Leo Tolstoy then spent much of his time in Moscow, Tula and Saint Petersburg, leading a lax and leisurely lifestyle. He began writing during this period, including his first novel "Childhood", a fictitious account of his own youth, which was published in 1852. In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. Tolstoy served as a young artillery officer during the Crimean War and was in Sevastopol during the 11-month-long siege of Sevastopol in 1854–55, including the Battle of the Chernaya. During the war he was recognised for his bravery
War and Peace and "serving for an ideal manual to every textbook on theories of military art." Unlike professional literary critics, most prominent Russian writers of the time supported the novel wholeheartedly. Goncharov, Turgenev, Leskov, Dostoyevsky and Fet have all gone on record as declaring "War and Peace" the masterpiece of the Russian literature. Ivan Goncharov in a July 17, 1878 letter to Pyotr Ganzen advised him to choose for translating into Danish "War and Peace", adding: "This is positively what might be called a Russian "Iliad". Embracing the whole epoch, it is the grandiose literary event, showcasing the gallery of great men