11 Tsar-Cannon: A huge cannon (Tsar’-Pushka), which still stands in the Kremlin.
PART II
1 Lyubomirsky, Bronnitsky, Wlocki: Polish adjutants-general serving in the Russian army during 1812.
2 Dessalles looked in amazement . . . already at the Dnieper: Vitebsk and the river Dnieper are 300 miles east of the Niemen.
3 Vasily Pushkin: (1779 – 1837), a poetaster of average merit, is not to be confused with his nephew, Alexander Pushkin (1799 – 1837), Russia’s greatest poet.
4 Charon’s ferry: In classical Greek myth Charon ferried the dead over the river Styx into Elysium, the abode of the blessed.
5 a huge balloon that was being built by Leppich: Franz Leppich was the constructor of an expensive balloon intended for use against the French, which failed while being tested.
6 here that the whole battle . . . took place: Tolstoy drew up his own sketch map after consulting Russian and French historians, and also visiting the actual territory at Borodino, and included it here in his text.
7 Marin . . . Gerakov: S. N. Marin and G. V. Gerakov were two minor writers. Here, the former adds to the many parodies of the latter’s work.
PART III
1 Columbus’s egg: A trick that is easy once you know how to do it. Legend has it that Columbus, riled by the charge that anyone could have discovered America, once asked the company how to make an egg stand on end. When nobody could do it he tapped one end of an egg against the table and stood it up, showing how easy things can be once a pioneer has led the way.
2 boyars: The boyars had been the Tsar’s right-hand men in medieval Russia. The title had been abolished almost a century before, and Napoleon’s repeated use of the term is an ironic indicator of his ignorance.
3 attempt on Napoleon’s life in Vienna in 1809: Friedrich Staps failed in an attempt to stab Napoleon outside the Schönbrünn Palace in October 1809, and was summarily executed.
4 the business of the 7th of September: That is, the battle of Borodino. Ramballe is using the New Style date.
5 Talma, la Duchénois, Potier, the Sorbonne: Talma was a celebrated tragedienne, la Duchénois a popular actress and Potier a well-known comedian. The Sorbonne, the University of Paris, founded in the mid-thirteenth century, had been closed down in 1792.
VOLUME IV
PART I
1 the possible implications of the words, ‘Natasha is nursing him’: Under Russian Church law a man could not marry his sister-in-law; Nikolay and Princess Marya would therefore be unable to get married if Prince Andrey were to survive and marry Natasha.
2 Fraula and Laura: The martyred brothers Florus and Laurus (third century AD), beatified in the Russian Orthodox Church, became the patron saints of horses for the peasants, who mispronounced their names.
PART IV
1 Sir Robert Wilson’s Diary: Sir Robert Wilson (1774—1849) was Britain’s military commissioner in Russia during the period 1812 – 14. His Private Diary was fresh in Tolstoy’s mind, having been published in 1861.
2 Vive Henri Quatre . . . à quatre: ‘Long live Henry IV, that valiant king, that devil with four . . .’
3 Qui eut . . . vert gallant: ‘Who had a threefold talent, for drinking, fighting and being a ladies’ man’.
EPILOGUE
PART I
1 Seven years had passed: the story ended in 1813; it is now 1820.
2 Photius, Schelling, Fichte, Chateaubriand: Photius (1792—1838), the conservative-minded head of the Novgorod monastery, castigator of freemasonry and all forms of liberalism. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775—1854), a German philosopher who saw nature as a single organism working towards self-consciousness and art as a vital part of this process. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762—1814), a German Idealist philosopher and political thinker whose early enthusiasm for the French Revolution developed into strong condemnation of Napoleon. François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768 – 1848), a French writer and statesman who spent much of his life abroad, supported the restoration of the French monarchy and refused to serve under Napoleon.
3 gave Poland a constitution: Following the Congress of Vienna (1815) Poland was re-established as a country with its own constitution.
4 the Holy Alliance: An alliance founded in 1815 between Austria, Prussia and Russia as a means of guaranteeing peace; it soon became an instrument of political repression.
