CHAPTER IV

THE CRIMEAN WAR

Joins army of the Danube. Siege of Silistria. Sevastopol. Projected Newspaper. _Sevastopol in December._ Battle of the Tchérnaya. Capture of the Maláhof. Courier to Petersburg. Song. Relations with superiors and fellow-officers. Self-depreciation. _The Wood-Felling._ _Sevastopol in May._ The Censor. On War.

AT twenty-five years of age it fell to Tolstoy's lot to take part in a great European war and thereby to extend the range of his experience in a way that considerably affected his subsequent life and writings.

Tolstoy tells us that he got his first understanding of war from Stendhal, the author of _Le Rouge et le Noir_ and _La Chartreuse de Parme_. In conversation with Paul Boyer, Tolstoy once spoke of those novels as inimitable works of art, adding, 'I am greatly indebted to Stendhal. He taught me to understand war. Re-read the description of the battle of Waterloo in _La Chartreuse de Parme_. Who ever before so described war? Described it, that is, as it is in reality? Do you remember Fabrice riding over the field of battle and understanding "nothing"?'

Tolstoy's brother Nicholas, though fond of war, also disbelieved in the popular romantic view of it, and used to say: 'All _that_ is embellishment, and in real war there is no embellishment.'--'A little later, in the Crimea,' added Tolstoy in his talk with Boyer, 'I had a grand chance to see with my own eyes that this is so.'

Of the causes that led to the war it need only be said that the rule of the Turks over Christian populations had long kept a dangerous sore open in Europe, and the consequent diplomatic difficulties were complicated by the indefiniteness of two lines in the Treaty of Kainardji, which Catherine the Great had imposed upon Turkey in 1774. There was also friction between the Eastern and Western Churches, with reference to the custody of the Places in Palestine rendered holy by their traditional connection with the Prince of Peace. Nicholas I, who had wellnigh drilled all intelligence out of those near him in his Government and in his army, was not accustomed to be thwarted. Dimly conscious of the first faint symptoms of that growth of Liberalism which a few years later, in the early 'sixties, led to sweeping reforms in Russia, he felt inclined to demonstrate the beneficence of his rule not by allowing changes to be made at home, but by arbitrarily inflicting reforms on Turkey. Failing to get his way by diplomatic pressure, he rashly proceeded to occupy the Danubian Principalities as a 'material guarantee' of Turkey's compliance with his demands.

He was opposed by Austria and Prussia as strongly as by England and France, and the pressure exerted by the four powers sufficed to compel him to withdraw his army from Turkish soil. Thereupon the war, which had as yet been waged only between Russia and Turkey, might well have ended, had not England and France undertaken a quite needless invasion of the Crimea: an enterprise in which Austria and Prussia refused to join. The end did not justify the proceedings, for in spite of success in this war, Napoleon the Third's dynasty crumbled to dust within twenty years, while within a like period after Palmerston's death Lord Salisbury frankly admitted that we had 'put our money on the wrong horse.' As to Nicholas I, his pride was destined to be bitterly mortified by the results of an enterprise which not only failed of its immediate object, but by its failure actually hastened the coming of those reforms in Russia against which he had set his face. Even Turkey did not really benefit by being allowed to oppress her subject races for a couple of generations longer.

It was the influence of Napoleon III, as Kinglake has pointed out, that led England to take part in the war. Having by treachery and murder made himself Emperor of the French, that monarch found himself for a time dangerously isolated from the support of people of good repute. In consultation with Palmerston, he decided to subordinate the traditional Eastern policy of his country to that of England if thereby he could succeed in being publicly paraded as the friend and ally of Queen Victoria. As soon as he had secured an alliance with England, with Palmerston's aid, and helped by the extraordinary war fever which seized the English nation, he quickly forced the peacefully disposed Lord Aberdeen along an inclined plane which ultimately plunged both nations into a war for which no sufficient motive justification or excuse existed.

1854

Hostilities between Russia and Turkey had begun in October 1853, but France and England did not break off negotiations with the former power till the end of March 1854, the very month in which Tolstoy reached Bucharest on his way through Wallachia to join the army.

From there he wrote to his aunt, telling of his journey. The roads after he had passed Khersón, and especially after he had crossed the frontier, were abominable; his journey lasted nine days; and he 'arrived almost ill with fatigue.'

A few days later, on 17th March, he wrote of his first interview with Gortchakóf:

[14]Le prince Gortchakóf n'était pas ici. Hier il vient d'arriver et je viens de chez lui. Il m'a reçu mieux que je ne croyais--en vrai parent. Il m'a embrassé, il m'a engagé de venir dîner tous les jours chez lui et il veut me garder auprès de lui, mais ce n'est pas encore décidé.

Pardon, chère tante, que je vous écris peu--je n'ai pas encore la tête à moi,--cette grande et belle ville, toutes ces présentations, l'opéra italien, le théâtre français, les deux jeunes Gortchakóf qui sont de très braves garçons ... de sorte que je ne suis pas resté deux heures chez moi, et je n'ai pas pensé à mes occupations.

[14] Prince Gortchakóf was not here. He arrived yesterday, and I have just come from his lodgings. He received me better than I expected--quite as a relation. He embraced me, and made me promise to dine at his house every day. He wants to keep me near him, but this is not yet decided.

Forgive me, dear Aunt, for writing but little to you--I have not yet collected my wits; this large and fine town, all these presentations, the Italian opera, the French theatre, the two young Gortchakófs, who are very fine lads ... so that I have not remained two hours at home, and have not thought of my duties.

