The Sentient Warrior and Two Acolytes

A samurai is wandering in foreign lands, to be precise, in England and Italy. It turns out he is not alone. One of the Acolyte's vision of history is quite different in ITS DESIGN from the theory of history to be found in Tolstoy's "War and Peace." Tolstoy never really returned to that theory after writing the novel, which makes one suspect that it was basically a structural device for the otherwise rambling novel. The warrior's companion's vision here is not necessarily only structural.