The hidden warmth of patriotism in L. N. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace"

Tolstoy first thought of calling his novel The Decembrists, and the action of the novel was to begin in 1856, with the return of the Decembrist from exile. But soon the writer left what he started, as he felt the need to explain the fate of his hero. He began to write from 1825 - the time of the Decembrist uprising, but soon abandoned this idea, as it was necessary to show the origins, the origin of Decembrist thoughts. These origins coincided with the Patriotic War of 1812. The writer explored this era, addressed many people and events.

Before proceeding to describe the war, he studies a large number of archival documents, historical writings, private correspondence, makes a trip to the Borodino field in September 1867.

The epic "War and Peace" tells about two wars, but main topic This is the War of 1812. It was a just people's war of the Russian people against the Napoleonic invasion. The writer shows us the participation in the war of most sections of the Russian population, their common patriotic impulse, which led to the defeat of the French troops.

All heroes are tested by the events of the culminating episode - the Battle of Borodino. This episode will be the main one, all events - both battle and main ones - will be connected with it. In the battle of Borodino reveals potential strength people, its essence in the face of death.

The main property in this war is the "hidden warmth of patriotism." All heroes are tested by this feeling: both positive and negative. battle of Borodino given mainly through Pierre's perception. This awkward, kind, naive person who has never seen a war is for Tolstoy a wonderful object of perception of the true meaning of a people's battle without any prejudice. military environment.

In depicting the battle of Borodino, Tolstoy uses his favorite technique - first he gives a view from above, and then from the inside of the battle. This is achieved by transmitting Pierre's observations. Twice Pierre covers the entire field of Borodino with his eyes: before the battle and during the battle. But both times his eye sees not a position, but, in the words of Tolstoy, "a living area."

Especially keenly Pierre felt the power of popular patriotism. Folk and soldier scenes are also given through Pierre's perception, and this informs the image great strength. The immediacy, simplicity, sincerity of Pierre in this case serve in Tolstoy as witnesses to the greatest truth: the people are the main force of the battle of Borodino.

The writer was convinced that "the reason for our triumph was not accidental, but lay in the essence of the character of the Russian people and troops." Tolstoy has a clear and moral criterion: "I love the thought of the people as a result of the war of 1812." The attitude of a person to the people, his proximity or distance from him is the main thing for Tolstoy. The author says that blessed is the people who do not follow the rules of war, but grab a heavy club and beat it until they drive out the last invader: “... The club people's war rose with all its formidable and majestic strength and, without asking anyone's tastes and rules, with stupid simplicity, but with expediency, without understanding anything, rose, fell and nailed the French until the entire invasion died.

Though the main objective in the battle was not achieved - the Russians retreated, but morally they won. For the Russian army, the battle was meaningless, since they lost half of the soldiers (fifty thousand people), but also for French troops it was also meaningless - they did not reach the goal: they did not defeat the troops, they did not win. After the French themselves fled from Russian soil.

In the epilogue, Tolstoy talks about the collision of two nuclei - a larger and a smaller mass. A large nucleus will move the small one away and move further, but if the resistance force of the small nucleus is large, then by inertia it will roll back. What happened in the battle of Borodino.

According to Tolstoy, it is impossible to explain the outbreak of war by someone's separate will, for example, by the will of Napoleon. Napoleon is objectively involved in this event in the same way as any corporal who goes to war that day. The war was inevitable, it began according to the invisible historical will, which was made up of "billions of wills." The role of the individual in history is practically negligible. How more people connected with others, the more they serve "necessity", that is, their will is intertwined with other wills and becomes less free. Therefore, public and statesmen are the least subjectively free: "The Tsar is a slave of history." Napoleon is mistaken when he thinks that he can influence the course of events: "... The course of world events is predetermined from above, depends on the coincidence of all the arbitrariness of the people participating in these events, and ... the influence of Napoleons on the course of these events is only external and fictitious."

No matter how active Napoleon is before the battle - he writes the disposition, gives orders, manages everything, everything is taken into account with him - but it doesn’t happen at all the way he would like, he feels powerless.

Kutuzov is right in that he prefers to strictly follow an objective process, and not to impose his own line, “not to interfere” with what should happen. He himself does nothing at all, on the contrary, during the battle he sits and eats fried chicken: “He did not make any orders, but only agreed or disagreed with what was offered to him, therefore, he made a choice and made a movement with his consent.” He understood the spirit of the people and guided them...

