Finally finished WAR AND PEACE. I say finally, but I anticipated it would take me a year to read it and I finished it in nine months. The book becomes increasingly a work of philosophy rather than a historical romance as it goes along. One question that Tolstoy returns to throughout the novel is "Why did millions of people kill one another when it has been known since the world began that it is physically and morally bad to do so?"
My answer (not Tolstoy's) is they were given permission. Everyone has it in them to kill, but in normal circumstances they don't on account of social strictures. But when those in authority gave permission to the masses to kill and when the anonymity of the crowd freed them from individual responsibility, people were allowed to act on their darkest impulses without fear of censure.
Just as today the anonymity of the social network allows people to vent their worst inclinations and destroy others without remorse, the madding crowd gave cover to those people in the Napoleonic Wars to kill with impunity.