Notes on Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE. What Started the War of 1812 Against Napoleon? Nobody Knows.

 

What Started the War? Nobody Knows

Here’s how Volume Three of War and Peace begins: “Since the end of the year 1811 an ever increasing armament and concentration of Western European forces had begun, and in the year 1812 those forces—millions of men, including those who provided transportation and food for the army—moved from west to east, to the borders or Russia, towards which borders, since the year 1811, the forces of Russia had been advancing as well. On the twelfth of June the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian border and war began—that is, an event contrary to human reason, and to the whole of human nature, came about.”

 

Tolstoy goes on to outline the possible reasons why the war started, finally concluding that there were so many reasons, and sub-reasons, and intertwined sub-sub-reasons that it is impossible to conclude exactly how and why the war began. At one point he uses a metaphor to make his point:

 

“When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? By reason of its gravitational attraction to the ground, or because the stem has withered, or because the sun has dried it up and it has grown heavier, or because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?” He concludes that the apple falls for all these reasons, and still more.

 

Of course, in the first paragraph cited above Tolstoy makes one statement that is patently false. He says that war is something not compatible with the whole of human nature. Wrong. Men love war, and wars have been perpetual throughout human history, despite the efforts of rational human beings to abolish the institution of war. Men love war, and so does human nature.