In the frontline

In March 1854, after several weeks with his family, Leo Tolstoy joins the Crimean War as an officer with an artillery brigade, stationed near Bucharest. Unexpectedly he is treated like family by Prince Michael Gorchakov, commander in chief of the troops in the region and a relation through Tolstoy’s paternal grandmother. Despite a war raging just 60 miles away, Tolstoy has plenty of time for writing and access to society life.

Tolstoy sees plenty of action once he is moved to a hilltop in Silistra on the Danube. From there, albeit by telescope, he can watch the fighting between the Russian and Turkish troops. On one night he counts up to 100 explosions per minute. He is far enough away to feel separated from the reality of war although sometimes he must ride down into the trenches. By mid-year he is back on Russian soil at Kishinev after Russia withdraws from the disputed Balkan territories at the insistence of Austria and Prussia. He toys with the idea of founding a periodical titled The Military Gazette aimed at boosting the morale of the soldiers but it comes to nothing.

He successfully applies for a transfer to the hotspot of Sevastopol, telling one of his brothers in a letter that he is chiefly motivated by patriotic feelings. He also wants to see war up close. Now a second lieutenant, he arrives in November and is stationed a stone’s throw away from enemy lines in the heart of the conflict. Part of him is “furious to think that nobody has imagined I could be good for something other than cannon fodder of the most useless kind” (p125, Tolstoy, Troyat).

It is the first time he has been directly engaged in full scale war and on one night more than 1,000 men are left dead or wounded on each side. Sevastopol has been under siege for several months. He fights shoulder to shoulder with fellow Russians and is under constant heavy fire.

Remarkably, during the six weeks he is there, he keeps writing as though he is a war correspondent. The terrible things he sees, his narrow escapes, his own conflicted feelings and the many people he encounters on both sides, feed directly into Sevastopol in December and his two other highly emotive Sevastopol sketches about the reality of war.

It is rumoured that Tsar Alexander II moves Tolstoy to a less dangerous position because he greatly admires his writings but this is very unlikely: Gorchakov is probably humouring him on behalf of his aunt. He may now be in a safer spot but soon after Russia embarks on a final desperate assault and fails -- the Battle of Chernaya -- Sevastopol falls and he witnesses the French hoist their flag over the city in September 1855. About 10,000 Russian troops are killed and about 2,000 from Britain and France in the dreadful battle.

A personal matter simultaneously weights on him: gambling debts force him to send word home that the main house at Yasnaya Polyana must be sold and this fills him with self-disgust. He is sent to St Petersburg as a courier and on the eve of his departure he loses another 2,800 roubles playing cards. He stays in uniform for another year, part of the time working in an undemanding role in a factory manufacturing Russian rockets. He is awarded the St Anne Cross, fourth degree, for courage under fire.

Home from the war
First trip to Europe
Another brother dies