The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2022

60 JULY-AUGUST 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Tolstoy also applauds some fancy footwork by the Russian ambassador who recoils when Napoleon drops his handkerchief in front of him, a cunning test of both his manners and loyalty. The ambassador quickly realizes that turning on his heel would be bad form, and bending to retrieve the article even worse. So, he devises a face-saving stratagem: He drops his own hand- kerchief on the same spot … and then picks it up … and leaves the other. Tolstoy seems to enjoy this rebuke to Napoleon. (We might venture a pun ourselves on the ambassador’s toss: a put- down, an instance of one-downsmanship.) Well done, ambas- sador. But again that whisper, just a piece of linen . The Envoy’s Blunder One diplomatic episode in the novel may be open to inter- pretation, but practitioners will readily infer Tolstoy’s point. After Napoleon crosses the Nieman River and invades Russia in 1812, Tsar Alexander sends his envoy, Balashov, to warn him of the consequences. The instructions are stern. The tsar “com- manded” Balashov to insist all the invaders in the multinational force pull back; it is a firm condition that must be satisfied before the tsar would consider negotiations with Napoleon. The passage bears study: “Balashov remembered those words [from the tsar]: ‘As long as a single enemy under arms remains on Russian soil,’ but some complicated feeling checked his utterance of them. He could not utter those words, though he tried to do so. He stammered, and said: ‘On condition the French troops retreat beyond the Nieman.’ Napoleon observed Balashov’s embarrassment in the utterance of those words” and then he flew into a rage. In other words, the envoy Balashov watered down his instructions, and Napoleon sensed weakness and pounced on it—and continued his march all the way through Borodino to Moscow. Is this a déformation professionnelle ? A tendency to stint on tough instructions delivered in person to a foreign leader? Tolstoy may be on to something. History offers a few real examples. The Opposite Number Employing his dazzling literary technique, Tolstoy cre- ates characters that embody qualities opposite to those of the diplomats. Consider, for example, the peasant Karataev, a “centered” personality, as we would say, a man of many folk sayings, which Tolstoy does not mock as platitudes but serves up as Russian wisdom. (The character borders on a stereotype, perhaps the only one in the novel’s multitude.) Karataev could not score with a pun if his life depended on it, but he does exude earthy sagacity and simple integrity. These qualities have a transformative influence on Pierre, his companion in French captivity. The other counterpoint to the diplomats is the old war- horse, the Russian commander Kutuzov, one of Tolstoy’s characters drawn from real life and superbly fictionalized. Born into Russian nobility, Tolstoy counted ambassadors as well as generals among his family’s ancestors. This still from the 1968 Russian film version of War and Peace shows its protagonist Pierre Bezukhov walking with Prince Andrei Volkonsky. RGRCOLLECTION/ALAMY