Davout in the historiography of Borodino

Well, he is dealing with historiography and even Tolstoy can fall under that rubric.

@tomholmberg That is correct. I had to read War and Peace in college and thought it, and still do, an awful read. That could be accounted for by a poor translation, but I still am not impressed. And Tolstoy is no historian.

[@Kevin F. Kiley] However, authors of historical fiction do have an influence in popular understanding and views on historical events. Much of ancient and medieval history has it’s Shakespeare. Where would Waterloo be without Thackeray, Scott or Hugo. Or perhaps today Dino di Laurentis, Sergei Bondarchuk or Bernard Cromwell? Certainly their romanticism has drifted into (infected?) more than one biography or more serious work. We see many of these notions abroad amongst one or two of our fellow forumites, on occasion. I believe therefore that if we ignore them in our examination of the historiography we do so at our peril. To do so on the quality of the writing seems especially egregious.