Leo Tolstoy, in "War and Peace", wrote about the 1812 French invasion of Russia: "What is the cause of this movement which took the French army all the way from Paris to Moscow, and then back to Paris? A system, a mysterious callous force ... the unconscious swarm-life of mankind." The French decision to invade Russia in 1812 had been intended to secure a Franco-Russian alliance that would then conquer India, but it ended in a rout and in the exile of Bonaparte—prompting Stanley Michalak to write that "In 1812 Napoleon failed the supreme test of power politics—knowing when to stop."