The short answer is that historical novels always merge fact and fiction, as the contradictory terms “historical” and “novel” remind us. But the deeper and more interesting answer as to why Tolstoy chose a historical context for this particular story—unlike his later Anna Karenina, which is completely fictional—involves his complex theory of history. As Tolstoy repeatedly shows us in War and Peace, historians do not give us the whole truth about what happened on the battlefield, or anywhere else for that matter. They give us only their particular slant on what happened, distorted by their own prejudices, interpretations, and fantasies. The historian is, then, much more akin to a creative writer than he would likely admit. By writing an account of Napoleon’s war with Russia from the Russian perspective, which had not yet been attempted at the time of the novel’s publication (or so Tolstoy tells us), Tolstoy is suggesting that a fictional work may do the job of recording history just as well. Literature may tell the truth as effectively as supposedly objective history books that are in fact not objective at all. Moreover, fiction has the power to reconstruct the lowly figures of history that the historian must necessarily leave out, as history itself forgets small individuals in its focus on great men and great leaders. Tolstoy’s philosophy of history insists that great men are illusions, and that the high and the low alike are swept along by networks of circumstances. Therefore, he has a vested interest in depicting the significance of nobodies like Platon Karataev or Pierre’s executed prison mates. History books may be forced to overlook these small figures, but the novelist has the power to conjure them up before our eyes, to restore their rightful importance in the overall scheme of things.