On 22nd March he adds: 'I learnt yesterday that I am not to remain with the Prince, but am to go to Oltenitza to join my battery.'

In May he wrote:

[15]Tandis que vous me croyez exposé à tous les dangers de la guerre je n'ai pas encore senti la poudre turque, et je suis très tranquillement à Boukarest à me promener, à faire de la musique et à manger des glaces. En effet tout ce temps, excepté deux semaines que j'ai passées à Oltenitza où j'ai été attaché à une batterie, et une semaine que j'ai passée en courses par la Moldavie, Valachie et Bessarabie par ordre du gén. Serjpoutóvsky auprès duquel je suis à présent _by special appointment_, je suis resté à Boukarest et à vous avouer franchement, ce genre de vie un peu dissipé, tout à fait oisif et très coûteux que je mène ici me déplaît infiniment. Auparavant c'était le service qui m'y retenait, mais à présent j'y suis resté pendant près de trois semaines à cause d'une fièvre que j'ai attrapée pendant mon voyage, mais dont, Dieu merci, je suis pour le moment assez rétabli pour rejoindre dans deux ou trois jours mon général qui est au camp près de Silistrie. A propos de mon général, il a l'air d'être un très brave homme et paraît, quoique nous nous connaissons fort peu, être bien disposé à mon égard. Ce qui est encore fort agréable est que son état-major est composé pour la plupart de gens comme il faut.

[15] While you are fancying me exposed to all the dangers of war, I have not yet smelt Turkish powder, but am very quietly at Bucharest, strolling about, making music, and eating ices. In fact, all this time, except for two weeks I spent at Oltenitza, where I was attached to a battery, and one week I passed making excursions in Moldavia Wallachia and Bessarabia by order of General Serzhpoutóvsky, on whose staff I now am by special appointment, I have been at Bucharest; and to speak frankly, the rather dissipated, quite idle and very expensive kind of life that I lead here, displeases me very much. Formerly it was the service that kept me here; but now for three weeks I have been kept here by a fever caught during my journey, but from which, thank God, I have for the present recovered sufficiently to be able in two or three days' time to rejoin my General, who is in camp near Silistria. Apropos of my General, he appears to be a very fine fellow, and though we know each other very slightly, seems well disposed toward me. What is also agreeable is that his staff consists for the most part of gentlemen.

We shall find Tolstoy modifying this opinion, a little later on; but it is worth noting that at this time he was fully alive to the superiority of '_gens comme il faut_,' and that his depreciation of them in later years may have been partly a reaction from a previous over-valuation.

By June 1854 the military and political situation was as follows. The Russians had advanced through Moldavia and Wallachia to the Danube, had crossed that river, and were besieging Silistria. Austria, supporting the other great powers, had massed a powerful army on the Turkish frontier, and a glance at the map of Europe will show that the Russian army, far removed from its base, was in imminent danger of being cut off by the Austrians, who peremptorily summoned Russia to evacuate the Principalities, and on 14th June concluded a formal alliance with the Porte. These circumstances explain the sudden abandonment of the siege of Silistria mentioned in the following letter, addressed by Leo Tolstoy to his Aunt Tatiána and to his brother Nicholas conjointly; though when he wrote it, the causes which produced the result he described were a mystery to him.

[16]Je vais vous parler donc de mes souvenirs de Silistrie. J'y ai vu tant de choses intéressantes, poétiques et touchantes que le temps que j'y ai passé ne s'effacera jamais de ma mémoire. Notre camp était disposé de l'autre côté du Danube c.à d. sur la rive droite sur un terrain très élevé au milieu de superbes jardins, appartenant à Mustafa Pasha--le gouverneur de Silistrie. La vue de cet endroit est non seulement magnifique, mais pour nous tous du plus grand intérêt. Sans parler du Danube, de ces îles et de ces rivages, les uns occupés par nous, les autres par les Turcs, on voyait la ville, la forteresse, les petits forts de Silistrie comme sur la main. On entendait les coups de canons, de fusils qui ne cessaient ni jour ni nuit, et avec une lunette d'approche on pouvait distinguer les soldats turcs. Il est vrai que c'est un drôle de plaisir que de voir de gens s'entretuer et cependant tous les soirs et matins je me mettais sur ma cart et je restais des heures entières à regarder et ce n'était pas moi le seul qui le faisait. Le spectacle était vraiment beau, surtout la nuit. Les nuits ordinairement mes soldats se mettent aux travaux des tranchées, et les Turcs se jettent sur eux pour les en empêcher, alors il fallait voir et entendre cette fusillade. La première nuit que j'ai passée au camp ce bruit terrible m'a reveillé et effrayé, je croyais qu'on est allé a l'assaut et j'ai bien vite fait seller mon cheval, mais ceux qui avait déjà passé quelque temps au camp me dirent que je n'avais qu'à me tenir tranquille, que cette canonnade et fusillade était une chose ordinaire et qu'on appela en plaisantant, 'Allah'; alors je me suis recouché, mais ne pouvant m'endormir je me suis amusé, une montre à la main, à compter les coups de canon que j'entendais et j'ai compté 110 explosions dans l'espace d'une minute. Et cependant tout ceci n'a eu de près l'air aussi effrayant que cela le paraît. La nuit, quand on n'y voyait rien, c'était à qui brûlerait le plus de poudre et avec ces milliers de coups de canons on tuait tout au plus une trentaine d'hommes de part et d'autre.

