Abstract
This essay is concerned with Tolstoy's attitude to history - both its nature and its purpose - as that is revealed in War and peace. Tolstoy is critical of historians who, he believes, exaggerate the role of 'great men': exemplified in particular by Napoleon, such men are far less in control of events - are far less free - than they themselves might claim and than appears from such reports as constitute historical evidence. Vivid descriptions of battles (based partly on the author's own experience of military service) indicate an underlying chaos, of which only subsequent rationalisations can make any sense; and that is emblematic of the past more generally. Tolstoy's own focus on the sufferings of 'ordinary' people reveals his moral purpose - to examine the causes and conditions of man's continuing inhumanity to man. Despite an unresolved inconsistency regarding freewill and determinism, that introduction of an ethical dimension into historical studies may be of particular interest today.