the nations to his sway'. No such romantic attachment can be discerned in Tolstoy, although prior to commencing War and Peace he writes that he has 'become engrossed in the history of Napoleon and Alexander. The idea of writing a psychological history of the romance of Alexander and Napoleon has swept over me like a cloud of joy and the awareness of the opportunity to do a great thing' (Diaries, 164). It is hardly surprising that Tolstoy had a somewhat different attitude to Napoleon than Hardy, for the country he loved had been invaded, her towns and cities destroyed and thousands of her people killed. He was, however, able to give voice to the initial feelings of optimism aroused by the rise of Napoleon by allowing his character, Pierre Bezukhov to express such feelings at the beginning of War and Peace. At Anna Pavlovna's soirée, where the book begins, Pierre argues with the French viscount who is a supporter of the Bourbons, maintaining that:

'Napoleon is great, because he stood above the revolution, put an end to its abuses, and kept all that was good – the equality of citizens and freedom of speech and of the press – and that is the only reason why he gained power'. (W and P, 20)

Seven years later, after witnessing the horrors of Borodino and the entry of Napoleon's army into Moscow, Pierre is ready to assassinate Napoleon:

'Yes, for one and all, I must do it or perish!' he thought. 'Yes, I'll go up ... and then suddenly ... Will it be pistol or dagger?' Pierre wondered. 'However, it makes no difference. It is not I but the hand of Providence that punishes you, I'll say' (Pierre thought of the words he would utter as he killed Napoleon. (W and P, 900)

Encounters with War

Hardy and Tolstoy's fascination with the Napoleonic Wars and the character of Napoleon Bonaparte played a major part in their planning and writing, but they were also influenced by events occurring much closer in time to the creation of these two works. Tolstoy's early diary entries for the years 1851–54 reveal him to be a rather introspective, self-obsessed young man concerned 'that three evil passions predominate in me: gambling, sensuality and vanity' (Diaries, 36). In an attempt to escape his rather dissolute way of life he joined his brother in the Caucasus in 1851, entering the army in 1852 and receiving his commission in 1854. During this time he took part in a few actions against local Chechen tribes, one such action being described in his short story The Raid. Even when he reached Bucharest in 1854 on the outbreak of war with Turkey he experienced little actual fighting, and during the siege of Silistria in June 1854 when the Russian army was defeated by the Turks, he writes in his diary 'I haven't yet been in action', and 'If three days pass without my doing anything of service to others, I shall kill myself' (Diaries, 73). His frustration prompted him to petition General Gorchakov, who had been a friend of his father and also Commander-in-Chief of the army, to arrange his transfer to the Crimea where France and England had now joined with Turkey in the war against Russian expansionism. Tolstoy arrived in Sebastopol in September 1854 but was not to take a direct part in military action until August of the following year, just prior to Russian defeat and withdrawal. He was, however, free to observe and write about army life and a result of these observations was his three 'Sebastopol Sketches'. A marked change occurs in his diary entries following his arrival in the Crimea, when he comes face to face with the inadequacies of the Russian army and the terrible suffering of the troops. Introspective musings on his personal failings and lack of purpose are replaced by perceptive comments on military manoeuvres and a growing awareness that he should devote his life to literature. There is frequent criticism of the army hierarchy and the lack of resources and an acknowledgement of the superiority of the French and English troops. In November 1854 he says: 'The Cossacks want to plunder but not to fight; the hussars and uhlans suppose military worth to consist of drunkenness and debauchery, and the infantry – of robbery and making money. A sad state of affairs for the army and the country' (Diaries, 83). However, in a letter to his brother Sergei in the same month he shows admiration for the troops defending Sebastopol, saying 'the spirit of the army is beyond all description. There wasn't so much heroism in the days of ancient Greece' (Letters I, 44). In March of the following year he talks of working on a 'plan for reorganising the army' but concludes that 'a military career is not for me, and the sooner I get out of it to devote myself fully to a literary one the better' (Diaries, 87). David McDuff, in his introduction to The Sebastopol Sketches, asserts that the description of war in these sketches 'in many ways anticipates the accounts of military action to be found in War and Peace', a connection also recognised by R.F. Christian in his study of War and Peace, and it is important to illustrate just how close this connection is.

As a young officer free to wander around Sebastopol and its environs, Tolstoy was in an ideal position to observe his fellow officers and the huge numbers of men fighting to defend the city and it should be presumed that these 'sketches' offer a fairly accurate view of proceedings. In the first sketch, Sebastopol in December, Tolstoy writes as a patriotic Russian, claiming that it would be 'quite impossible for Sebastopol ever to be taken' due to each man's high motivation arising from 'a love of his native land'. In the second sketch the tone changes and Tolstoy correctly guesses that the censor will not be happy with some of the anti-war sentiments he expresses. He had seen thousands of men die terrible deaths for no apparent reason and can only conclude, 'one of two things appears to be true: either war is madness, or, if men perpetrate this madness, they thereby demonstrate that they are far from the rational creatures we for some reason commonly suppose them to be'. His growing pacifism was to have considerable influence when he came to write War and Peace but his close observations of his fellow officers were also to provide him with much material. On several occasions he describes the 'strange blend of fear and enjoyment' experienced by men in battle:

At the moment you know the shell is heading in your direction, you are bound to think it is going to kill you ... when, however the shell sails past, leaving you unscathed, you will recover your spirits and be seized, if only for a moment, by a sense of relief that is unutterably pleasant. You will discover a peculiar fascination in this dangerous game of life and death'.

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Excerpted from War, the Hero and the Will by Jane L. Bownas. Copyright © 2015 Jane L. Bownas. Excerpted by permission of Sussex Academic Press.
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