Napoleon Bonaparte and Apocalyptic Discourse in Early Nineteenth‐Century Russia

Abstract

Leo Tolstoy's great epic novel War and Peace begins in 1805 with an ominous salon conversation in which Napoleon Bonaparte is likened to the Antichrist for his increasingly expansionist policies in Europe.' Later in the book, with the French emperor already on Russian soil and threatening Moscow itself, Pierre Bezukhov discovers a Masonic tract, which attempts to discern in Napoleon's name and title the sign of the Beast of the Apocalypse-666 and in the year 1812 the limit of his power. Excited and agitated by his discovery, Pierre tries to figure out his own role in the apocalyptic drama, imagines himself to be the emperor's worthy opponent, and naively sets out to destroy Napoleon and thus save the world from the enemy he regards as the Antichrist.2 It is this wellknown episode from Tolstoy's novel recounting Pierre's cosmological speculations that is perhaps most familiar to readers confronted with the topic of this article. Yet the identification of Napoleon with the Antichrist, as well as a general sense of apocalyptic foreboding associated with the Napoleonic Wars was evident throughout Europe (as well as the newly independent United States) during the emperor's meteoric rise to power and during the height of his military conquests, with Russia being no exception.3 Moreover, as the lone major continental power still free of French domination, Russia (led by its increasingly pious and mystically inclined Emperor Alexander I) was expected by many