Ceci donc est un spectacle ordinaire que nous avions tous les jours et dans lequel, quand on m'envoyait avec des ordres dans les tranchées, je prenais aussi ma part; mais nous avions aussi des spectacles extraordinaires, comme celui de la veille de l'assaut quand on a fait sauter une mine de 240 pouds de poudre sous un des bastions de l'ennemi. Le matin de cette journée le prince avait été aux tranchées avec tout son état-major (comme le général auprès duquel j'étais en fait partie, j'y ai aussi été) pour faire les dispositions définies--vu pour l'assaut du lendemain. Le plan, trop long pour que je puisse l'expliquer ici, était si bien fait, tout était si bien prévu que personne ne doutait de la réussite. A propos de cela il faut que je vous dise encore que je commence à avoir de l'admiration pour le prince (au reste il faut en entendre parler parmi les officiers et les soldats, non seulement je n'ai jamais entendu dire du mal de lui, mais il est généralement adoré).

Je l'ai vu au feu pour la première fois pendant cette matinée. Il faut voir cette figure un peu ridicule avec sa grande taille, ses mains derrière le dos, sa casquette en arrière, ses lunettes et sa manière de parler comme un dindon. On voit qu'il était tellement occupé de la marche générale des affaires que les balles et les boulets n'existaient pas pour lui; il s'expose au danger avec tant de simplicité, qu'on dirait qu'il n'en a pas l'idée et qu'involontairement qu'on n'a plus peur de lui que pour soi-même; et puis donnant ses ordres avec tant de clarté et de précision et avec cela toujours affable avec chacun. C'est un grand, c.à d. un homme qui s'est voué toute sa vie au service de sa patrie et pas par l'ambition, mais par le devoir. Je vais vous raconter un trait de lui qui se lie à l'histoire de cet assaut que j'ai commencé à raconter. L'après-dîner du même jour on a fait sauter la mine, et près de 600 pièces d'artillerie ont fait feu sur le fort qu'on voulait prendre, et on continuait ce feu pendant toute la nuit, c'était un de ces coups d'oeil et une de ces émotions qu'on n'oublie jamais. Le soir de nouveau le prince, avec tout le tremblement, est allé coucher aux tranchées pour diriger lui-même l'assaut qui devait commencer à 3 heures de la nuit même.

Nous étions tous là et comme toujours à la veille d'une bataille nous faisions tous semblant de ne pas plus penser de la journée de demain qu'à une journée ordinaire et tous, j'en suis sûr, au fond du coeur ressentaient un petit serrement de coeur et pas même un petit mais un grand, à l'idée de l'assaut. Comme tu sais que le temps qui précède une affaire est le temps le plus désagréable--c'est le seul où on a le temps d'avoir peur, et la peur est un sentiment des plus désagréables. Vers le matin, plus le moment approchait, plus le sentiment diminuait et vers 3 heures quand nous attendions tous à voir partir le bouquet de fusées qui était le signal de l'attaque--j'étais si bien disposé que si l'on était venu me dire que l'assaut n'aurait pas lieu, cela m'aurait fait beaucoup de peine. Et voilà que juste une heure avant le moment de l'assaut arrive un aide de camp du maréchal avec l'ordre d'ôter le siège de Silistrie. Je puis dire sans craindre de me tromper que cette nouvelle a été reçue par tous--soldats, officiers et généraux--comme un vrai malheur, d'autant plus qu'on savait par les espions, qui nous venaient très souvent de Silistrie, et avec lesquels j'avais très souvent l'occasion de causer moi-même, on savait que ce fort pris,--chose dont personne ne doutait--Silistrie ne pouvait tenir plus de 2 ou 3 jours. N'est-ce pas que si cette nouvelle devait faire de la peine à quelqu'un ce devait être au prince, qui pendant toute cette campagne ayant fait toute chose pour le mieux, au beau milieu de l'action vit venir le maréchal sur son dos pour gâter les affaires et puis ayant la seule chance de réparer nos revers par cet assaut, il reçoit le contre ordre du maréchal au moment de le commencer. Eh bien, le prince n'a pas eu un moment de mauvaise humeur, lui, qui est si impressionable, au contraire il a été content de pouvoir éviter cette boucherie, dont il devait porter la responsabilité et tout le temps de la retraite qu'il a dirigé lui-même, ne voulant passer qu'avec le dernier des soldats, qui s'est faite avec un ordre et une exactitude remarquables, il a été plus gai qu'il n'a jamais été. Ce qui contribuait beaucoup à sa bonne humeur, c'était l'émigration de près de 7000 familles bulgares, que nous prenons avec pour le souvenir de la férocité des Turcs--férocité a laquelle malgré mon incredulité j'ai été obligé de croire. Dès que nous avons quitté des différents villages bulgares que nous occupions, les Turcs y sont revenus et excepté les femmes assez jeunes pour un harem, ils ont fait main basse sur tout ce qu'il y avait. Il y a un village dans lequel je suis allé du camp pour y prendre du lait et des fruits qui a été exterminé de la sorte. Alors dès que le prince avait fait savoir aux Bulgares que ceux qui voulaient pouvaient avec l'armée passer le Danube et devenir sujets russes, tout le pays se soulève et tous avec leurs femmes, enfants, chevaux, bétails arrivent au pont,--mais comme il était impossible de les prendre tous, le prince a été obligé de refuser à ceux qui sont venus les derniers et il fallait voir comme cela le chagrinait. Il recevait toutes les députations qui venaient de ces pauvres gens, il causait avec chacun d'eux, tâchait de leur expliquer l'impossibilité de la chose, leur proposait de passer sans leurs chariots et leur bétail et en se chargeant de leurs moyens de subsistence jusqu'à ce qu'ils arrivassent en Russie, payant de sa propre bourse des vaisseaux particuliers pour les transporter, en un mot faisant tout son possible pour faire du bien à ces gens.