The war turns out not to be a duel between Napoleon and Alexander or Kutuzov. This is a duel of two principles - aggressive, destructive and harmonious, creative. On the one hand, war is the opposite of everything. human event, on the other hand, this objective reality, meaning personal experience for the characters.

Patriotism, according to L. N. Tolstoy, is not loud words, not noisy activity and fussiness, but simple and natural feeling"the need for sacrifice and compassion in the consciousness of a common misfortune." This feeling is common to Natasha and Pierre, it possessed Petya Rostov when he rejoiced that he was in Moscow, where there would soon be a battle; the same feeling attracted the crowd to the house of Count Rostopchin, who had deceived her, because people from the crowd wanted to fight Napoleon. At the heart of all these actions, for all their difference, there was one feeling - patriotism. No one forced the Muscovites to leave, on the contrary, Count Rostopchin persuaded them to stay and called those who left the city cowards. But they went, “because for the Russian people there could be no question: will it be good or bad under the control of the French in Moscow? It was impossible to be under the French: it was the worst of all ... ”As it turned out, the author writes, under tragic circumstances, people still turn out to be better than one might think:“ I won’t submit to Napoleon, ”said those from whom no one expected this behaviour. And when Napoleon on September 2, 1812 stood on Poklonnaya Hill, waiting for the deputation of the boyars with the keys to Moscow, he could not imagine that it was empty. No, my Moscow did not go To him with a guilty head. Not a holiday, not an accepting gift, She was preparing a fire for an impatient hero ... - this is how Pushkin wrote. On the way to the Borodino field, where decisive battle, Pierre Bezukhov saw and heard a lot. The words were simple and understandable, they were spoken by the militia: “They want to pile on all the people ...” Tolstoy believes that patriotism is a natural feeling of people living the life of their people. Therefore, he refuses it to Berg, Kuragin, Rostopchin. Natasha cannot and does not want to understand a mother who “at such a moment” thinks about her property and forbids unloading the carts on which she wants to take “the remaining good” out of Moscow. The daughter thinks of the wounded, who cannot be left to the French. It was "wild and unnatural" to think of oneself. “The countess understood this and was ashamed,” writes Tolstoy. This is how the author answers the question of what patriotism is, and wants to be understood by readers. The description of the Battle of Borodino, which occupies twenty chapters of the third volume of the novel, is the center of the work, a decisive moment in the life of the whole country and many heroes of the book. Here all paths will cross, here each character will be revealed in a new way, and here an enormous force will appear: the people, "men in white shirts" - the force that won the war. On the faces of the people that Pierre saw, there was "an expression of awareness of the solemnity of the coming minute", there was "a hidden warmth of patriotism ... which explained why these people were calmly and as if thoughtlessly preparing for death." What determined this victory? Tolstoy believes: not command orders, not plans, but many simple, natural actions individual people: the fact that the men Karp and Vlas did not bring hay to Moscow for good money, but burned it, that the partisans destroyed great army Napoleon in parts that partisan detachments"there were hundreds of different sizes and characters ..." Tolstoy quite accurately understood the meaning of that feeling, under the influence of which the guerrilla war: patriotism of the people. Growing out of this feeling, “the cudgel of the people’s war rose with all its formidable and majestic strength and, without understanding anything, rose, fell and nailed the French until the entire invasion perished.” Is this not a great feeling of patriotism shown by the people in the Patriotic War of 1812? L. N. Tolstoy opened so many springs to readers human behavior, in particular patriotism, which today is simply not spoken about or spoken about shamefully. But this is a proud feeling that allows a person to feel his involvement in time, events, life, to determine his position in it. It would seem that what is common between the time, about which L. N. Tolstoy wrote, and ours, between the war of 1812 and 1941? In 1812 there were no bombs, no planes, there were no horrors and atrocities of Majdanek, Buchenwald, Mauthausen - death camps. But why, then, in the dugouts and hospitals of the forty-first, with blockade oil lamps, people read "War and Peace" as the most "today's" book for them, why was Lermontov's "Borodino" the favorite poem - from a first grader to a general for the long four years of the war? LN Tolstoy also wrote about us, because he knew something about a person that was enough for more than a hundred years. And when the Great Patriotic War, it turned out that Tolstoy said something very important about each person, and people rushed to him. We still have to draw and draw from the inexhaustible source of his book spiritual strength, steadfastness and that complex feeling that is called patriotism.

