Fascinating stuff @Lana_Maskus and @kim.kovacs. I love rabbit hole visits!!!
@kim.kovacs @Anne_Glasgow This is so what I love about BookBrowse and the Community Forum!
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I’m gradually catching up (finally!).
The thing that struck me about this section was how realistically Tolstoy depicted the chaos of battle - the poor planning, the egos involved, etc. The scene where the bridge wasn’t blown up as ordered was horrifying.
It made me wonder if Tolstoy himself had been in battle. I did a little Googling, and of course, he had. He fought in the Crimean War (a conflict I know zero about). Here’s something interesting the AI had to say:
“The brutal realities of the battlefield deeply disillusioned him. This shift in perspective eventually led Tolstoy to embrace a philosophy of radical nonviolence and Christian pacifism, which later influenced figures like Mahatma Gandhi.”
Huh! That’s not at all what I would have expected. I’m a bit ahead but Pierre goes on a religious bent, ala freemasonry. Do these things go hand-in-hand?