Oui, chère tante, je voudrais bien que votre prophétie se réalise. La chose que j'ambitionne le plus, est d'être l'aide de camp d'un homme comme lui que j'aime et que j'estime du plus profond de mon coeur. Adieu, chère et bonne tante; je baise vos mains.

[16] I am going to tell you of my recollections of Silistria. I there saw so much that was interesting, poetic and touching, that the time I passed there will never be effaced from my memory. Our camp was on the other side of the Danube, _i.e._ on the right bank, on very high ground amid splendid gardens belonging to Mustafa Pasha, the Governor of Silistria. The view from that place is not only magnificent, but of the greatest interest to us all. Not to speak of the Danube, its islets and its banks, some occupied by us, others by the Turks, one could see the town, the fortress and the little forts of Silistria as on the palm of one's hand. One heard the booming of cannon and musket-shots unceasingly day and night; and with a spy-glass one could distinguish the Turkish soldiers. It is true it is a queer sort of pleasure to see people killing one another, yet every evening and every morning I got on to my cart and remained for hours at a time, watching: nor was I the only one who did so. The sight was really fine, especially at night. At night my soldiers usually undertake trench-work, and the Turks fling themselves upon them to hinder them; then one should see and hear the fusillade! The first night I passed in camp, this dreadful noise awoke and frightened me: I thought an assault had begun. I very soon had my horse saddled; but those who had been already some time in camp told me that I had only to keep quiet: that this cannonade and fusillade was an ordinary affair, and they jestingly called it 'Allah.' Then I lay down again; but not being able to sleep, I amused myself, watch in hand, counting the cannon-shots, and I counted 110 reports in a minute. And yet, at close quarters, all this did not look so terrible as might be supposed. At night, when nothing was visible, it was a case of who could burn most powder, and with all these thousands of cannon-shots at most some thirty men were killed on each side....

This then was an ordinary performance we had every day, and one in which I took a share when I was sent to the trenches with orders; but we also had extraordinary performances, such as the one on the eve of the attack, when a mine of 240 poods (8600 lbs.) of gunpowder was exploded under one of the enemy's bastions. On the morning of that day the Prince had been to the trenches with all his staff (and as the General I was attached to belong to it, I was there too) to make the final arrangements for next day's assault. The plan--too long for me to explain here--was so well arranged, all was so well foreseen, that no one doubted its success. Apropos of this I must tell you further that I am beginning to feel admiration for the Prince (for that matter you should hear how the officers and soldiers speak of him: not only have I never heard him spoken ill of, but he is generally adored).

That morning I saw him under fire for the first time. You should see his rather absurd tall figure, his hands behind his back, his cap on the back of his head, his spectacles, and his way of speaking like a turkey-cock. One could see that he was so preoccupied with the general trend of affairs that the balls and bullets did not exist as far as he was concerned. He exposes himself to danger so simply that one would say he was unconscious of it, and involuntarily one fears it only for oneself; [The text here is obscure, and the meaning a little doubtful] and then he gives his orders with such clearness and precision, and is at the same time always so affable with everybody. He is a great man, _i.e._ a capable and honest man, as I understand the word: one who has dedicated his whole life to the service of his country, and not from ambition, but for the sake of duty. I will give you a trait of his character connected with the story I had begun to tell you of the assault. After dinner that same day, the mine was sprung, and nearly 600 guns opened fire on the fort we wished to take, and this continued the whole night. It was such a sight and such an emotion as one never forgets. That evening the Prince, amid all the commotion, went to sleep in the trenches, that he might personally direct the assault, which was to begin at 3 o'clock the same night.

