War and Peace Epilogue, Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

  • Power flows through people in some mysterious way.
  • At one point, Napoleon is the most powerful person on earth. He comes back from his first exile and is again put in charge. But after his defeat, he’s suddenly a powerless puppet who can be tossed aside.
  • Meanwhile, Emperor Alexander – who, after Napoleon’s defeat, becomes the most powerful person on the continent – just takes that power and chucks it away himself.
  • Huh.
  • We don’t really know why things happen. We just know that they do happen, and we can only try to figure out why from our limited point of view.