In 1805, the Third Coalition of Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia fought Napoleon over French aggressions in Italy and parts of Central and Northern Europe. Obviously, the novel’s main focus is the Napoleonic Wars, which were fought between Napoleon (and his allies) and several different coalitions of European countries. Tolstoy poured extensive research into the novel, including approximately 160 historical figures among its characters. He was nominated several times for both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize, though he never won.
Tolstoy died of pneumonia at a train station when he was 82. Both the characters of Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky drew on his personality in various ways. Tolstoy wrote War and Peace on the brink of a moral and spiritual crisis that led him to focus on Christ’s ethical teachings (especially the Sermon on the Mount) and to embrace pacifism. Their later years together were unhappy, though, as Tolstoy became more absorbed in radical ideas.
Sophia faithfully edited and copied her husband’s massive manuscripts. Soon after, in 1862, he married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, with whom he had 13 children (eight of them living to adulthood). Back at his home of Yasnaya Polyana, he founded schools for recently emancipated serf children.
(Tolstoy’s father, Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, was a veteran of the War of 1812.) Though recognized for courage, Tolstoy found warfare horrifying and increasingly favored nonviolent political ideas. After studying briefly at Kazan University, Tolstoy followed his older brother into the army and served as an artillery officer in the Crimean War. The fourth of five children born into a well-known aristocratic family, Tolstoy was orphaned at age nine and raised by relatives.
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