There was a fourth, more personal reason: his comrade Komstadius, with whom he had planned to edit the gazette, had been killed at the battle of Inkerman. Tolstov's reaction to this news was to conccivc a
4
sudden loathing for his behind-the-lines safety and comfort. "More than anything else, it was his death that drove me to ask for a transfer to Sevastopol," he wrote in his diary. "In a sense, I felt ashamed to face him."-0
On November 1 his transfer came through and he set out. Upon reaching Odessa the following day, he learned the details of the stupid defeat at Inkerman, due entirely to General Dannenberg's lack of fore-
f Sons of Nicholas I.
thought. "I saw old men shedding bitter tears and young ones who had vowed to kill Dannenberg," he wrote the same day. "The moral strength of the Russian people is great indeed!"
It was rumored at Odessa that an assault on Sevastopol would begin on November 9 at dawn. Tolstoy was afraid he would arrive too late to display his bravery; he reached the city on the seventh—but the attack did not take place. Assigned to the 3rd light battery of the 14th Artillery Brigade, he found to his annoyance that he was quartered in the city itself, far from the fortifications and outworks.
To defend Sevastopol against attack by sea, part of the Russian fleet had been sunk in the roads. The entire city had been encircled by bastions. 'ITie offensive had come from the south, and reinforcements and supplies from the interior were still arriving by the north. The fortified Malakov Hill defended passing convoys. '"I"here is 110 way to take Sevastopol," Leo Tolstoy wrote on November 11. "And the enemy seems convinccd of this as well."
Inside the city reigned a strange mixture of "camp life" and "town life." The streets were one huge bivouac. The quay was thronged with infantry in gray, sailors in black, women in multicolored garb, shiten- vendors! with their samovars. A general sitting stiffly in his caldche passed a convoy of hay-carts. Bloodstained soldiers lay on stretchers on the peristyle of a stately mansion. The shifting breeze alternately brought the smell of the sea or the stench of overcrowded hospitals. Now and then disdainful camels passed, hauling corpse-piled flat wagons. Cannon boomed in the distance. Suddenly a military march was heard. The crowd bared their heads and crossed themselves: an officer's funeral. Pink coffin, flags unfurled. For church, tsar and fatherland. In a nearby restaurant, other officers, still hale and hearty, commented on their comrade's death as they devoured "cutlets and green peas" and drank "the sour Crimean wine baptized Bordeaux."
Closer to the fortifications, the town assumed a more tragic aspect. Houses in ruins, roadways transformed into pitted dumps, bombs half- buried in the mud, the smell of carrion and cannon powder. Stooping over, soldiers crept along the maze of trenches. At the back of a ease- mate non-commissioned officers played cards by candlelight; sailors picked lice off each other 011 an esplanade surrounded by gabions; near a cannon a lieutenant rolled a cigarette in yellow paper. Balls whistled. Bombs crashed. The sentinels called out, "Ca-a-non!" or "Mortar!" to give warning. "When the shell has gone past," Tolstoy wrote, "you revive, and an inexpressible thrill of joy and relief surges through you."21
t Sbiten is a beverage made of honey.
On November 15 he left Sevastopol for a week-long trip through the forward defense lines. What he saw in the trenches and bastions there heightened his love of the Russian people. "The heroism of the troops beggars description/' he wrote to his brother Sergey. "There was far less in the time of the ancient Greeks! When passing the troops in review, Kornilov said not, 'Hello there, my lads!' but 'If it has to be death, my lads, arc you willing to die?' And the soldiers cried out, 'We'll die, Your Excellency! Hurrah!' And there was no play-acting, you could see on every face that it was true, and twenty-two thousand have already been as good as their word. One wounded soldier, nearly dead, told me how they took a French battery on the twenty-fourth of last month, without reinforcements! lie was sobbing. A company of sailors nearly mutinied when relief was sent to the battery they had been serving for thirty days under fire. The soldiers tear the fuses out of the shells. The women bring water to the men in the bastions, and many have been killed or wounded. The priests go from one fort to another brandishing their crucifixes and reciting prayers under fire. In one brigade there were one hundred and sixty wounded who refused to leave the ranks. These are noble days! ... I have not had the good fortune to see action yet myself, but I thank God for allowing me to be with these people and live through this glorious time!"22
After paying this enthusiastic tribute to the brave defenders of Sevastopol, Tolstoy soon discovered a dreadful truth beneath the patriotic imagery. The Russian soldiers were armed with muskets, the French had rifles. As a result of the parade-ground training advocated by Nicholas I, the new recruits knew how to march in step, but not how to fight. The sorry condition of the roads in the south slowed down troop transport. Supply methods had not changcd since 1812. "During this trip," Tolstoy wrote in his diary on November 23, 1854, "I became convinced that Russia must either fall or be transformed. Nothing works the way it should, we do not prevent the enemy from consolidating his position, although it could easily be done. And we ourselves stand there facing him with inferior forces, without retrenching, with no hope of reinforcements, commanded by generals like Gorchakov,0 who have taken leave of their senses, their common sense and their initiative, and are relying on St. Nicholas to send storms and foul weather to drive away the intruder. The Cossacks are ready to plunder, but not to fight; the hussars and uhlans prove their military prowess in drunken carouses and debauchery; the infantry is conspicuous only for its thievery and money-grubbing. A sorry state of affairs
• Prince Peter Gorchakov, brother of the commandcr of the army of the Danube.
for the army and the country. I spent a couple of hours talking to some English and French casualties. Every soldier among them is proud of his position and has a sense of his value, he feels he is a positive asset to his army. He has good weapons and knows how to use them, he is young, he has ideas about politics and art and this gives him a feeling of dignity. On our side: senseless training, useless weapons, ill treatment, delay everywhere, ignorance and shocking hygiene and food stifle the last spark of pride in a man and even give him, by comparison, too high an opinion of the enemy."
Why couldn't he state his views—in milder terms, of course—in one of the early numbers of his gazette? 'l'olstoy scarcely had time to ask the question: at the beginning of December, he was informed that the tsar had refused permission to publish it, on the ground that there already was a periodical, The Army and Navy Gazette, specializing in military literature. It was plain to see that intellectual officers were not trusted by those on high.
Furious, Tolstoy wrote to Nckrasov on December 19, offering the texts he had originally intended for his gazette to The Contemporary. Nekrasov replied by return post: "Send your soldiers' tales to us. Why bury them in some old veteran's review?" This proposal both delighted and embarrassed Tolstoy, for he now felt obliged to write the stories, after being so vociferously unhappy when their publication was refused. But he was not in the mood for work. A short time before he and his battery had been sent to the rear—to Esky-Ord, near Simferopol. The year was ending quietly for him. Quartered in a comfortable villa, he was reading, "playing various pianos and hunting red deer and roe."2-1 His comrades were pleasant for the most part, but he was afraid that because of his standoffish manners, "they like me less than before."24 As for women: he was missing them keenly. He was seeing all the young ladies, of course, but these little provincial idyls never led to anything more substantial. "In these conditions, I am afraid I shall become a boor, incapable of living the family life I love so dearly!"25 lie sighed.