We were all there, and as usual on the eve of a battle, we all made believe not to think of the morrow more than of any other day, and we all, I am sure, at bottom, felt our hearts contract a little (and not a little, but a great deal) at the thought of the assault. As you know, the time before a fight is the most disagreeable: it is only then that one has time to be afraid, and fear is a most disagreeable feeling. Towards morning, the nearer the moment came the more the feeling diminished, and towards 3 o'clock when we were all expecting to see a shower of rockets let off, which was the signal for the attack, I was so well inclined for it that I should have been much disappointed if any one had come to tell me that the attack was not to take place. And there! Just an hour before the time for the attack, an aide-de-camp comes from the Field-Marshal [Paskévitch, who for a time took over the supreme command of the army of the Danube] with orders to raise the siege of Silistria! I can say, without fear of making a mistake, that this news was received by all, soldiers, officers, and generals, as a real misfortune, the more so as we knew from the spies--who very often came to us from Silistria, and with whom I very often had occasion to speak--that once we had taken this fort (about which none of us felt any doubt) Silistria could not have held out for more than 2 or 3 days. Is it not true that if this news was calculated to pain any one, it must have been the Prince, who having all through this campaign arranged everything for the best, yet saw, in the very middle of the action, the Field-Marshal override him and spoil the business? Having this one chance to repair our reverses by this assault, he received counter-orders from the Field-Marshal at the moment of commencing! Well, the Prince was not put out of temper for a moment. He who is so impressionable, was, on the contrary, pleased to be able to avoid that butchery, the responsibility for which he would have had to bear; and during the whole time of the retreat--which he directed personally, not wishing to cross (the Danube) before the last of the soldiers--which took place with remarkable order and exactitude, he was gayer than he has ever been. What contributed much to his good humour, was the emigration of nearly 7000 Bulgarian families, whom we took with us as a reminder of the ferocity of the Turks: a ferocity in which, in spite of my incredulity, I was obliged to believe. As soon as we quitted the different Bulgarian villages we had occupied, the Turks returned to them, and except women young enough for a harem, they made a clean sweep of all that was in them. There was one village to which I went from the camp for milk and fruit, which had been exterminated in this way. So, as soon as the Prince let the Bulgarians know that those who wished to, could cross the Danube with our army and could become Russian subjects, the whole country rose, and with their wives, children, horses and cattle, came to the bridge: but as it was impossible to take them all, the Prince was obliged to refuse the last arrivals, and you should have seen how it grieved him to do so. He received all the deputations which came from these poor folk, and spoke with them all: trying to explain the impossibility of the matter, offering to let them cross without their carts and cattle, charging himself with their support till they could reach Russia, and out of his own purse paying for private ships to transport them; in a word, doing his very best for the welfare of these people.

Yes, dear Aunt, I should much like your prophecy to come true. What I desire most is to be aide-de-camp to such a man as he, whom I love and esteem from the bottom of my heart. Adieu, dear and kind Aunt. I kiss your hands.

The army retired to Bucharest, and here, at an officers' ball, Tolstoy seized an opportunity to beg Gortchakóf to have him transferred to where service would be most active.

The retreat from Silistria took place at the end of June, and on 2nd August we find Tolstoy starting for Russia. On the journey he fell ill and had to lie up in hospital. On 13th November in Kishinéf he renewed his application for an appointment in the Crimea, and was ordered to Sevastopol, which he reached on the 20th of that month.[17]

[17] In this chapter the dates, when possible, are given new style (12 days later than the Russian style), in order that they may tally with English accounts of the Crimean war.

1854

The situation there, at this time, was the following. The Allies had landed in the Crimea to the north of Sevastopol on 14th September, and had defeated the Russian army under Ménshikof on the 20th at Alma. Instead of marching straight into the town, which was almost undefended, they had then gone round and encamped on the south side, where they remained inactive till 17th October, by which time Todleben, an engineer of rare genius, had thrown up earthworks and mounted guns (many of them taken from the Russian ships Ménshikof sank at the entrance to the Roadstead). Ménshikof himself had practically abandoned the town, withdrawing the bulk of his army northward; but the situation was saved by the patriotism of just that section of the Russian forces which had been least exposed to the deadening influence of Nicholas the First's militarism,--namely by the officers and men of the fleet. Inspired by the example of the heroic Admiral Kornílof (who lost his life during the siege) they rallied to the defence with a courageous devotion seldom paralleled. Their example awoke enthusiasm throughout Russia and compelled Ménshikof to supply reinforcements, which enabled the town to hold out for eleven months, in spite of the great superiority of the Allies in rifles, artillery and the modern equipments of war generally.

Tolstoy reached Sevastopol when the defence was already fully organised, and when (in spite of the repulse experienced by the Russians at Inkerman) the garrison had gained confidence in their powers of resistance, and had settled down to a dogged defence.

Of the hospitals, in which the wounded saw one another's limbs amputated while waiting their own turn; of the staff officers, who managed to amuse themselves pretty well during the siege; of the commissariat officers, flourishing amid the general havoc; as well as of the line and non-commissioned officers and privates, upon whom the greatest hardships fell, Tolstoy gives vivid glimpses in the Sketches he wrote during the siege.

A fortnight after his arrival he writes, from somewhere outside the town, to his brother Sergius, apologising for not having sent him a letter sooner, and adds:

So much have I learnt, experienced, and felt this year that I positively do not know what to begin to describe, nor how to describe it as I wish to.... Silistria is now ancient history, and we have Sevastopol, of which I suppose you all read with beating hearts, and where I was four days ago. Well, how can I tell you all I saw there, and where I went and what I did, and what the prisoners and wounded French and English say; and _whether it hurts them and hurts very much_,[18] and what heroes our enemies are, especially the English? I will tell all that later at Yásnaya or at Pirogóvo; and you will learn much of it from me through the press. How this will happen, I will explain later; but now let me give you an idea of the position of affairs in Sevastopol. The town is besieged from one side, the south, where we had no fortifications when the enemy approached it. Now we have on that side more than 500 heavy guns, and several lines of earthworks, positively impregnable. I spent a week in the fortress, and to the last day used to lose my way among that labyrinth of batteries, as in a wood. More than three weeks ago the enemy advanced his trenches at one place to within 200 yards, but gets no further. When he makes the smallest advance he is overwhelmed with a hailstorm of shot and shell.

[18] This must refer to some family joke, as it occurs in other letters home, apropos of people who were killed.

