War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [814]
17. Meshkov, Vereshchagin: P. A. Meshkov was a lawyer in Moscow. In 1812 he copied out Vereshchagin’s “proclamations” (see note 9 above), for which he was sentenced to be stripped of rank and nobility and sent to the army as a simple soldier. He was pardoned by Alexander I in 1816.
18. Inside the Kremlin, the bells were ringing for vespers: There are five churches and the Ivan the Great bell tower in the Kremlin. The French evidently did not know that and, confused by the ringing of so many bells, thought it was a call to arms.
19. this student had been shot: During a military review in front of the Schönbrunn palace in Vienna, on 12 October 1809, the seventeen-year-old German student Friedrich Staps attempted to assassinate Napoleon with a kitchen knife. He was sentenced by a military court and shot on 17 October 1809.
20. l’affaire du Sept: That is, the battle of Borodino. Ramballe, being French, gives the date in the New Style (see note 33 to Volume III, Part Two); in the Old Style, it is 26 August, as Tolstoy says elsewhere. Further on, Ramballe also refers to the battle of Borodino in the French manner as la grande bataille de la Moskowa (“the great battle of the Moskova [River]”).
21. Paris, c’est Talma…boulevards: Ramballe, reflecting Tolstoy’s view of French culture, produces an interesting list of the merits of Paris—the tragic actor Talma, the actress la Duchesnois, the comedian Potier, the boulevards associated with the theaters—and into it sticks the Sorbonne, the city’s ancient university.
22. our dear mother of white st…: Belokamennaya (“white-stoned”) was an endearing epithet for Moscow, because of the whitewashed stone churches of the Kremlin.
23. the Trinity monastery: The Trinity–St. Sergius Monastery, to the north of Moscow, is named for its founder, St. Sergius of Radonezh (ca. 1319–92), the greatest of the saints of ancient Russia.
VOLUME IV
Part One
1. the two empresses: The mother of Alexander I, the dowager empress Maria Feodorovna, and his wife, Elizaveta Alexeevna (1779–1826), daughter of the margrave of Baden-Durlach, who became empress on Alexander’s accession to the throne after the assassination of Paul I.
2. the metropolitan…St. Sergius: Platon II (born Platon Levshin, 1737–1812) was metropolitan of Moscow from 1775 until his death a few months after the battle of Borodino. A former instructor of rhetoric in the theological academy of the Trinity–St. Sergius Monastery, he was famous for his sermons, which were published posthumously in twenty volumes. In 1380 St. Sergius (see note 23 to Volume III, Part Three) blessed the grand prince of Vladimir, Dmitri Donskoy, before the battle of Kulikovo, the first successful attempt of the Russians to resist the Tartars.
3. a diplomatic paper…le héros de Pétropol: The standards were sent back to Vienna to chide the Austrians for changing sides and fighting for Napoleon. The Germanic name St. Petersburg was changed to Petropol for the same reason.
4. Hosanna, blessed is He that comes: As Christ rides into Jerusalem, the people who go before him and follow him cry out: “Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Mark 11:9). The same words are sung in the eucharistic prayer of the Orthodox liturgy.
5. the surrender of Moscow to the French: Bogdanovich mentions “some sort of landowner” in his History of the Fatherland War of 1812 (see note 5 to Volume III, Part Two). The landowner was in fact I. A. Yakovlev, whose illegitimate son was the well-known radical writer and publicist Alexander Herzen (1812–70).
6. owner of a carpet room: A room in a manor house decorated with carpets in the Oriental style.
7. Frola and Lavra…the horses’ feast: Floros and Lavros, stonemasons in Illyria, were martyred in the early second century, and their bodies were thrown into a dry well. More than a century later, horses were seen drinking at this well, and the intact relics of the twin brothers were found in it. The well was said to have healing powers for horses.