Chapter 11
Petya charges into his first battle. He keeps trying to get to the exciting bits, but the enemies are all dead when he arrives. Then Petya is dead, or at least gravely wounded. It is very sudden. Denisov and Dolokhov are dealing with that and their new Russian prisoners who, it turns out, includes Pierre.
Chapter 12
Nothing much has changed with Pierre since we last saw him, at least as far as orders from the French go. They've basically just been travelling to this point, slowly losing bits of the French army and prisoners as they go. Pierre has become more meditative and realised that, actually, being a prisoner really isn't any less free than being married to Helena. He's managing to ignore the men who are being shot or dying of illness, and is quite content.
Chapter 13
We're still with Pierre, on the 22nd of October, strolling through Moscow. There are rotting creatures "from men to horses" lying around everywhere. Pierre is finding it harder to ignore the death around him, and finally has to face his dying friend and fellow prisoner.
Chapter 14
We're still with Pierre as a French marshal with a three-cornered hat goes past. I associate that hat entirely with Napoleon, but I don't think it's Napoleon. There's a gunshot. Pierre doesn't understand its significance - and nor do I - but the French soldiers seem concerned.
Chapter 15
Pierre is reunited with the Russian army. The soldiers and prisoners are very happy to see one another, even those who haven't before met in person. Petya is being buried. He was dead, after all.
Chapter 16
We're doing big picture stuff again now, on October 28th. Mostly about how terribly the French are handling things.
Chapter 17
More big picture stuff. Basically, the French were panicking and ran straight into the Russians.
Chapter 18
Tolstoy does not approve of historians describing any of this as if Napoleon planned it or as if the generals were great or clever. "There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent".
Chapter 19
...and yet, why did the Russians fail to capture or cut off the French? And, if this failure to be captured is a French victory, why did it lead to the defeat of France? Because, according to Tolstoy, the Russians weren't trying to capture the French. The French were running away, that's what Russia wanted. And because you can't "cut off" an army. It's not one thing, it's thousands of people who can each break apart and escape and get through the gaps. Also, the Russians were out of vodka (that sounds like a joke, and I have phrased it more humorously than in the text, but I didn't make it up, it is in there).
Anyway, Tolstoy ascribes the difference between what happened and what historians wrote about to the fact that historians are writing about the beautiful words and plans the generals wrote, and not what actually happened. For example, they never talk about the 50,000 men who dropped out of the war because they were old and sick and couldn't carry on. He describes the Russian army as a whip behind a fleeing animal, held as a threat but not actually needing to strike.
This is the end of part 14! I have three parts left, of 20, 16, and 12 chapters each. We'll see how I get on with them.
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