The spirit of the army is beyond all description. In the times of ancient Greece there was not such heroism. Kornílof, making the round of the troops, instead of greeting them with, 'Good health to you, lads!' says: 'If you have to die, lads, will you die?' and the troops shout, 'We'll die, Your Excellency! Hurrah!' and they do not say it for effect. On every face one saw that it was not jest but earnest; and 22,000 men have already fulfilled the promise.

A wounded soldier, almost dying, told me they captured the 24th French Battery but were not reinforced; and he wept aloud. A Company of Marines nearly mutinied because they were to be withdrawn from batteries in which they had been exposed to shell-fire for thirty days. The soldiers extract the fuses from the shells. Women carry water to the bastions for the soldiers. Many are killed and wounded. The priests with their crosses go to the bastions and read prayers under fire. In one brigade, the 24th, more than 160 wounded men would not leave the front. It is a wonderful time! Now, however, after the 24th, we have quieted down; it has become splendid in Sevastopol. The enemy hardly fires, and all are convinced that he will not take the town; and it is really impossible.... I have not yet succeeded in being in action even once; but thank God that I have seen these people and live in this glorious time. The bombardment of the 5th [17 October, n.s.] remains the most brilliant and glorious feat not only in the history of Russia, but in the history of the world. More than 1500 cannon were in action for two days against the town, and not only did not cause it to capitulate, but did not silence one two-hundredth part of our batteries. Though, I suppose, this campaign is unfavourably regarded in Russia, our descendants will place it above all others; do not forget that we, with equal or even inferior forces, and armed only with bayonets, and with the worst troops in the Russian army (such as the 6th corps) are fighting a more numerous enemy aided by a fleet, armed with 3000 cannon, excellently supplied with rifles and with their best troops. I do not even mention the superiority of their Generals.

Only our army could hold its ground and conquer (we shall yet conquer, of that I am convinced) under such circumstances. You should see the French and English prisoners (especially the latter): they are each one better than the other--morally and physically fine fellows. The Cossacks say it is even a pity to cut them down, and alongside of them you should see some Chasseurs or others of ours: small, lousy, and shrivelled up.

Now I will tell you how you will get printed news from me of the deeds of these lousy and shrivelled heroes. In our artillery staff, consisting, as I think I wrote you, of very good and worthy men, a project has been started for publishing a military newspaper, in order to maintain a good spirit in the army--a cheap paper (at Rs. 3) and popularly written, so that the soldiers may read it. We have drawn up a plan and submitted it to the Prince. He likes the idea very much, and has submitted the project and a specimen sheet which we also wrote, for the Emperor's sanction. I and Stolýpin[19] are advancing the money for the publication. I have been chosen joint editor with a Mr. Konstantínof, who published _The Caucasus_, a man experienced in such work. The paper will publish descriptions of the battles (but not such dry and mendacious ones as other papers) courageous deeds, biographies, and obituaries of good men, especially the unknown; military stories, soldiers' songs, and popular articles on engineering, artillery, etc. This plan pleases me very much: in the first place, I like the work; and secondly, I hope the paper will be useful and not quite bad. It is as yet merely a project, until we know the Emperor's reply, about which I confess I have my fears. In the specimen sheet sent to Petersburg, we rashly inserted two articles, one by me and one by Rostóvtsef, not quite orthodox. For this business I want Rs. 1500, which I have asked Valeryán to send me.

[19] Father of the present (1908) Premier of Russia.

I, thank God, am well, and live happily and pleasantly since I returned from Turkey. In general, my army service divides up into two periods: beyond the frontier--horrid: I was ill, poor, and lonely. This side of the frontier--I am well and have good friends, though I am still poor: money simply runs away.

As to writing, I do not write; but, as Aunty teases me by saying, 'I test myself.' One thing disquiets me: this is the fourth year I live without female society; and I may become quite coarse and unsuited for family life, which I so enjoy.

A few days later his battery was moved to Simferópol, a town lying to the north of Sevastopol, beyond the sphere of actual fighting.

1855

On 6th January (o.s.) he wrote to his Aunt:

[20]On ne se bat plus en rase campagne, à cause de l'hiver qui est extraordinairement rigoureux, surtout à présent; mais le siège dure toujours.... J'avais parlé je crois d'une occupation que j'avais en vue et qui me souriait beaucoup; à présent que la chose est décidée, je puis le dire. J'avais l'idée de fonder un journal militaire. Ce projet auquel j'ai travaillé avec le concours de beaucoup de gens très distingués fut approuvé par le prince et envoyé à la décision de sa Majesté, mais l'empereur a refusé.

Cette déconfiture, je vous l'avoue, m'a fait une peine infinie et a beaucoup changé mes plans. Si Dieu veut que la campagne de Crimée finisse bien et si je ne reçois pas une place dont je sois content, et qu'il n'y ait pas de guerre en Russie, je quitterai l'armée pour aller à Pétersbourg à l'académie militaire. Ce plan m'est venu, 1° parce que je voudrais ne pas abandonner la littérature dont il m'est impossible de m'occuper dans cette vie de camp, et 2° parce qu'il me paraît que je commence à devenir ambitieux, pas ambitieux, mais je voudrais faire du bien et pour le faire il faut être plus qu'un Sub-Lieutenant; 3° parce que je vous verrai tous et tous mes amis.

[20] There is no more fighting in the open country on account of the winter, which is extraordinarily rigorous, particularly just now; but the siege still goes on.... I think I have mentioned an occupation I had in view, which promised very well--as I may say, now that it is settled. I had the idea of founding a military newspaper. This project, at which I worked with the co-operation of many very distinguished men, was approved by the Prince and submitted to His Majesty for his consent, but he has refused.

