Excerpt

What Clausewitz and Tolstoy were trying to do was to derive from the experiences of history the laws governing it. Although they failed, these 19th-century thinkers, each operating from a different perspective, anticipated what we’ve come to call chaos and complexity theory.

There is a curious moment in Tolstoy’s account of the Battle of Borodino—page 774 in the new Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace—when two of the central characters of the novel, Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, are interrupted by the sound of hoofbeats, look up, and see Carl von Clausewitz and another officer riding by. One of the horsemen is saying to the other: “War must be extended in space. I cannot put too high a price on this view.” The other agrees: “The aim is to weaken the enemy, so one cannot pay attention to the loss of private persons.” This disgusts Andrei, whose family estate lies within the space through which this particular war is to be extended. “[A]ll there is in a German head,” he complains bitterly to Pierre, “is reasoning, which isn’t worth a tinker’s damn. . . . They gave him [Napoleon] the whole of Europe and came to teach us. Fine teachers!” [6, p.117-19; 10, p.774].

Pierre and Prince Andrei were at Borodino only in Tolstoy’s imagination, but Clausewitz really was there: when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, Clausewitz resigned his commission in the Prussian Army, joined the Russians, and participated in the great battle [7]. The meticulous Tolstoy would have known this, and could well have read Clausewitz’s great work On War, published posthumously in 1832, before writing War and Peace in the 1860s. If he did, Tolstoy’s portrayal suggests that, like many other readers of Clausewitz, he misunderstood the point of the book. For not only are there similarities in the way that Clausewitz and Tolstoy depicted war, they also appear to have shared a sense of the relationship between theory and reality. And that relationship, in turn, relates to everything else.

Begin with war. Here is a famous passage from Clausewitz, which leaves no doubt that he knows what he’s writing about:

Let us accompany a novice to the battlefield. As we approach, the rumble of guns grows louder and alternates with the whir of cannonballs, which begin to attract his attention. Shots begin to strike close around us. We hurry up the slope where the commanding general is stationed with his large staff. Here cannonballs and bursting shells are frequent, and life begins to seem more serious than the young man had imagined. Suddenly someone you know is wounded; then a shell falls among the staff. You notice that some of the officers act a little oddly; you yourself are not as steady and collected as you were: even the bravest can become slightly distracted. Now we enter the battle raging before us, still almost like a spectacle, and join the nearest division commander. Shot is falling like hail, and the thunder of our own guns adds to the din. Forward to the brigadier, a solder of acknowledged bravery, but he is careful to take cover behind a rise, a house, or a clump of trees. A noise is heard that is a certain indication of increasing danger—the rattling of grapeshot on roofs and on the ground. Cannonballs tear past, whizzing in all directions, and musketballs begin to whistle around us. A little further we reach the firing line, where the infantry endures the hammering for hours with incredible steadfastness. The air is filled with hissing bullets that sound like a sharp crack if they pass close to one’s head. For a final shock, the sight of men being killed and mutilated moves our pounding hearts to awe and pity.

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