Patriotism, according to L. N. Tolstoy, is not loud words, not noisy activity and fussiness, but a simple and natural feeling of "the need for sacrifice and compassion in the consciousness of a common misfortune." This feeling is common to Natasha and Pierre, it possessed Petya Rostov when he rejoiced that he was in Moscow, where there would soon be a battle; the same feeling attracted the crowd to the house of Count Rostopchin, who had deceived her, because people from the crowd wanted to fight Napoleon. At the heart of all these actions, for all their differences, there was one feeling - patriotism.

No one forced the Muscovites to leave, on the contrary, Count Rostopchin persuaded them to stay and called those who left the city cowards. But they went, “because for the Russian people there could be no question: will it be good or bad under the control of the French in Moscow? It was impossible to be under the French: it was the worst of all ... "

As it turned out, the author writes, under tragic circumstances, people still turn out to be better than one might think: “I will not submit to Napoleon,” said those from whom no one expected such behavior. And when Napoleon stood on Poklonnaya Hill on September 2, 1812, waiting for the deputation of the boyars with the keys to Moscow, he could not imagine that it was empty.

No, my Moscow did not go To him with a guilty head. Not a holiday, not an accepting gift, She was preparing a fire for an impatient hero... —

so wrote A. S. Pushkin.

On the way to the Borodino field, where the decisive battle was being prepared, Pierre Bezukhov saw and heard a lot. The words were simple and understandable, they were spoken by the militia: “They want to pile on all the people ...”

Tolstoy believes that patriotism is a natural feeling of people living the life of their people. Therefore, he refuses it to Berg, Kuragin, Rostopchin.

Natasha cannot and does not want to understand a mother who “at such a moment” thinks about her property and forbids unloading the carts on which she wants to take “the remaining good” out of Moscow. The daughter thinks of the wounded, who cannot be left to the French. It was "wild and unnatural" to think of oneself. “The countess understood this and was ashamed,” writes Tolstoy.

The description of the Battle of Borodino, which occupies twenty chapters of the third volume of the novel, is the center of the work, a decisive moment in the life of the whole country and many heroes of the book. Here all paths will cross, here every character will be revealed in a new way, and here an enormous force will appear: the people, “men in white shirts” – the force that won the war. On the faces of the people that Pierre saw, there was "an expression of awareness of the solemnity of the coming minute", there was "a hidden warmth of patriotism ... which explained why these people were calmly and as if thoughtlessly preparing for death."

What determined this victory? Tolstoy believes: not command orders, not plans, but a lot of simple, natural actions of individuals: the fact that the peasants Karp and Vlas did not bring hay to Moscow for good money, but burned it, that the partisans destroyed Napoleon's great army in parts, that there were hundreds of partisan detachments "of various sizes and characters ..."

Tolstoy quite accurately understood the meaning of that feeling under the influence of which the guerrilla war began: the patriotism of the people. Growing out of this feeling, “the cudgel of the people’s war rose with all its formidable and majestic strength and, without understanding anything, rose, fell and nailed the French until the entire invasion perished.” Is this not a great feeling of patriotism shown by the people in the Patriotic War of 1812?

L. N. Tolstoy opened to readers so many springs of human behavior, in particular patriotism, which today is simply not talked about or spoken about shamefully. But this is a proud feeling that allows a person to feel his involvement in time, events, life, to determine his position in it. material from the site

It would seem that what is common between the time, about which L. N. Tolstoy wrote, and ours, between the war of 1812 and 1941? In 1812 there were no bombs, no planes, there were no horrors and atrocities of Majdanek, Buchenwald, Mauthausen - death camps. But why, then, in the dugouts and hospitals of the forty-first, with blockade oil lamps, people read "War and Peace" as the most "today's" book for them, why was Lermontov's "Borodino" the favorite poem - from a first-grader to a general for the long four years of the war?

