Grand tours: Moscow lay in ruins, but the bells rang out.

Leo Tolstoy, the son of a nobleman landowner, was born in 1828 at the family's estate south of Moscow. He studied law and oriental languages at Kazan University, but left without finishing his degree. 'War and Peace', from which this extract is taken, is an epic of Russian society in the Napoleonic period and was written between 1863 and 1869. In this extract Moscow is destroyed, having been taken by the French. The protagonist, Pierre, has been taken prisoner.

Pierre gazed at the ruins and did not recognise districts he had known well. Here and there he could see churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly.

These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to be seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when they saw the French.

It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but in place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed, Pierre unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order had been established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the looks of the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and gaily, were escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the looks of an important French official in a carriage and pair driven by a soldier, whom they met on the way.

He felt it in the merry sounds of regimental music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt and realised it especially from the list of prisoners the French officer had read out when he came that morning.

Pierre had been taken by one set of soldiers and led first to one and then to another place with dozens of other men, and it seemed that they might have forgotten him, or confused him with the others. But no: the answers he had given when questioned had come back to him in his designation as "the man who does not give his name," and under that appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were now leading him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces that he and all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted and that they were being taken to the proper place.

Pierre felt himself to be an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose action he did not understand but which was working well.

He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the Virgin's Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not far from the convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov's house, where Pierre had often been in other days, and which, as he learned from the talk of the soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of Eckmuhl (Davout).

They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one. Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass gallery, an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a long low study at the door of which stood an adjutant.

Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end of the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently consulting a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without raising his eyes, he said in a low voice:

"Who are you?"

Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word. To him Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious for his cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern schoolmaster who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre felt that every instant of delay might cost him his life; but he did not know what to say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at his first examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was dangerous and embarrassing. So he was silent.

Follow in the footsteps

At home in Moscow

Tolstoy spent the winters in the 1880s and 1890s at Ulitsa Lva Tolstovo 21 (00 7 095 246 9444). Open Apr-Sep Tues-Sun 10am–6pm, Oct-Mar Tues-Sun 10am-4pm, closed on the last Friday of each month. Admission is £3. The Tolstoy Museum, at 11ul Prechistenka (00 7 095 202 2190), is closed until next year for refurbishment. For city breaks contact Intourist (020-7727 4100; www.intourist.co.uk).

A countryside retreat

Yasnaya Polyana (00 7 087 233 9832), the estate where Tolstoy was born, spent much of his life and is buried, is about 150 miles from Moscow. The house is open Weds-Sun 11am-3pm and the grounds are open on the same days from 10.30am-4.30pm. Admission is £1.40. Take a train from Moscow's Kursk station to Tula, then catch a number 114 bus to Shchekino, which stops at the turn off for the estate. The journey takes five hours.

Into battle

Closer to Moscow is Borodino, the site of the bloodiest battle in the war against Napoleon in 1812. The whole battlefield is now a museum. Tolstoy stayed in the inn here in 1867 to research War and Peace. It is now a museum open Tues-Sun, 10am-6pm, closed on the last Friday of each month. Admission is 40p. Take a train from Moscow's Belorusskaya station to Borodino. The journey takes just over two hours.

By Sarah Rickaby