War and Peace

War and Peace depicts a huge cast of characters. Pierre Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count who is dying of a stroke, and becomes unexpectedly embroiled in a tussle for his inheritance.

The intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, husband of a charming wife Lise, finds little comfort in married life, instead choosing to be aide-de-camp of Prince Mikhail Kutuzov in their coming war against Napoleon.

We learn too of the Moscow Count Rostov family, with four adolescent children, of whom the vivacious younger daughter Natalya Rostova ("Natasha") and impetuous older Nikolai Rostov are the most memorable.

At Bleak Hills, Prince Andrei leaves his pregnant wife to his eccentric father and religiously devout sister Maria Bolkonskaya and leaves for war.

The first page of War and Peace in an early edition
At the Schöngrabern engagement, Nikolai Rostov, conscripted as ensign in a squadron of hussars, has his first baptism of fire upfront in battle. Like all young soldiers he is attracted by Tsar Alexandr's charisma.

He gambles recklessly and consorts with the lisping Denisov. Briefly returning home to Moscow, he finds the Rostov family facing financial ruin due to poor management. Nikolai refuses to accede to his mother's request to find a rich heiress for wife and promises to marry his childhood sweetheart, the orphaned and self-obliterating cousin Sonya.


If there is a central character to War and Peace it is Pierre Bezukhov who, upon receiving an unexpected inheritance, is suddenly burdened with the responsibilities and conflicts of a Russian nobleman.

His former carefree behavior vanishes and he enters upon a philosophical quest particular to Tolstoy: how should one live a moral life in an ethically imperfect world? He attempts to free his peasants, but ultimately achieves nothing.

He enters into marriage with Prince Kuragin's beautiful and immoral daughter Elena, against his own better judgement. He joins the Freemasons but is helpless in the face of his wife's numerous affairs.


Pierre is vividly contrasted with Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, Tolstoy's intelligent and ambitious alter ego. At the Battle of Austerlitz Andrei is inspired by glory to lead a charge of a struggling army, but is nearly fatally wounded.

Rescued by Napoleon, all the visions of his of life are shattered in the face of death and Napoleon's apparent vanity, his earlier hero.


His wife Lise dies during childbirth. Burdened with nihilistic disillusionment Prince Andrei is led to a philosophical argument with Pierre – where is God in this amoral world? Pierre points to panentheism and an afterlife. Young Natasha briefly reinvigorates Andrei, but their plan to marry has to be postponed with a year-long engagement.

Elena and her handsome brother Anatoly conspire together for Anatoly to seduce and dishonor the young and beautiful Natasha Rostova. This plan fails, yet, for Pierre, it is the cause of an important meeting with Natasha, when he realizes he is in love with her, during the time when the Great Comet of 1811–2 streaks the sky.

Natasha, shamed by her seduction, has had her wedding engagement broken off by Andrei.

Meanwhile Nikolai unexpectedly acts as a knight to beleaguered Maria Bolkonskaya, whose father's death has left her in the mercy of an estate of hostile, rebelling peasants. He reconsiders marriage, and finds Maria's devotion, honesty, and inheritance extremely attractive.

As Napoleon pushes through Russia, Pierre decides to watch the Battle of Borodino near the battle next to a Russian artillery crew. There, he realizes just how terrible and fatal war can be.


When Napoleon's Grand Army occupies an abandoned and burning Moscow, Pierre takes off on a quixotic mission to assassinate Napoleon and is captured as a prisoner of war. After witnessing French soldiers sacking Moscow and shooting Russian civilians, including his saintly cell-mate Karataev, Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow. He is later freed by a Russian raiding party.

Meanwhile Andrei, wounded during Napoleon's invasion, is taken in as a casualty by the fleeing Rostovs when he is reunited with Natasha and sister Maria before the end of the war. Having lost all will to live after forgiving Natasha, he dies, much like the death scene at the end of The Death of Ivan Ilych.

Tolstoy vividly depicts the contrast between the attacking Napoleon and the Russian general Kutuzov, both in terms of personality and in the clash of armies.

Napoleon believes that he could control the course of a battle through giving orders by couriers, while Kutuzov admits all he could do was to plan the initial disposition, and let subordinates direct the field of action. Napoleon chooses wrongly, opting to march on to Moscow and occupy it for five fatal weeks, when he would have been better off destroying the Russian army in a decisive battle.

General Kutuzov believes time to be his best ally, and refrains from engaging the French, who ultimately destroy themselves as they limp back toward the French border. They are all but destroyed by a final Cossack attack as they straggle back toward Paris.


As the novel draws to a close, Pierre's wife Elena dies sometime during the last throes of Napoleon's invasion and Pierre is reunited with Natasha while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow.

Pierre finds love at last and marries Natasha, while Nikolai, whose dilemma between his heart's choices is now firmly set on Princess Maria, is released from his oath by Sonya. He marries Maria Bolkonskaya but provides for Sonya for the rest of her life. Prince Andrei's son is brought up by Nicolai and Maria.