War and Peace vocabulary

“Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel,” said Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times before.

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: 08 (Book Eight)

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Forgetting that the house was on fire, these strange fellows went on squabbling where they were, till they were suffocated by the smoke, and they and their goods were all burnt up together.

[This fable is said to refer to the squabbles which took place among the Russian generals at the time of the French invasion. Count Rostopchin, for instance, withdrew firom the Moscow Volunteer Committee simply because it was made dependent on the Volunteer Committee of St Petersburg. In many cases what was much worse than squabbling took place, some of the officials being charged with having, even at that critical period, "stolen all that could be stolen, the very clothes, the very food of the recruits, of the volunteers, of the prisoners."]

Ivan Krylov.The Division (Ralston translation, 1869)