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When imperial projects go awry
“Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a log that lay on the bank,” Leo Tolstoy wrote. Handed a telescope, he peered at the far shore.
The year was 1812 and the Emperor of France was commanding his Grande Armée, the largest military force ever seen in Europe. The plan was to cross the Nieman River and invade Russia. Napoleon mumbled an order for the cavalry to find a ford enabling them to safely reach the other side.
In one of the most vivid scenes in War and Peace, Tolstoy added that a Polish colonel, “a handsome old man, flushed and fumbling in his speech from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be permitted to swim the river with his Uh…
