War and Peace: Original Version. Лев Толстой

at which…

      VI

      Natasha was the first to set the tone of Yuletide…

      VII

      The love between Prince Andrei and Natasha and their happiness…

      VIII

      At the beginning of winter, Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky and…

      IX

      In 1811 a French doctor acquired rapid fashionability in Moscow.

      X

      Pierre’s suppositions concerning Boris were correct. Boris could not make…

      XI

      The Rostovs arrived in early February. Natasha had never been…

      XII

      That evening the Rostovs went to the theatre. Natasha had…

      XIII

      In the year of 1811, life in Moscow was very…

      XIV

      The brightly lit drawing room at the Bezukhovs’ house was…

      XV

      After his first meeting with Natasha in Moscow, Pierre had…

      Part VI

      I

      In the spring of 1812, Prince Andrei was in Turkey,…

      II

      The count was in despair. He wrote to send for…

      III

      “My brother sovereign!” Napoleon wrote in the spring of 1812…

      IV

      On the 11th of June at eleven o’clock in the…

      V

      The Russian Emperor and his court had already been living…

      VI

      As he despatched Balashov, the sovereign repeated yet again his…

      VII

      The gloomy soldier Davout was the complete opposite of Murat.

      VIII

      After Balashov had spent four days in solitude, boredom and…

      IX

      After his meeting with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrei went…

      X

      Prince Andrei reached army Central Headquarters on the 13th of…

      XI

      While Prince Andrei was living on the Drissa with nothing…

      XII

      Before the start of the campaign, when the regiment was…

      XIII

      More than a year had passed since Natasha had rejected…

      XIV

      As promised, Pierre came to dinner straight from Count Rostopchin’s…

      XV

      On the twelfth the sovereign arrived in Moscow and from…

      Part VII

      I

      What had to happen was bound to happen. Just as…

      II

      After Prince Andrei’s departure, the old Prince Bolkonsky’s daughter observed…

      III

      Among the countless categories of all the phenomena of life,…

      IV

      While this was taking place in St. Petersburg, the French…

      V

      “The bird returned to its native fields” galloped to the…

      VI

      Between four and five in the evening that day, long…

      VII

      On taking command of the armies, Kutuzov remembered Prince Andrei…

      VIII

      On the 24th of August the French Emperor’s chamberlain, de…

      IX

      The Shevardino redoubt was attacked on the evening of the…

      X

      After the sovereign left Moscow, when that first moment of…

      XI

      On that clear evening of the 25th of August, Prince…

      XII

      At six o’clock it was light. It was a grey…

      XIII

      Prince Andrei was in the reserves, who had been firing…

      XIV

      After the Battle of Borodino, immediately after the battle, the…

      XV

      The following day Napoleon stood on Poklonnaya Hill and looked…

      XVI

      The two princesses (the third had married long ago) had…

      XVII

      In St. Petersburg, after the sovereign’s arrival from Moscow, many…

      XVIII

      On the 1st of October, on the feast of the…

      XIX

      In the middle of September the Rostovs and their transport…

      XX

      After the enemy’s entry into Moscow and the reports denouncing…

      XXI

      During this period, when all the French wanted was to…

      XXII

      Pierre was with this depot among the prisoners. On the…

      XXIII

      One of the first people Andrei met in the army…

      About the Author and Translator

      Praise

      Credits

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

       LEO TOLSTOY Photograph, Moscow, 1868

      INTRODUCTION

      Ben Jonson is said to have criticized Shakespeare when told that ‘hee never blotted out line’, and Sir Walter Scott was similarly an author who wrote with extraordinary rapidity and accuracy. Leo Tolstoy, in contrast, regularly rewrote and restructured much of his work, on occasion spending years immersed in elaborate correction. It is not surprising, therefore, that War and Peace, the longest major Russian novel ever written, occupied the greater part of the decade 1863 to 1873. He had been mulling over the potential of an historical novel some years before that, but his earliest drafts for the book dating from 1863 show that it was then that he decided to write a work whose setting would be the dramatic events associated with Russia’s wars against Napoleon. Two years later he published the first section in the literary journal Russkii Vestnik under the title 1805, and the second entitled War appeared a year later in 1866.

      Although Tolstoy’s prime concern lay with exploration of human character, he was fascinated by the grand drama of historical events. He