LN Tolstoy also wrote about us, because he knew something about a person that was enough for more than a hundred years. And when the Great Patriotic War began, it turned out that Tolstoy said something very important about every person, and people rushed to him. We still have to draw and draw from the inexhaustible source of his book spiritual strength, steadfastness and that complex feeling that is called patriotism.

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Thoughts the simplest, clearest and therefore terrible thoughts did not leave him [Prince Andrei] alone. He knew that tomorrow's battle was to be the most terrible of all those in which he participated, and the possibility of death for the first time in his life, without any regard for worldly, without considerations of how it would affect others, but only in relation to himself, to his soul, with liveliness, almost with certainty, simply and terribly, she presented herself to him. And from the height of this idea, everything that had previously tormented and occupied him was suddenly illuminated by a cold white light, without shadows, without perspective, without distinction of outlines. All life seemed to him like a magic lantern, into which he looked for a long time through glass and under artificial light. Now he suddenly saw, without glass, in bright daylight, these badly painted pictures. “Yes, yes, here they are, those false images that excited and delighted and tormented me,” he said to himself, turning over in his imagination the main pictures of his magic lantern of life, now looking at them in this cold white light of day - clear thought about death. - Here they are, these roughly painted figures, which seemed to be something beautiful and mysterious. Glory, public good, love for a woman, the fatherland itself - how great these pictures seemed to me, what deep meaning they seemed to be completed! And it's all so simple, pale and crude in the cold white light of that morning that I feel is rising for me." The three main sorrows of his life in particular caught his attention. His love for a woman, the death of his father and the French invasion that captured half of Russia. “Love! .. This girl, who seemed to me full of mysterious powers. How I loved her! I made poetic plans about love, about happiness with her. O dear boy! he said out loud angrily. — How! I believed in some ideal love that was supposed to keep her faithful to me for whole year my absence! Like the gentle dove of a fable, she must have withered away from me. And all this is much simpler ... All this is terribly simple, disgusting!
My father also built in the Bald Mountains and thought that this was his place, his land, his air, his peasants; and Napoleon came and, not knowing about his existence, like a chip from the road, pushed him, and his Bald Mountains and his whole life fell apart. And Princess Marya says that this is a test sent from above. What is the test for, when it no longer exists and will not exist? never again! He is not! So who is this test for? Fatherland, death of Moscow! And tomorrow he will kill me - and not even a Frenchman, but his own, as yesterday a soldier emptied a gun near my ear, and the French will come, take me by the legs and by the head and throw me into a pit so that I don’t stink under their noses, and new conditions will develop lives that will also be familiar to others, and I will not know about them, and I will not be.
He looked at the strip of birch trees, with their motionless yellowness, greenery and white bark, shining in the sun. "To die so that they would kill me tomorrow, so that I would not be ... so that all this would be, but I would not be." He vividly imagined the absence of himself in this life. And these birches with their light and shadow, and these curly clouds, and this smoke of bonfires - everything around was transformed for him and seemed to be something terrible and threatening. Frost ran down his back. Rising quickly, he went out of the shed and began to walk.
[…]
Prince Andrei, looking out of the shed, saw Pierre coming up to him, who stumbled on a lying pole and almost fell. It was generally unpleasant for Prince Andrei to see people from his world, especially Pierre, who reminded him of all those difficult moments that he experienced on his last visit to Moscow..

[...] How should I tell you... Well, your father has a German lackey, and he is an excellent lackey and will satisfy all his needs better than you, and let him serve; but if your father is ill at death, you will drive away the footman and with your unaccustomed, clumsy hands you will begin to follow your father and calm him better than a skilled, but a stranger. That's what they did with Barclay. While Russia was healthy, a stranger could serve her, and there was a wonderful minister, but as soon as she was in danger, she needed her own, native person. And in your club they invented that he was a traitor! By being slandered as a traitor, they will only do what later, ashamed of their false reprimand, they will suddenly make a hero or a genius out of traitors, which will be even more unfair. He is an honest and very accurate German...

