Pyotr Cherkasov's documentary novels are the result of many years of archival research. The reader will learn a lot of unexpected things. Catherine II prays for the salvation of the Corsican rebel leader Paoli, Louis XV secretly sends military advisers to Emelyan Pugachev, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of revolutionary France regularly supplies ciphers and secret documents to his Russian curators, the Duke de Montebello meets with Imam Shamil, the "Surte National" organizes surveillance of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich... Here is a portrait of a man of 'striking contrasts' Russian Russian diplomats' dispatches of Nicholas I, the story of the first chief of Russian foreign intelligence, the zigzags of the fate of the hatter, who became a hereditary nobleman as a reward for saving the tsar and ended with delirium tremens, details of the assassination attempt in the Bois de Boulogne on the Russian and French emperors, and much more.Pyotr Cherkasov is a Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher at the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.