War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [816]
4. a reminder of springtime: Both changes suggest vesna, the Russian word for spring.
5. Karabakh…a Little Russian horse: Karabakh is a mountainous region in the southern Caucasus, whereas Little Russia (Malorus) is in the Ukraine.
6. a story Pierre knew: Tolstoy reworked this story separately and published it in 1872 under the title “God Sees the Truth but Waits” in his didactic collection A New Primer.
7. the Makary: In the early nineteenth century, the trade fair in Nizhni Novgorod was called the Makaryevsky fair (“Makary” for short), after the nearby St. Makary monastery; later it became known as the Nizhni fair.
Part Four
1. chevalier sans peur et sans reproche: Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard (1473–1524), one of the great military commanders of his time, was considered the epitome of chivalry. In Paris in 1527, his loyal follower Jacques de Mailles published La Très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire du gentil Seigneur de Bayart, le bon chevalier sans peur et sans reproche (“The Very Joyful and Very Pleasing Story of the Noble Lord of Bayart, the Good Knight Without Fear and Without Reproach”). The phrase became proverbial.
2. They accused Kutuzov…that he had been bribed by him: At this point Tolstoy supplies the terse footnote: “Wilson’s Diaries.” General Sir Robert Wilson was the English representative at the headquarters of the Russian army. Along with Bennigsen, who was chief of staff, he intrigued against Kutuzov, calling for decisive action and slandering him in his dispatches to the Russian emperor. Tolstoy undoubtedly read the passages of Wilson’s journals published in the Russian Messenger in 1862.
3. governor of Vilno: Kutuzov had been military governor of Lithuania during the last years of the reign of Paul I (1799–1801) and again in 1809–11, before he was made commander in chief of the army in Moldavia.
4. And he died: Kutuzov died on 28 April 1813, during the Russian army’s campaign abroad, in the small town of Bunzlau in what was then Prussian Silesia (now Poland).
5. the Faceted Palace: So-called because of the distinctive stonework of its façade, the Faceted Palace is what remains of a fifteenth-century royal palace in the Kremlin. Its vast main hall (5,380 square feet) was once the throne room and banqueting hall of the tsars.
EPILOGUE
Part One
1. he acted badly…and so on: These “bad actions” all have to do with Alexander’s increasing mysticism and conservatism. Alexander signed the constitution of the kingdom of Poland at the Congress of Vienna on 9 December 1815, but also declared there that Poland was indissolubly bound to the Russian throne. The Holy Alliance of Austria, Prussia, and Russia was concluded in Paris in September 1815, after Napoleon’s second abdication. Prince Golitsyn was a conservative statesman, head of the Biblical Society, minister of education, and procurator of the Holy Synod (see note 17 to Volume II, Part Two); retired admiral Alexander Semyonovich Shishkov, who headed the conservative Society of Lovers of the Russian Word (much mocked by Pushkin and his circle), had been a severe critic of Alexander’s early liberal measures. The Semyonovsky regiment, founded in 1683, one of the two oldest and most prestigious of the emperor’s lifeguard regiments, mutinied in October 1820 under the harsh treatment of its new German commander, Colonel Schwartz. The entire regiment was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petersburg, the leaders of the mutiny were executed, and the rest were sent to hard labor in Siberia.
2. The Russian troops…while he is there: Suvorov’s and Bagration’s string of victories against the French in northern Italy (see note 4 to Volume II, Part One) took place while Napoleon was on his expedition to Egypt (1798–99).
3. The enemy fleet…lets pass a whole army: Napoleon tricked Admiral Nelson in 1798 by spreading a rumor that his fleet was going to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar and land in Ireland. In fact, the French fleet went to Malta, where the garrison surrendered without a fight.
4. a conspiracy against