Various rich Russians are portrayed in War and Peace as having a sort of "swear jar" for accidentally speaking French. The reader is given to understand that the normal language of conversation among these people was French, but because Napoleon was at that time causing such a great deal of worry and bother, there was a patriotic desire to return to Russian, but the desire sometimes outran their actual ability to speak it. An absent nobleman is described with some scorn as having actually hired a tutor in order to learn Russian. So whenever these folks accidentally slipped into French, they'd have to pay a penalty.

Is all this a reasonable portrayal of the language abilities of the kind of high society that's being portrayed there? Did this class of persons know only enough Russian for practical necessities (e.g. to tell the foreman to tell the peasants to go harvest the southwest field on Thursday) and try to have all their advanced philosophical/social conversations in French? And are we aware of any genuine attempt to eschew French in favor of Russian during the Napoleonic Wars?