In a passage that exemplifies situational irony, Tolstoy writes that Pierre finally found the "peace and harmony" that he has spent much of his life searching for while imprisoned under horrific conditions by the French army: 

In devastated and burnt Moscow, Pierre experienced almost the final limits of privation that a man can endure, but [...] he bore his situation not only lightly, but joyfully. And precisely in that time he received the peace and contentment with himself that he had previously striven for in vain. In his life he had long sought in various directions for that peace, that harmony with himself [...] And, without thinking, he had received that peace and harmony with himself only through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he had understood in Karataev.

Pierre, Tolstoy writes, suffered "almost the final limits of privation that a man can endure" during his imprisonment by the French in the burnt ruins of Moscow. Ironically, however, he looks upon his imprisonment as a period of "peace and contentment with himself," an inner peace that "he had previously striven for in vain" in his life as a wealthy man of privilege and luxury. Stripped of the material comforts to which he has been accustomed, Pierre is able to better appreciate the basic pleasures of life, despite the almost unsurvivable conditions of his imprisonment. Throughout the novel, Tolstoy often dismisses the extravagances of the Russian aristocracy in favor of a more humble mode of life that he regards as spiritually clarifying and enriching.