Imperial Splendour

Chapter One ~ 1812-1

Chapter One ~ 1812The Duke of Welminster walked across the room to pull back the curtains from the window and stare out at the Neva.

In the pale sunlight, which later would deepen to a red heat, the river, one of the shortest in the world, was shimmering on the water.

It reflected the bright and shining gold on the needle-like spire on the Peter and Paul Cathedral on the far shore and the Duke could also see the bastions and battlements of the Fortress built by Peter the Great.

He was for the moment, however, not concerned with the beauty of St. Petersburg, which had left him somewhat surprised by the perfection of its architecture, but with the Russian Army awaiting their Commanders-in-Chief’s conclusion as to the direction that the French intended to advance.

The Duke’s contemplation was interrupted by a soft cry of protest.

“Have you forgotten me?” a woman’s voice asked. “I am still here and wanting you.”

There was no mistaking the invitation and the seductive undertone that made the words, spoken in English but with a distinct trace of a Russian accent, sound passionately alluring.

The Duke turned round with a smile on his lips.

There was no doubt that the Princess Katharina Bagration was very lovely, in fact one of the loveliest women that he had ever seen.

Lying back against the lace-edged pillows with her hair falling over her white shoulders and her huge eyes seeming to fill her whole face, she looked very much younger than she actually was.

There was a distinct Oriental mystery about her, an Andalusian charm and, when she was dressed, a Parisian elegance.

It was not surprising, the Duke thought, that the Czar Alexander I had chosen her to spy on him, a fact that he had been aware of from the moment he had arrived in the City of St. Petersburg.

The Duke was very experienced in the art of intrigue and had carried out a number of unofficial Diplomatic missions with such success that he had not been surprised when the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, had sent for him.

“I want your help, Welminster,” he began, “and I think you can guess where I wish you to go.”

“To Russia?” the Duke had queried.

“Exactly,” the Prime Minister replied.

Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, who was in the Cabinet Room, interposed to add,

“For God’s sake, Welminster, please find out what is happening. The reports I receive contradict themselves to the point where I don’t know whether I am on my head or my heels as far as that enigmatic country is concerned.”

The irritation in the Foreign Secretary’s voice was very evident and the Duke could well understand his frustration.

Czar Alexander had kept not just the British but most of Europe seriously confused by his behaviour during the last few years.

And even Napoleon Bonaparte might be excused for finding him incomprehensible.

Having moved through the first years of his reign at the beginning of the century, as a shadowy indecisive figure, Alexander’s attention had become focused on Bonaparte.

The Corsican’s astonishing Military successes had turned the whole of Europe into a turmoil.

The Czar could not make up his mind whether to join a coalition against the French or to try to continue his father’s policy of friendship.

Napoleon had actually suggested to Czar Paul, his father, that France and Russia should partition the world, but, when Bonaparte had trampled into the dust the terms of the Treaty of Amiens, the Russian Sovereign had written that he seemed to be ‘one of the most infamous tyrants that history has ever produced’.

After the great disaster at the Battle of Austerlitz, when the twenty-eight year old Czar Alexander, leading his Army as its Commander-in-Chief, had been completely routed, his gallantry had seemed to desert him.

He had ridden away from the battlefield alone, dismounted and collapsed under an apple tree, where he had wept convulsively.

Although he tried to excuse himself by blaming the Austrians, the Russians suffered yet another disastrous defeat at the Battle of Friedland.

It was then, to the amazement of the Russian people, that Alexander had signed ‘a Treaty of Friendship’ with the French when he had promised faithfully that he would take part in the Continental Blockade of trade against England.

This had brought him extreme unpopularity with the Russian people together with the fact that they could not adjust themselves after Catherine the Great’s victories to a number of ignominious defeats.

In the previous year, 1811, Alexander had listened to his subjects and refused to send soldiers to fight for the French and, what was more, he had refused to close Russian Ports to neutral shipping and uphold the Blockade against England.

“I cannot help thinking,” a famous British General had said to the Duke in London, “that if it comes to a showdown, Russia will prove a poor match for Napoleon’s Grand Army.”

The Duke had felt inclined to agree with him, but now that he was actually in Russia he began to have his doubts.

Indeed yesterday the Czar had shown him a letter from Count Rostopchin, the Governor of Moscow, he had found the contents very convincing.

The Governor had written,

“Your Empire, Sire, has two powerful defenders, its vast space and its climate. The Emperor of all Russia will be formidable at Moscow, terrible at Karzan and invincible at Tobolsk.”

“Stop thinking about war, Blake,” the Princess Katharina now cried insistently. “I can find something far more interesting to talk about.”

The Duke standing by the bed, knew what such a conversation involved, but instead of surrendering to the invitation of her lips he replied,

“I think it is time you returned to your own room.”

“There is no hurry.”

“I am thinking of your reputation.”

The Princess laughed and it was a low musical sound.

“You are the only man I know who is so considerate or is it perhaps that I am boring you?”

There was no doubt she assumed that was an impossibility and the Duke, with just a touch of cynicism in his voice, answered,

“How could I be so ungallant?”

