Ричард Вудмен - Baltic Mission

The free movement of strangers among the military is affirmed by Savary, Duke of Rovigo: 'this meeting attracted visitors to Tilsit from a hundred leagues around.' The opening exchange between Napoleon and Alexander is too widely quoted to tamper with. For, as Napoleon's secretary Bourienne points out, the meeting at Tilsit was 'one of the culminating points of modern history ... the waters of the Nieman reflected the image of Napoleon at the height of his glory'. Who that reflected image concealed in the water below is here revealed as the mysterious 'Ostroff'.

Wilson's presence at Eylau, the seizure by Gustavus of the Tsar's subsidy and the loss of the arms shipment are all verifiable and the Danes have not yet forgiven us the seizure of their fleet in 1807.

Morality has never been a conspicuous feature of war, and, as Fortescue says, 'it was Denmark's misfortune to lie between the hammer and the anvil' while, on Britain's part, 'the law of self-preservation [was] cogent'. Even as the British struck, Marshal Bernadotte received Napoleon's orders to invade Denmark. Finally, Fouche, Napoleon's Chief of Police, says in his memoirs, 'The success of the attack on Copenhagen was the first thing that deranged the secret article of the Treaty of Tilsit, by virtue of which the fleet of Denmark was to be put at the disposal of France ... I had never seen Napoleon in such a transport of rage.'

The circumstances under which Edward Drinkwater found himself in Russia are more fully explained in The Bomb Vessel.