War of 1812 Vienna, during which British diplomats had clashed with Russian and Prussian diplomats over the terms of the peace with France, and there were fears at the Britain might have go to war with Russia and Prussia. Now each side was tired of the war. Export trade was all but paralyzed and after Napoleon fell in 1814 France was no longer an enemy of Britain, so the Royal Navy no longer needed to stop American shipments to France, and it no longer needed to impress more seamen. It had ended the practices that so angered the Americans in 1812. The British
War and Peace the way the author, as he saw it, 'idealized' the old nobility, expressing "unconscious and quite natural tenderness towards" the Russian dvoryanstvo. On the opposite front, the conservative press and "patriotic" authors (A. S. Norov and P. A. Vyazemsky among them) were accusing Tolstoy of consciously distorting 1812 history, desecrating the "patriotic feelings of our fathers" and ridiculing dvoryanstvo. One of the first comprehensive articles on the novel was that of Pavel Annenkov, published in #2, 1868 issue of "Vestnik Evropy". The critic praised Tolstoy's masterful portrayal of man at war, marveled at the complexity of the whole composition, organically