War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [797]
COUNT LEO TOLSTOY
The Russian Archive
March 1868
NOTES
VOLUME I
Part One
1. Gênes et Luques…la famille Buonaparte: In 1797, after his first Italian campaign, Napoleon made Genoa into the Ligurian Republic, which was annexed to France in 1805. Lucca was taken by the French in 1799, and in 1805 became the center of a princedom which Napoleon bestowed upon his sister Marie-Anne-Elisa (1777–1820), married to Felix Bacciochi, who thus became prince of Lucca and Piombino. Anna Pavlovna scornfully uses the Corsican form of Napoleon’s family name, as others will later. He will also be referred to as “Boonapart” and “Bonapartius.”
2. la dépêche de Novosilzoff: In 1804–1805 England, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and the kingdom of Naples planned to form a coalition against France. Napoleon, learning of the plan, made an offer of peace to England. England asked the Russian emperor, Alexander I, to mediate in the negotiations, and he sent his special emissary, Novosiltsev (here and further on called “Novosiltsov”), to Paris for that purpose. On reaching Berlin on 15 June 1805, Novosiltsev learned of Napoleon’s taking of Genoa and Lucca, sent that information in a dispatch to the emperor, and remained in Berlin. No peace was concluded, and in the fall of 1805 war began between France and the Austrian-Russian coalition.
3. Austria…betraying us: Austria had separated itself from Russia in several previous wars, with Turkey in 1787–91, with the French after the Italian campaign of 1799, and in 1801, when Austria signed the peace of Lunéville, which dissolved the second coalition against France.
4. the righteous one: The reference is to the murder of Louis-Antoine, duc d’Enghien (1772–1804), of the princely house of Condé, who lived in emigration in Germany after the revolution. Falsely accusing him of taking part in a plot to assassinate him, Bonaparte had him arrested, condemned by a summary court-martial, and shot. Alexander I was the only European monarch to protest openly against this act.
5. to evacuate Malta: The Mediterranean island of Malta, which since the sixteenth century had belonged to the order of the knights of St. John, was taken by Napoleon in 1798 and by England in 1800. The English refusal to quit the island led to new hostilities in 1803, in which Russia participated against the French.
6. Hardenberg…Haugwitz: Prussia delayed in joining the coalition against Napoleon, who was in the process of conquering the southern and western German principalities. In 1805, Alexander I, sending Russian troops to Austria, ordered them to cross Prussian territory without permission and to act against the Prussian army in case of resistance. In 1805, Hardenberg was the Prussian minister of foreign affairs; Haugwitz was a Prussian diplomat.
7. our dear Wintzingerode: In May 1805 Alexander I sent General F. F. von Wintzingerode to Austria with an overall plan of action for the coalition against Napoleon; it was hoped that he would be able to convince Prussia to join them.
8. the good émigrés: Many members of the French nobility sought refuge abroad during the revolution. Tolstoy’s Mortemart is a composite figure; the actual Mortemarts were a branch of the house of Rochechouart. Montmorency and Rohan are indeed among the highest French nobility.
9. the famous Prince Bolkonsky: Tolstoy took many features of the old Prince Bolkonsky from his maternal grandfather, Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky (1753–1821), a high military dignitary under the empress Catherine the Great, who was disgraced under her son, the emperor Paul I, and retired to his estate. Tolstoy similarly drew features from his paternal grandfather, Count Ilya Andreevich Tolstoy (1757–1820), in portraying Count Ilya