Imperial Splendour

Author’s NoteAs Napoleon waited impatiently in Moscow for an Armistice, the vacillating Russian Czar Alexander was transformed into a man fortified by deep religious fervour. He replied that he would not negotiate while ‘one enemy soldier remains on Russian soil’. After five weeks Napoleon had no option but to withdraw his Army and begin the long trek home. But he had left it too late. On November 4th the snow began to fall and two days later the temperature was many degrees below freezing. Lack of food and clothing and the savagery of the Russian peasants resulted in the roads being strewn with dead men, guns and horses. Half a million of the Grande Armée failed to reach France. In April 1813 Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to the island of Elba. When Alexander entered Paris the crowds went wild and his own country begged him to accept the title of ‘Alexander the Blessed’. It was the Czar who, at the conquest of Vienna, first had the idea of a League of Nations. The Russians rebuilt Moscow and, when I visited Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in 1978 I could see how brilliantly they had rebuilt that City after the terrible devastation left by the Germans in 1941. The Palaces that had been looted, shelled and blown up by mines are now elaborate, splendid and exactly as when they were designed on the order of Catherine the Great. The famous Duke of Wellington in 1826 thought St. Petersburg ‘the most beautiful City on earth’. Armand-Emmanuel Due de Richelieu (1766-1822) held the post of Governor-General of New Russia until 1815. After the War he was twice Prime Minister of France under King Louis XVIII. Les Sylphides launched the whole Romantic period of the ballet and was performed in Paris in March 1832, in London in July and in St. Petersburg in September. The costume attributed to Eugène Lami with the long bell-shaped skirt, became the accepted attire of ballerinas of the period and is still worn. Because it is so familiar, and I wanted my readers to know exactly how Zoia looked, I have anticipated its first performance in St. Petersburg by twenty years. This book is dedicated to a good friend of mine, The Earl Mountbatten of Burma, who first suggested that I should visit Russia to obtain the background for a novel. He also helped me with many authentic details of the period.