“However,” he [Pierre] said, “they say that war is like a chess game.
“Yes,” said Prince Andrei, “with the only slight difference that in chess you can think as much as you like about each step, that you are there outside the conditions of time, and with the difference that a knight is always stronger than a pawn and two pawns are always stronger.” one, and in war one battalion is sometimes stronger than a division, and sometimes weaker than a company. Relative strength troops may not be known to anyone. Believe me,” he said, “if anything depended on the orders of the headquarters, then I would be there and make orders, but instead I have the honor to serve here, in the regiment with these gentlemen, and I think that we really tomorrow will depend, and not on them ... Success has never depended and will not depend either on position, or on weapons, or even on numbers; and least of all from the position.
- And from what?
“From the feeling that is in me, in him,” he pointed to Timokhin, “in every soldier.
[…]
— The battle will be won by those who are determined to win it.. Why did we lose the battle near Austerlitz? Our loss was almost equal to that of the French, but we told ourselves very early that we had lost the battle, and we did. And we said this because we had no reason to fight there: we wanted to leave the battlefield as soon as possible. "We lost - well, run away!" - we ran. If we had not said this before evening, God knows what would have happened. We won't say that tomorrow. You say: our position, the left flank is weak, the right flank is extended,” he continued, “all this is nonsense, there is nothing of it. And what do we have tomorrow? One hundred million of the most varied accidents that will be solved instantly by the fact that they or ours ran or run, that they kill one, kill another; and what is being done now is all fun. The fact is that those with whom you traveled around the position not only do not contribute general course affairs, but hinder him. They are only concerned with their little interests.
[…]
This is what I told you - these gentlemen Germans will not win the battle tomorrow, but will only tell how much their strength will be, because in his German head there are only arguments that are not worth a damn, and in his heart there is nothing that alone and you need it for tomorrow - what is in Timokhin. They gave all of Europe to him and came to teach us - glorious teachers!

... The question that had been troubling Pierre from Mozhaisk Mountain all that day now seemed to him completely clear and completely resolved. He now understood the whole meaning and significance of this war and the forthcoming battle. Everything that he saw that day, all the significant, stern expressions of faces that he caught a glimpse of, lit up for him with a new light. He understood that latent (latente), as they say in physics, warmth of patriotism, which was in all those people whom he saw, and which explained to him why all these people calmly and, as it were, thoughtlessly prepared for death.

[Notes:
Tolstoy has in mind a concept that was later defined internal energy body, dependent only on his internal state. On this subject, in The Second Russian Book for Reading, he wrote a discourse called "Heat" (vol. 21, pp. 173-174). it physical definition translated by Tolstoy into the sphere public relations. "The hidden warmth of patriotism" is, according to the writer, an integral feature of the Russian national character and explains in the end the reasons for Russia's victory over Napoleon.]
“Do not take prisoners,” continued Prince Andrei. “That alone would change the whole war and make it less brutal. And then we played war - that's what's bad, we are magnanimous and the like. This generosity and sensitivity is like the generosity and sensitivity of a lady, with whom she becomes faint when she sees a calf being killed; she is so kind that she cannot see the blood, but she eats this calf with sauce with gusto. They talk to us about the rights of war, about chivalry, about parliamentary work, to spare the unfortunate, and so on. All nonsense. In 1805 I saw chivalry, parliamentarianism: they cheated us, we cheated. They rob other people's houses, let out fake banknotes, and worst of all, they kill my children, my father and talk about the rules of war and generosity towards enemies. Do not take prisoners, but kill and go to your death! Who came to this the way I did, the same suffering...

War is not a courtesy, but the most disgusting thing in life, and one must understand this and not play war. This terrible necessity must be taken strictly and seriously. It's all about this: put aside lies, and war is war, not a toy. Otherwise, war is the favorite pastime of idle and frivolous people... The military class is the most honorable. And what is war, what is needed for success in military affairs, what are the morals of a military society? The purpose of the war is murder, the weapons of war are espionage, treason and encouragement, the ruin of the inhabitants, robbing them or stealing for the food of the army; deceit and lies, called stratagems; the mores of the military class - lack of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, depravity, drunkenness. And despite that - this is the highest class, revered by all. All kings, except the Chinese, wear a military uniform, and the one who killed the most people is given a greater reward... They will come together, as tomorrow, to kill each other, kill, maim tens of thousands of people, and then they will serve thanksgiving prayers for having beaten many people (whose number is still being added), and proclaim victory, believing that the more people are beaten, the more merit. How God watches and listens to them from there! Prince Andrei shouted in a thin, squeaky voice. - Ah, my soul, recent times It became hard for me to live. I see that I began to understand too much. BUT it is not fit for a man to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...

