THE CRIMEAN WAR Joins army of the Danube. Siege of Silistria. Sevastopol. Projected Newspaper. _Sevastopol in December._ Battle of the Tchérnaya. Capture of the Maláhof. Courier to Petersburg. Song. Relations with superiors and fellow-officers. Self-depreciation. _The Wood-Felling._ _Sevastopol in May._ The Censor. On War. AT twenty-five years of age it fell to Tolstoy's lot to take part in a great European war and thereby to extend the range of his experience in a way that considerably affected his subsequent life and writings. Tolstoy tells us that he got his first understanding of war from Stendhal, the author of _Le Rouge et le Noir_ and _La Chartreuse de Parme_. In conversation with Paul Boyer, Tolstoy once spoke of those novels as inimitable works of art, adding, 'I am greatly indebted to Stendhal. He taught me to understand war. Re-read the description of the battle of Waterloo in _La Chartreuse de Parme_. Who ever before so described war? Described it, that is, as it is in reality? Do you remember Fabrice riding over the field of battle and understanding "nothing"?' Tolstoy's brother Nicholas, though fond of war, also disbelieved in the popular romantic view of it, and used to say: 'All _that_ is embellishment, and in real war there is no embellishment.'--'A little later, in the Crimea,' added Tolstoy in his talk with Boyer, 'I had a grand chance to see with my own eyes that this is so.' Of the causes that led to the war it need only be said that the rule of the Turks over Christian populations had long kept a dangerous sore open in Europe, and the consequent diplomatic difficulties were complicated by the indefiniteness of two lines in the Treaty of Kainardji, which Catherine the Great had imposed upon Turkey in 1774. There was also friction between the Eastern and Western Churches, with reference to the custody of the Places in Palestine rendered holy by their traditional connection with the Prince of Peace. Nicholas I, who had wellnigh drilled all intelligence out of those near him in his Government and in his army, was not accustomed to be thwarted. Dimly conscious of the first faint symptoms of that growth of Liberalism which a few years later, in the early 'sixties, led to sweeping reforms in Russia, he felt inclined to demonstrate the beneficence of his rule not by allowing changes to be made at home, but by arbitrarily inflicting reforms on Turkey. Failing to get his way by diplomatic pressure, he rashly proceeded to occupy the Danubian Principalities as a 'material guarantee' of Turkey's compliance with his demands.