The Count smiled at her in perfect sympathy. ‘You chose your example badly – thousands of serfs died to raise Petersburg from the swamps. But I grant you the point. Perhaps a great cathedral is almost as grand a vision as a mighty empire.’
Sergei looked bored with the turn the conversation had taken. ‘But Father, will Napoleon really fight Prussia? We heard that he had offered them Hanover in exchange for their neutrality.’
‘He won’t give Hanover to Prussia any more than he will give it to England. Why should he? He has little to fear from Frederick William.’
‘Who are you talking of, Koko?’ said Vera Borisovna, walking into the room at that moment. ‘The King of Prussia? Oh, he’s a poor creature, nothing like his great-uncle, Frederick the Great. Now there was a ruler! He was on the best of terms with our dear Empress Catherine, you know. In those days, Europe was ruled by great monarchs, a giant breed who seem, alas, to be extinct in these poor modern times! Now there is nothing but an unprincipled Corsican bandit, and spineless creatures like the Austrian Emperor, signing away his patrimony, and that half-witted, vacillating oaf in Berlin. His wife is more of a man than he is. Why doesn’t he drive Bonaparte out?’
‘He will probably try, Mama,’ the Count said mildly, ‘but I doubt whether he will succeed. Napoleon’s star is still rising. The time has not yet come when he can be defeated.’
The Countess was looking at him with wide, surprised eyes, but Vera Borisovna had merely snorted contemptuously. ‘Mystical rubbish! He is a common little man who rose through the ranks, and he can be sent back the same way. He has armies? Send armies against him! He lives by the sword? Let him die by the sword!’
There was never any point in arguing with Vera Borisovna, so the Count changed the subject at that point; but after dinner, while strolling on the terrace, he told Anne that Frederick William was even then in negotiation with the Tsar, for his support if he declared war on France.
‘I don’t think the Tsar will refuse to help,’ the Count said. ‘As soon as they reach an agreement, war will be declared, and I will have to leave you all again.’ He lapsed into silence, leaning on the parapet and staring sightlessly at the blue wreaths of smoke rising from his neglected cigar.
‘Will it be for long?’ Anne asked quietly.
‘Yes, I think so. It will not take long for Napoleon to defeat Prussia; but my fear is that he will interfere in Poland, and that will mean that we will enter the war on our own behalf, not just to help Frederick William.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Anne said.
He smiled. ‘No, how should you? I will explain, if you are ready for a little history lesson.’
‘You know that I am always eager to learn,’ Anne said.
‘Yes, I know. That was one of the things I always liked about you, Anna Petrovna: your mind is not closed and shuttered like most women’s – like most people’s indeed! Well, then, we must go back to the last century, when, as my mother told us so eloquently, the world was ruled by those giant figures, Catherine of Russia and Frederick of Prussia. Catherine the Great and Frederick the Great.’
‘Were they so great?’ Anne asked.
‘You doubt it? Little cynic! They were, at least, ruthless, which often does just as well in a ruler. At any rate, with the help of the Emperor of Austria, they carved up the Kingdom of Poland into three portions, and swallowed them. Austria took the southern Polish province of Galicia; Russia took the provinces bordering the Ukraine, along with Lithuania and the northern seaboard territories; and that left Prussia with the ancient Polish Crown lands, the capital of Warsaw, and the seaport of Danzig – which up until then had been a sort of free state with its own autonomous government.’
‘Rather hard on the Polish people,’ Anne suggested.
‘Straight to the heart of it, as usual,’ the Count nodded approvingly. ‘Yes, it was; and the Poles are a fiercely patriotic people. Well, we Russians haven’t had much trouble with our share of the partition, because our way of life isn’t much different from theirs, and we leave them alone a good deal. But the Crown Lands were the heart of Poland, and they hate Prussian rule. That’s where the trouble is likely to begin. Last year Czartoryski, our Foreign Minister, who happens to be a Pole himself, begged the Tsar to help the Polish cause; but he wouldn’t interfere, and that, of course, leaves the way clear for Napoleon to become their national hero instead.’
‘But how?’
‘By helping to recreate the Kingdom of Poland – with himself as overlord, of course. I imagine he will offer to help them free themselves from Prussia, in return for their becoming a satellite kingdom within the French Empire. The Poles are proud, and Napoleon is not without tact, so he will probably not ask to be called King, or Emperor, or Protector, or whatever is this year’s title, but that’s what it will amount to. And then, naturally, the Poles will want their lands back, which now belong to Russia.’
‘And the Tsar, of course, will not agree,’ Anne said thoughtfully.
‘Of course not. It will mean real war between us and France, not this half-hearted business of helping Austria and helping Prussia.’
Anne sought for something comforting to say. ‘Perhaps if it is real war, it will be over the sooner,’ she said.
He looked at her for a moment, and then laughed. ‘Well tried! But it would be more to the purpose if you offered to play to me on the pianoforte. Music has charms, you know, to soothe a savage breast.’
‘Likewise, “music oft hath such a charm to make bad good, and good provoke to harm”,’ Anne returned.
The count considered. ‘Shakespeare,’ he said at last.
‘That’, she said severely, ‘was pure guesswork.’
‘It’s a long time since we played that game,’ he smiled, and offered her his arm. ‘Come and play to me, and we’ll see who was right.’
Prussia declared war on France in September 1806, and the Count rode away again to join his regiment, this time in Lithuania. Napoleon defeated the Prussians in a devastatingly short campaign, crushing their armies at Jena and Auerstadt on October the 14th in a single day. Thereafter, the Prussian Empire collapsed in a series of retreats and surrenders; and by December, French troops were trotting into Warsaw to be greeted as deliverers by the delirious inhabitants. From every side, Polish nobles and their followers streamed into Warsaw, eager to offer their services. Napoleon had made the offer the Count had foreseen, and as the bitter Polish winter closed in on the armies of France and Russia, a new Polish state was being created under the leadership of Prince Joseph Poniatowski, the nephew of the country’s last king.
The Count had written what he knew of these events from a camp near Konigsberg, where he was with his regiment under the overall command of the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Constantine, as short, pug-nosed and hot-tempered as Alexander was tall, handsome and serene. News came infrequently, much delayed and frequently garbled or contradictory. There had been a short, fierce but inconclusive battle in December between the Russians and the French at Pultusk, after which the French had retired into winter quarters, and nothing more was expected to be heard until the thaw.
But three weeks ago news had filtered through of a further engagement. The Russians, it seemed, had attacked the French in winter quarters at Preuss-Eylau. A running battle had been fought through the town, with heavy losses on both sides, but the French, it was claimed, had had the worst of it. It was the nearest thing the Russians had had yet to a victory, and there was rejoicing in Petersburg. In the Kirov Palace they did not celebrate. The Count’s regiment had been one of those engaged, and as yet there had been no news of him.
A scratching on the door of her chamber roused Anne from her reverie, and a maid came in to say that Fräulein Hoffnung had finished giving the girls their German lesson and wondered, as it had stopped snowing, whether they ought to take their walk now, in case it should begin again.