This disappointment has, I confess, distressed me greatly, and has much altered my plans. If God wills that the Crimean campaign should end well, and if I do not receive an appointment that satisfies me, and if there is no war in Russia, I shall leave the army and go to Petersburg to the Military Academy. I have formed this plan, (1) because I do not want to abandon literature, at which it is impossible to work amid this camp life; (2) because it seems to me that I am becoming ambitious: not ambitious, but I want to do some good, and to do it one must be something more than a Sub-Lieutenant, and (3) because I shall see you all and all my friends.

In May he wrote again to his brother:

From Kishinéf on 1st November (o.s.), I petitioned to be sent to the Crimea, partly in order to see this war, and partly to break away from Serzhpoutóvsky's staff, which I did not like, but most of all from patriotism, of which at that time, I confess, I had a bad attack. I did not ask for any special appointment, but left it to those in authority to dispose of my fate. In the Crimea I was appointed to a battery in Sevastopol itself, where I passed a month very pleasantly amid simple, good companions, who are specially good in time of real war and danger. In December our battery was removed to Simferópol, and there I spent 6 weeks in a squire's comfortable house, riding into Simferópol to dance and play the piano with young ladies, and in hunting wild goats on the Tchatyrdag [the highest point of the chain of mountains running across the southern part of the Crimea] in company with officials. In January there was a fresh shuffling of officers, and I was removed to a battery encamped on the banks of the Belbék, 7 miles from Sevastopol. There I got into hot water: the nastiest set of officers in the battery; a Commander who, though good-hearted, was violent and coarse; no comforts, and it was cold in the earth huts. Not a single book, nor a single man with whom one could talk; and there I received the Rs. 1500 [= about £180 at that time] for the newspaper, sanction for which had already been refused; and there I lost Rs. 2500, and thereby proved to all the world that I am still an empty fellow, and though the previous circumstances may be taken into account in mitigation, the case is still a very, very bad one. In March it became warmer, and a good fellow, an excellent man, Brenévsky, joined the battery. I began to recover myself; and on 1 April, at the very time of the bombardment, the battery was moved to Sevastopol, and I quite recovered myself. There, till 15 May (o.s.) I was in serious danger, _i.e._ for four days at a time, at intervals of eight days, I was in charge of a battery in the 4th Bastion; but it was spring and the weather was excellent, there was abundance of impressions and of people, all the comforts of life, and we formed a capital circle of well-bred fellows; so that those six weeks will remain among my pleasantest recollections. On 15 May Gortchakóf, or the Commander of the Artillery, took it into his head to entrust me with the formation and command of a mountain platoon at Belbék, 14 miles from Sevastopol, with which arrangement I am up to the present extremely well satisfied in many respects.

The transfer of Tolstoy from Sevastopol to Belbék was not, as he supposed when he wrote this letter, a whim of Gortchakóf's or of the Commander of the Artillery, but a result of his having written the first of his three sketches of the siege of Sevastopol, _Sevastopol in December_. The article, though not published in the _Contemporary_ till June, had been read in proof by the Emperor Alexander II [Nicholas had died 2nd March, n.s.], and had caused him to give instructions to 'take care of the life of that young man,' with the result that Tolstoy was removed from Sevastopol. The Dowager Empress Alexándra Fédorovna also read the story and, it is said, wept over it.

It was, perhaps, at this time (though I am not sure of the date) that Tolstoy found himself obliged to consent to the sale of the large wooden house in which he had been born, for the wretched price of 5000 'assignation roubles' (about £170). The house was taken to pieces, and removed to the estate of the purchaser, where it still stands, though not now in use.

Apropos of the above letter it should be mentioned that the Fourth Bastion was the one English writers call 'the Flagstaff Bastion.' It formed the southernmost point of the fortifications, as a glance at the accompanying map will show, and it was for a long time the point exposed to the fiercest fire.

Throughout the siege Tolstoy was accompanied by Alexis, one of the four serfs presented to the young Tolstoys when they entered the University. This man (who figures in more than one of Tolstoy's works under the name of Alyósha) brought him his rations to the bastion, a duty involving considerable danger. What the bastions were like in the first months of the siege, we learn from the following passages in the first part of _Sevastopol_:

[Illustration]

...You want to get quickly to the bastions, especially to that Fourth Bastion about which you have been told so many and such different tales. When any one says, 'I am going to the Fourth Bastion,' a slight agitation or a too marked indifference is always noticeable in him; if men are joking they say, 'You should be sent to the Fourth Bastion.' When you meet some one carried on a stretcher, and ask, 'Where from?' the answer usually is, 'From the Fourth Bastion.'...

...Beyond this barricade the houses on both sides of the street are unoccupied: there are no signboards, the doors are boarded up, the windows smashed; here a corner of the walls is knocked down, and there a roof is broken in. The buildings look like old veterans who have borne much sorrow and privation; they even seem to gaze proudly and somewhat contemptuously at you. On the road you stumble over cannon-balls that lie about, and into holes full of water, made in the stony ground by bombs. You meet and overtake detachments of soldiers, Cossacks, officers, and occasionally a woman or a child--only it will not be a woman wearing a bonnet, but a sailor's wife wearing an old cloak and soldier's boots. Farther along the same street, after you have descended a little slope, you will notice that there are now no houses, but only ruined walls in strange heaps of bricks, boards, clay and beams, and before you, up a steep hill, you see a black untidy space cut up by ditches. This space you are approaching is the Fourth Bastion.... Here you will meet still fewer people and no women at all, the soldiers walk briskly by, traces of blood may be seen on the road, and you are sure to meet four soldiers carrying a stretcher, and on the stretcher probably a pale, yellow face and a blood-stained overcoat....