Thoughts the simplest, clearest and therefore terrible thoughts did not leave him [Prince Andrei] alone. He knew that tomorrow's battle was to be the most terrible of all those in which he participated, and the possibility of death for the first time in his life, without any regard for worldly, without considerations of how it would affect others, but only in relation to himself, to his soul, with liveliness, almost with certainty, simply and terribly, she presented herself to him. And from the height of this idea, everything that had previously tormented and occupied him was suddenly illuminated by a cold white light, without shadows, without perspective, without distinction of outlines. All life seemed to him like a magic lantern, into which he looked for a long time through glass and under artificial light. Now he suddenly saw, without glass, in bright daylight, these badly painted pictures. “Yes, yes, here are those false images that excited and delighted and tormented me,” he said to himself, turning over in his imagination the main pictures of his magic lantern of life, now looking at them in this cold white daylight - a clear thought of death. - Here they are, these roughly painted figures, which seemed to be something beautiful and mysterious. Glory, public good, love for a woman, the fatherland itself - how great these pictures seemed to me, what deep meaning they seemed to be filled with! And it's all so simple, pale and crude in the cold white light of that morning that I feel is rising for me." The three main sorrows of his life in particular caught his attention. His love for a woman, the death of his father and the French invasion that captured half of Russia. “Love! .. This girl, who seemed to me full of mysterious powers. How I loved her! I made poetic plans about love, about happiness with her. O dear boy! he said out loud angrily. — How! I believed in some kind of ideal love, which was supposed to keep her faithful to me during the whole year of my absence! Like the gentle dove of a fable, she must have withered away from me. And all this is much simpler ... All this is terribly simple, disgusting!
My father also built in the Bald Mountains and thought that this was his place, his land, his air, his peasants; and Napoleon came and, not knowing about his existence, like a chip from the road, pushed him, and his Bald Mountains and his whole life fell apart. And Princess Marya says that this is a test sent from above. What is the test for, when it no longer exists and will not exist? never again! He is not! So who is this test for? Fatherland, death of Moscow! And tomorrow he will kill me - and not even a Frenchman, but his own, as yesterday a soldier emptied a gun near my ear, and the French will come, take me by the legs and by the head and throw me into a pit so that I don’t stink under their noses, and new conditions will develop lives that will also be familiar to others, and I will not know about them, and I will not be.
He looked at the strip of birch trees, with their motionless yellowness, greenery and white bark, shining in the sun. "To die so that they would kill me tomorrow, so that I would not be ... so that all this would be, but I would not be." He vividly imagined the absence of himself in this life. And these birches with their light and shadow, and these curly clouds, and this smoke of bonfires - everything around was transformed for him and seemed to be something terrible and threatening. Frost ran down his back. Rising quickly, he went out of the shed and began to walk.
[…]
Prince Andrei, looking out of the shed, saw Pierre coming up to him, who stumbled on a lying pole and almost fell. It was generally unpleasant for Prince Andrei to see people from his world, especially Pierre, who reminded him of all those difficult moments that he experienced on his last visit to Moscow..

[...] How should I tell you... Well, your father has a German lackey, and he is an excellent lackey and will satisfy all his needs better than you, and let him serve; but if your father is ill at death, you will drive away the footman and with your unaccustomed, clumsy hands you will begin to follow your father and calm him better than a skilled, but a stranger. That's what they did with Barclay. As long as Russia was healthy, a stranger could serve her, and there was an excellent minister, but as soon as she was in danger, she needed her own, dear person. And in your club they invented that he was a traitor! By being slandered as a traitor, they will only do what later, ashamed of their false reprimand, they will suddenly make a hero or a genius out of traitors, which will be even more unfair. He is an honest and very accurate German...

