The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) Read Online Free Page B

things,” the minister went on. “Each a distinct individual, with not only a language but a culture. No one would mistake a Prussian for a Frenchman, or a Russian for a Roman.” He gestured to his maps. “You can draw nations out of existence, like my native Poland, and yet the underlying country is as persistent as bedrock. Do you know that Poland was Europe’s largest nation in the 16th Century, when it combined with Lithuania? Tsar Alexander knows how rooted my people are, and yet he needs Prussia against the French, and Prussia will not allow Poland to be reconstituted.”
    “I thought Alexander dislikes Prussia as much as his mother favors it.”
    “He fears Napoleon more, and German alliance has a long tradition. Alexander’s father Paul was fascinated by Frederick the Great and trained the Russian army like Prussian marionettes. He even put metal braces on soldier’s knees so they’d be forced to goosestep. Paul was his wife’s creature, and thus quite mad.” Such candor was risky, but the foreign minister found release by confiding.
    “That’s why America and France got rid of our kings,” I said. “Although now the French have an emperor, which shows how inconsistent people can be. First they cut off the head of Louis, and then they crown Napoleon.”
    “He crowned himself, I hear.”
    I was sensible enough not to mention my own role in that affair.
    “But people swing to emotion as much as reason, and no mob is rational. Napoleon promises order. Strength. Pride. Glory. For the mere price of servitude! Here in St. Petersburg, Alexander’s dislike of Prussia ended at Austerlitz. He needs the Germans. King Frederick-Wilhelm hesitates, but his wife Louisa badgers him for war. Wags call her ‘the only man in Prussia.’”
    “But you think resurrecting Poland is a better strategy?”
    “With French guarantees. The name of my country is our Slavic word for prairie, and Poland’s rich plains always tempt invaders. My country is a beach, awash with barbarians from the east and tyrants from the west. Yet every handicap has its benefit. Poland is the link, and our learning has made us the Greece that informs Russia’s Rome. We gave the world the astronomer Copernicus, the mathematician Brozek, and the geologist Staszik. Bonaparte views us as civilizers.”
    “So Poland is eternally vulnerable, and eternally necessary.”
    “Well said! Nothing is simple, including my own birth. Poles have complicated identities.”
    “Yes. You have the name of Prince Adam Czartoryski, but—”
    “But Stanislaw Poniatowski was made king of Poland after sleeping with Catherine the Great, and so knew the power of the bed. My mother was a sexually adventurous Polish beauty, and Stanislaw persuaded her to sleep with Russian ambassador Nikolai Repnin as a patriotic act. The side result was me.” His expression was wry. “My mother’s husband, the man I am named for, was rewarded for her infidelity with command of Poland’s military academy. This is how things work. Sometimes we sleep with the Russians. Sometimes we fight them. Those same Russians burned my own home palace of Pulawy during Kosciuszko’s Rebellion. So I joined Russian service to recoup our losses.”
    “And that was Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who fought with George Washington?”
    “Exactly. He helped win your Battle of Saratoga and build the fort at West Point. I’m told Washington so struggled with Polish names that he spelled Kosciuszko eleven different ways, but he loved the general’s reliability.”
    “Another Lafayette.”
    “Kosciuszko also met your mentor Franklin, as did my mother. Circles within circles.”
    “Old Ben seems to have met half the people on the planet.” Which slightly tarnishes my own claim to him.
    “And then Kosciuszko,” Czartoryski went on, “brought the revolutionary ideas of the New World back to the Old. He led a ragtag army of Jewish cavalry, burgher gunners, and illiterate peasants against battle-hardened