Napoleon makes a couple brief appearances in the story, grounding the plot in reality.
He could not have told them simply that all rode at a trot, that he fell down, wrenched his arm, and ran away from a Frenchman into the woods…They expected a story of how he was all enveloped in flames, how, forgetting himself, he flew like a storm against a square, how he cut his way through it, slashing to the right and to the left, how his sword glutted on flesh how he fell down exhausted and all such things. The way Tolstoy describes the horror of war and the illusions of glory feels real and raw. The novel describes in detail the different kinds of warfare from the Calvary to guerrilla tactics. The “war” part of War and Peace is also worth studying, especially if you are writing about historical warfare. If you’re writing about family connections across generations this would be a great novel to study. That being said, it’s a heck of a family epic. Like with all the 19th-century novels, I can’t recommend using this book as a blueprint for the modern novel.
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