War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [802]
17. Napoléon: Tolstoy took this letter from L’Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire (“The History of the Consulate and the Empire”), by the French statesman and historian Adolphe Thiers, which was one of his main sources in the writing of War and Peace.
18. only atmosphere: The officers’ conversation about immortality has its source in an article entitled “Man Is Created to Expect Immortality,” by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803). A Russian version, printed in the July 1804 issue of the Vestnik Evropy (“European Messenger”), has been preserved in Tolstoy’s library at Yasnaya Polyana.
19. Napoleon…St. Helena: The source of Napoleon’s words is Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (“The Memorial of St. Helena”), a journal of conversations with Napoleon during his last years in exile on the island of St. Helena (1815–21), kept by Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases (1766–1842) and published in Paris in 1823–24.
20. a unicorn: A smooth-bored muzzle-loading cannon that tapered towards the mouth.
Part Three
1. Potsdam…enemy of the human race: See note 11 to Part Two.
2. Vinesse: A French miniaturist known to have been living in Petersburg in 1812.
3. Arnauti: A Turkish name for the Albanians, who served the Turks as cavalrymen.
4. lost his Latin: Since Dolgorukov is speaking in French, Tolstoy literally translates this French saying for him, which means “to be at a loss” or “to be all at sea.”
5. the old cunctators: The nickname of cunctator (from the Latin cunctatio [“delay”] was given to the Roman general Fabius (ca. 275–203 b.c.), because of his tactic of avoiding direct confrontation with the Carthaginian general Hannibal (247–183 b.c.) as the latter marched towards Rome. Russian and Austrian generals gave the same nickname to Kutuzov.
6. Prsch…Prsch: Bilibin is trying to pronounce the name of the Polish general Przebyszewski, who will be named later.
7. Hollabrunn: This is the French name for the battle that Tolstoy refers to elsewhere as Schöngraben, from the nearby village of that name.
8. Arcole: See note 20 to Part One.
9. the Tsaritsyn Field: See note 1 to Part Two.
VOLUME II
Part One
1. the English Club: Founded in Moscow in 1770, the English Club was a meeting place for the high nobility, modeled on gentlemen’s clubs in England.
2. Ilyushka the Gypsy: Nickname of Ilya Osipovich Sokolov (d. 1848), who for forty years conducted a famous Gypsy choir in Moscow and was admired by Pushkin, Liszt, and Denis Davydov.
3. the treachery…Langeron: All the reasons given here for the defeat at Austerlitz are wrong, apart from bad provisioning. Przebyszewski and his column of Russian soldiers surrendered to the French at the start of the battle; there was no treachery on the part of A. F. Langeron, a Frenchman serving in the Russian army, nor on the side of the Austrians, where there was only cowardice, poor strategy, and bad leadership.
4. Bagration…Italian campaign…Suvorov: Bagration had been one of Suvorov’s closest associates during the campaign of 1799–1800 against the French revolutionary forces in northern Italy, which was a series of brilliant victories for the Russian generals.
5. parodying…Voltaire: Voltaire’s famous phrase was S’il n’était pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer (“If there were no God, he would have to be invented”).
6. in powdered wigs and kaftans: That is, dressed in the fashion of the previous century.
7. had crowed like a cock: Field Marshal Suvorov was indeed known for several oddities of behavior, one of which was crowing like a cock.
8. Glorify…: The verses are by N. P. Nikolev (d. 1815), well-known in the eighteenth century as a poet and playwright. Tolstoy found them in Zhikharev’s Diary of a Student (see note 34 to Volume I, Part I), the entry for 4 March 1806, from which he also drew many details of the banquet itself. Ripheus was the companion of Aeneas in Virgil