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 exposes numerous scoundrels, worthless goons and fools", he added. In 1876 Dostoyevsky wrote: "My strong conviction is that a writer of fiction has to have most profound knowledge—not only of the poetic side of his art, but also the reality he deals with, in its historical as well as contemporary context. Here [in Russia], as far as I see it, only one writer excels in this, Count Lev Tolstoy." Nikolai Leskov, then an anonymous reviewer in ("The Stock Exchange Herald"), wrote several articles praising highly "War and Peace", calling it "the best ever Russian historical novel" and "the pride of