“You are very handsome, mon cher,” the Princess pouted, “as far too many women have told you. I adore handsome men and no man could be a more alluring lover.”

She had then broken into French, as if it was easier to express herself in that language when she spoke of love.

French was the language of the Nobility in St. Petersburg and French culture was a status symbol.

Someone had told the Duke on his arrival,

“Everything is uneatable for dinner if it is not first dressed by a French chef, no gown is elegant if it is not a Parisian one and yet there is surely no one in the whole City who does not blaspheme against Bonaparte and lament Lord Nelson!”

“You are very beautiful, Katharina,” the Duke said now in French,” but I still think that you should leave me for what is left of the night.”

The Princess made a petulant little sound. Then, bending forward to reveal the exquisite curves of her naked breasts, she put her hand on the Duke’s.

“You are too serious,” she murmured, “let’s be happy and enjoy ourselves. After all what is Russia to you?”

“An ally,” the Duke replied, “if a somewhat vacillating one.”

Katharina laughed softly and then she asked,

“Tell me what you want to know about your ‘ally’ and I will give you the right answers.”

“I am sure of that,” he replied. “I am only wondering what such information will cost me.”

Katharina laughed again.

She was well aware that the Duke knew why she had sought him out, why she had flirted enticingly with him since he had arrived at The Winter Palace and why last night after he had retired to bed a secret panel in the wall of his bedroom had opened suddenly and then she had appeared unexpectedly.

That was not entirely true, because the Duke had been expecting her, although not in the particular manner by which she had affected her entrance.

“You know, of course,” Lord Castlereagh had said to him in London, “that the Czar employs some of the loveliest women in St. Petersburg to spy on our Ambassador and any other Emissary we may send to Russia.”

He had seen the smile on the Duke’s face and added,

“Not that, Welminster, it will be a novelty for you.”

“I will admit that it has happened in the past,” the Duke replied, “and, having heard of the beauty of the women at the Court of St. Petersburg, I am quite looking forward to the experience.”

“Be careful,” the Foreign Secretary warned him.

“Of what?” the Duke enquired. “Giving away State secrets, most of which I suspect are known to the Russians already, or of losing my heart ?”

“The latter has not entered into my calculations,” Lord Castlereagh replied with a touch of irony.

The Duke had been expecting an enchantress, but he had to give the Czar full marks for his choice of the Princess.

As it happened, the Duke already knew a great deal about Katharina Bagration. She was half-Russian, half-Polish and had married at twenty a General many years older than herself.

A Countess in her own right with Royal blood in her veins, she was, with her husband, admitted to the highest circles of the Russian Court.

The fact that she was highly intelligent as well as beautiful, together with the traces in her of a Mongolian ancestry, gave her the faint air of Oriental mystery that made her unique even amongst a host of other beautiful Russian women.

It was the Czar who had ordered his Foreign Minister to use this effervescent and lovely young woman as a spy.

The Duke had already heard what had happened at Katharina’s first assignment.

She had been told to make the acquaintance of Count Metternich, the Austrian delegate to Dresden, who the Russian Diplomats in Vienna insisted was of far greater importance than his youth and minor appointment suggested.

Count Metternich, then an almost unknown young man, was described on the secret files in the Kremlin as an intimate of the Emperor of Austria and the instrument who had been primarily responsible for the downfall of Thugut.

Princess Katharina, young, lovely, but with a shrewd little mind well hidden behind her childlike face, had called at the Legation in Dresden and, as a footman opened the door, it happened that Count Metternich was passing through the hall.

He was expecting the arrival of one of the Imperial Couriers with grave news.

Then framed in the sunlight against the dark hallway he saw a small exquisite figure.

She was wearing one of the thin, almost transparent muslin gowns that were the fashion and against the sun her body showed through the diaphanous material like a beautiful marble statue.

Count Metternich was for the moment spellbound into a strange stillness.

He said afterwards to one of his friends who repeated it to the Duke,

“She was like a beautiful naked angel.”

At that moment the young Austrian and the Russian Secret Agent fell in love.

Their affair was a wild, fiery and insatiable union of all-consuming passion that had all Dresden talking.

The Duke had trained himself to file away information about people, especially those concerned in the Diplomatic world and he remembered as soon as he was introduced to Princess Katharina in The Winter Palace that he had been told that within three months of her meeting with Count Metternich, she found that she was to have a child.

This had been whispered about, argued over, discussed and re-discussed and there was actually a great deal of speculation as to what would happen next.

In fact, the Duke recalled, there had been an urgent command from the Czar, who wished to safeguard his beautiful agent’s reputation at all costs.

General Bagration went through the ritual of announcing that his marriage was shortly to be blessed with a child and after the birth of a daughter he formally acknowledged paternity.

The Czar was no less accommodating and the Court of St. Petersburg formally recorded the birth.

The baby was summarily handed over to Count Metternich’s adoring, patient and very understanding wife.

Utterly without conscience about the love-children he fathered, he was only grateful that his love affair could continue and, whatever was said privately, there would be no outward scandal.

Ten years later the Duke, however, was quite certain that, because Katharina had been so successful with by now the most outstanding Diplomat in Europe, the Czar had chosen her to win another triumph where he himself was concerned.