Inferno

Chapter 24

Tilsit, Duchy of Lithuania

The maitre d’hotel of the Hotel Tilze primped his moustache and looked out over the packed dining room with swelling satisfaction. The little town of the Teutonic Knights, now a modest spa resort on the southern Baltic, had been thrust into an astonishing prominence by the workings of Fate, sudden shifts of destiny in the world of war reaching even as far as there, and who was he to question it?

What was incredible was one simple fact: they had been spared.

Prussia, aided by young Alexander, Tsar of Russia, had dared to defy Napoleon Bonaparte but had been halted at the blood-soaked battlefield of Eylau earlier in the year. From there Emperor Bonaparte had thrust his army, like a sword, through the vitals of Prussia and even into the ancient lands of east Prussia, an unstoppable juggernaut.

They’d trembled for their safety as news and rumours of the approaching French host had flooded in – but had bravely cheered Count von Bennigsen as he marched across the border to confront them with some ninety thousand men and hundreds of guns.

It had not been enough. Even with King Friedrich falling back to his last redoubt, Konigsberg, at the extremity of Prussian territory, the French had pressed hard against his desperate resistance.

And only three weeks ago, no more than fifty miles away at Friedland, the two armies had come together in a titanic clash, which had finally ended after twenty hours of desperate hacking. The chaotic rout and slaughter of the Russian Army had left nearly fifty thousand bodies carpeting the battlefield. Terrified, the townsfolk had prepared for the inevitable, but it was not to be. Bonaparte, in his wisdom and mercy, had halted the advance and granted a general armistice.

Then the rumours started: it was for a reason, a world-changing purpose that had as its objective the forging of a continent-sized empire. This was nothing less than a meeting of emperors to determine the fate of the civilised world. Tsar Alexander of Russia would stand face to face with Emperor Bonaparte of France as equals to cease the useless bloodshed and decide the destiny of nations for centuries to come.

And all this was to take place in Tilsit, beside the Neman River between Prussia and the quaint old medieval Duchy of Lithuania, under Russian dominance since the dismembering of Poland in 1795.

It was a stupefying change of fortune for the town.

The Tsar was processing from Russia with his nobles and court. Coming from the opposite direction the newly victorious Emperor Bonaparte would arrive to stand at the banks of the Neman in recognition of the limit of his conquered territories, with his staff and generals, and who knew how many followers?

That meant a gratifying number of nobles and ladies, statesmen and grandees, all needing accommodation and entertainment at what better establishment than the Hotel Tilze?

His ransack of the champagne and fine wines, caviar and foie gras from far and wide was paying off handsomely as notables gathered for the greatest spectacle of the age. In the dining salon before him were the cream of the nobility of central Europe, generals and ambassadors. If he could maintain standards, there was a fortune to be made.

The maitre d’hotel surveyed the busy scene again. In yet another stroke of luck, he’d been able to procure the services of a first-class head waiter, Meyen, a Polish Jew recently fled from Konigsberg. He was a born professional, working the tables with attention and poise that was neither intrusive nor fawning. When this affair was over, he would most certainly see to it that Meyen found a secure position at the hotel.

‘Do you recommend the duck at all, my dear Meyen?’

‘If your ladyship craves adventure,’ the head waiter answered, with a roguish smile. This was the flirtatious Helga, Countess of Hesse-Darmstadt. He happened to know she was in an affair with General Gulstorff, sitting opposite, who had managed with desperate heroism to extricate himself and his cavalry from the field after Friedland.

Meyen leaned past her to align the silver cutlery to perfection and heard them resume their conversation in German.

‘When can we get away, Hans? It’s been so long.’

‘Not now. There’s a dispatch due, telling us whether we give ground on Hanover or not.’

He looked up suddenly at Meyen who returned a glassy smile of incomprehension and went on with his rearranging.

‘This whole thing is a catastrophe from start to finish. I swear that if Bonaparte asks for the crown we’ll have to give it him.’

Interesting.

Meyen withdrew with every expression of politeness and threaded through the room, ignoring other diners with practised ease to arrive at the table of Marshal Kuril, the Russian soldier who had arrived too late to make any difference to the crushing of the remnants of Tsar Alexander’s imperial ambitions. The occupants were sunk in the deepest gloom, and Kuril’s wife sat rigidly, letting her husband mutter on at his loyal adjutant.

Meyen carefully took position behind the marshal, order pad and polite smile at the ready. In their dejection he wasn’t noticed and his expatriate Russian was quite adequate to catch the drift of what was being said: it was the considered opinion of Kuril that if Alexander failed in his confrontation with Napoleon he would most certainly suffer assassination, like his father, Tsar Paul.

It was a rich haul he was getting from this concentration of the highest as they feverishly discussed the fateful meeting to come. His paymaster would no doubt be accordingly grateful.