The whiz of cannon-ball or bomb near by, impresses you unpleasantly as you ascend the hill, and you at once understand the meaning of the sounds very differently from when they reached you in the town.... You have hardly gone a little way up, when bullets begin to whiz past you right and left, and you will perhaps consider whether you had not better walk inside the trench which runs parallel to the road; but the trench is full of such yellow, liquid, stinking mud, more than knee deep, that you are sure to choose the road, especially as _everybody_ keeps to the road. After walking a couple of hundred yards, you come to a muddy place much cut up, surrounded by gabions, cellars, platforms, and dug-outs, and on which large cast-iron cannon are mounted, and cannon-balls lie piled in orderly heaps. All seems placed without any aim, connection, or order. Here a group of sailors are sitting in the battery; here, in the middle of the open space, half sunk in mud, lies a shattered cannon; and there a foot-soldier is crossing the battery, drawing his feet with difficulty out of the sticky mud. Everywhere, on all sides and all about, you see bomb-fragments, unexploded bombs, cannon-balls, and various traces of an encampment, all sunk in the liquid, sticky mud. You think you hear the thud of a cannon-ball not far off, and you seem to hear the different sounds of bullets all around--some humming like bees, some whistling, and some rapidly flying past with a shrill screech like the string of some instrument. You hear the awful boom of a shot which sends a shock all through you, and seems most dreadful.

'So this is it, the Fourth Bastion! This is that terrible, truly dreadful spot!' So you think, experiencing a slight feeling of pride and a strong feeling of suppressed fear. But you are mistaken; this is still not the Fourth Bastion. This is only the Yazónovsky Redoubt--comparatively a very safe and not at all dreadful place. To get to the Fourth Bastion you must turn to the right, along that narrow trench, where a foot-soldier, stooping down, has just passed. In this trench you may again meet men with stretchers, and perhaps a sailor or a soldier with spades. You will see the mouths of mines, dug-outs into which only two men can crawl, and there you will see the Cossacks of the Black Sea Battalions, changing their boots, eating, smoking their pipes, and, in short, living. And you will see again the same stinking mud, the traces of camp life, and cast-iron refuse of every shape and form. When you have gone some three hundred steps more, you come out at another battery--a flat space with many holes, surrounded with gabions filled with earth, and cannons on platforms, and the whole walled in with earthworks. Here you will perhaps see four or five soldiers playing cards under shelter of the breastworks; and a naval officer, noticing that you are a stranger and inquisitive, is pleased to show you his 'household' and everything that can interest you.... He will tell you (but only if you ask) about the bombardment on the 5th of October; will tell you how only one gun in his battery remained usable and only eight gunners were left of the whole crew, and how, all the same, next morning, the 6th, he fired all his guns. He will tell you how a bomb dropped into one of the dug-outs and knocked over eleven sailors; he will show you from an embrasure the enemy's batteries and trenches, which are here not more than seventy-five to eighty-five yards distant. I am afraid, though, that when you lean out of the embrasure to have a look at the enemy, you will, under the influence of the whizzing bullets, not see anything; but if you do see anything, you will be much surprised to find that this whitish stone wall which is so near you, and from which puffs of white smoke keep bursting--that this white wall is the enemy: is _him_, as the soldiers and sailors say.

It is even very likely that the naval officer, from vanity, or merely for a little recreation, will wish to show you some firing. 'Call the gunner and crew to the cannon'; and fourteen sailors--clattering their hob-nailed boots on the platform, one putting his pipe in his pocket, another still chewing a rusk--quickly and cheerfully man the gun and begin loading.

Suddenly the most fearful roar strikes not only your ears but your whole being, and makes you shudder all over. It is followed by the whistle of the departing ball, and a thick cloud of powder-smoke envelops you, the platform, and the moving black figures of the sailors. You will hear various comments by the sailors concerning this shot of ours, and you will notice their animation, the evidences of a feeling which you had not perhaps expected: the feeling of animosity and thirst for vengeance which lies hidden in each man's soul. You will hear joyful exclamations: 'It's gone right into the embrasure! It's killed two, I think.... There, they're carrying them off!' 'And now _he's_ riled, and will send one this way,' some one remarks; and really, soon after, you will see before you a flash and some smoke; the sentinel standing on the breastwork will call out 'Ca-n-non,' and then a ball will whiz past you and squash into the earth, throwing out a circle of stones and mud. The commander of the battery will be irritated by this shot and will give orders to fire another and another cannon, the enemy will reply in like manner, and you will experience interesting sensations and see interesting sights. The sentinel will again call 'Cannon!' and you will have the same sound and shock, and the mud will be splashed round as before. Or he will call out 'Mortar!' and you will hear the regular and rather pleasant whistle--which it is difficult to connect with the thought of anything dreadful--of a bomb; you will hear this whistle coming nearer and faster towards you, then you will see a black ball, feel the shock as it strikes the ground, and will hear the ringing explosion. The bomb will fly apart into whizzing and shrieking fragments, stones will rattle into the air, and you will be bespattered with mud.

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.