Fog of War

Prince Andrei's theory of battle proving right: Russians prevailing at Borodino because their forces are more fierce, confident, and determined. The French army is in disarray, falling apart. There's smoke and mist everywhere. Napoleon in particular - the focus of this section of the battle sequence - is "in the dark," completely unaware of the position and status of his forces. (Apparently same is true for Russian general Kutuzov, though Tolstoy does not depict this, yet. It's part of his point, however, that general's orders and strategies are not decisive events in battle - chance plays a huge role, and afterwards we honor the supposed brilliant tactics of the winning side.) Obviously bearing a national animus against Napoleon, Tolstoy shows him drinking punch and coming up with odd quips and apercus as his army falls apart. Two observations on Tolstoy's style: he extremely rarely uses similes or metaphors of any kind, and when he does they are almost pedestrian figures of speech. His writing just "is," another reason why his novels seem like "the world writing itself." Metaphor is writerly, showing the skill and perspicacity of the author. He rarely needs or chooses to do so. Also note that he uses passive voice a lot in description (hills in the distance could be seen, e.g.,), unless this is just a quirk of the Volkonsky Pavear translation. I think, however, that he does so because, even though the uses characters as a lens (Pierre viewing the battlefield before and during combat), he doesn't want to limit our viewpoint to theirs, he doesn't want to enter their consciousness (Pierre saw...) nor to address us directly (You could have seen...) - rather, the passive, makes the scene more universal and permanent.