“However,” he [Pierre] said, “they say that war is like a chess game.
“Yes,” said Prince Andrei, “with the only slight difference that in chess you can think as much as you like about each step, that you are there outside the conditions of time, and with the difference that a knight is always stronger than a pawn and two pawns are always stronger.” one, and in war one battalion is sometimes stronger than a division, and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of the troops cannot be known to anyone. Believe me,” he said, “if anything depended on the orders of the headquarters, then I would be there and make orders, but instead I have the honor to serve here, in the regiment with these gentlemen, and I think that we really tomorrow will depend, and not on them ... Success has never depended and will not depend either on position, or on weapons, or even on numbers; and least of all from the position.
- And from what?
“From the feeling that is in me, in him,” he pointed to Timokhin, “in every soldier.
[…]
— The battle will be won by those who are determined to win it.. Why did we lose the battle near Austerlitz? Our loss was almost equal to that of the French, but we told ourselves very early that we had lost the battle, and we did. And we said this because we had no reason to fight there: we wanted to leave the battlefield as soon as possible. "We lost - well, run away!" - we ran. If we had not said this before evening, God knows what would have happened. We won't say that tomorrow. You say: our position, the left flank is weak, the right flank is extended,” he continued, “all this is nonsense, there is nothing of it. And what do we have tomorrow? One hundred million of the most varied accidents that will be solved instantly by the fact that they or ours ran or run, that they kill one, kill another; and what is being done now is all fun. The fact is that those with whom you traveled around the position not only do not contribute to the general course of affairs, but interfere with it. They are only concerned with their little interests.
[…]
This is what I told you - these gentlemen Germans will not win the battle tomorrow, but will only tell how much their strength will be, because in his German head there are only arguments that are not worth a damn, and in his heart there is nothing that alone and you need it for tomorrow - what is in Timokhin. They gave all of Europe to him and came to teach us - glorious teachers!

... The question that had been troubling Pierre from Mozhaisk Mountain all that day now seemed to him completely clear and completely resolved. He now understood the whole meaning and significance of this war and the forthcoming battle. Everything that he saw that day, all the significant, stern expressions of faces that he caught a glimpse of, lit up for him with a new light. He understood that latent (latente), as they say in physics, warmth of patriotism, which was in all those people whom he saw, and which explained to him why all these people calmly and, as it were, thoughtlessly prepared for death.

[Notes:
Tolstoy has in mind the concept, which later received the definition of the internal energy of the body, depending only on its internal state. On this subject, in The Second Russian Book for Reading, he wrote a discourse called "Heat" (vol. 21, pp. 173-174). This physical definition is translated by Tolstoy into the sphere of social relations. "The hidden warmth of patriotism" is, according to the writer, an integral feature of the Russian national character and ultimately explains the reasons for Russia's victory over Napoleon.]
“Do not take prisoners,” continued Prince Andrei. “That alone would change the whole war and make it less brutal. And then we played war - that's what's bad, we are magnanimous and the like. This generosity and sensitivity is like the generosity and sensitivity of a lady, with whom she becomes faint when she sees a calf being killed; she is so kind that she cannot see the blood, but she eats this calf with sauce with gusto. They talk to us about the rights of war, about chivalry, about parliamentary work, to spare the unfortunate, and so on. All nonsense. In 1805 I saw chivalry, parliamentarianism: they cheated us, we cheated. They rob other people's houses, let out fake banknotes, and worst of all, they kill my children, my father and talk about the rules of war and generosity towards enemies. Do not take prisoners, but kill and go to your death! Who came to this the way I did, the same suffering...

War is not a courtesy, but the most disgusting thing in life, and one must understand this and not play war. This terrible necessity must be taken strictly and seriously. It's all about this: put aside lies, and war is war, not a toy. Otherwise, war is the favorite pastime of idle and frivolous people... The military class is the most honorable. And what is war, what is needed for success in military affairs, what are the morals of a military society? The purpose of the war is murder, the weapons of war are espionage, treason and encouragement, the ruin of the inhabitants, robbing them or stealing for the food of the army; deceit and lies, called stratagems; the mores of the military class - lack of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, depravity, drunkenness. And despite that - this is the highest class, revered by all. All kings, except the Chinese, wear a military uniform, and the one who killed the most people is given a greater reward... They will come together, as tomorrow, to kill each other, kill, maim tens of thousands of people, and then they will serve thanksgiving prayers for having beaten many people (whose number is still being added), and proclaim victory, believing that the more people are beaten, the more merit. How God watches and listens to them from there! Prince Andrei shouted in a thin, squeaky voice. “Ah, my soul, lately it has become hard for me to live. I see that I began to understand too much. BUT it is not fit for a man to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...