War and Peace

istory is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into
words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single
nation, appears impossible.

The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to describe
and seize the apparently elusive—the life of a people. They described
the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and regarded the
activity of those men as representing the activity of the whole nation.

The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished and by
what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the ancients
met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations to the will of
a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so as to accomplish
ends that were predestined.

For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the direct
participation of the Deity in human affairs.

Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.

It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in man’s
subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward which nations
are led, modern history should study not the manifestations of power but
the causes that produce it. But modern history has not done this. Having
in theory rejected the view held by the ancients, it still follows them
in practice.

Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided by
the will of God, modern history has given us either heroes endowed with
extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of very various
kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. Instead of the
former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations,
which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of
humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims—the welfare of the
French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the
welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually
meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a
large continent.

Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without
replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has
obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the divine
authority of the kings and the “fate” of the ancients, to reach the same
conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations guided
by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to which these
nations and humanity at large are tending.

At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon to
Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent novelty of
their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.

In the first place the historian describes the activity of individuals
who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian considers
only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men, while another
includes also orators, learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets).
Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward which humanity is being led
is known to the historians: to one of them this goal is the greatness of
the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; to another it is liberty, equality,
and a certain kind of civilization of a small corner of the world called
Europe.

In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is expressed
by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it moves
eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward.
In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable
symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting to
it, as the first movement had done, the nations of middle Europe. The
counter movement reaches the starting point of the first movement in the
west—Paris—and subsides.

During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions
of men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions
of Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
another.

What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people burn
houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these events?
What force made men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and
most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the
monuments and tradition of that period.

For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns to the
science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity to know
themselves.

If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that reply
would have been clear and complete. One might believe or disbelieve
in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone believing in
it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the history of that
period, nor would there have been any contradictions.

But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit the
conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the Deity
in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other answers.

Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know what
this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced these
events? Then listen:

“Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such and such
mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France badly. His
descendants were weak men and they too ruled France badly. And they had
such and such favorites and such and such mistresses. Moreover, certain
men wrote some books at that time. At the end of the eighteenth century
there were a couple of dozen men in Paris who began to talk about all
men being free and equal. This caused people all over France to begin
to slash at and drown one another. They killed the king and many other
people. At that time there was in France a man of genius—Napoleon. He
conquered everybody everywhere—that is, he killed many people because
he was a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and
killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned to
France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him. Having
become an Emperor he again went out to kill people in Italy, Austria,
and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. In Russia there
was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and
therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends
with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled and again began killing many
people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand men into Russia and captured
Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and the Emperor
Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to
arm against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly
became his enemies and their forces advanced against the fresh forces he
raised. The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to
abdicate, and sent him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the
title of Emperor and showing him every respect, though five years before
and one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand.
Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the laughingstock both of the
French and the Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears
before his Old Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then
the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who
managed to sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and
thereby extended the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by
these conversations made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the
diplomatists and monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of
again ordering their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon
arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating
him, immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were
angry at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated
the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent him
to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the beloved
France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that rock and
bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a reaction
occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress their
subjects.”

It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic—a caricature of the
historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild expression of
the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions, which all the
historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the histories
of separate states to the writers of general histories and the new
histories of the culture of that period.

The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that
modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.

If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of
humanity and of the peoples, the first question—in the absence of a
reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible—is: what is the
power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies
either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very
proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.

All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not
what was asked. All that would be interesting if we recognized a divine
power based on itself and always consistently directing its nations
through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we do not acknowledge such
a power, and therefore before speaking about Napoleons, Louis-es, and
authors, we ought to be shown the connection existing between these men
and the movement of the nations.

If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it should
be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole interest of
history lies precisely in that force.

History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone
reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new
force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really
quite well known to everybody.