He crashed into Wesley Lewis Jr, locking arms around the man’s shoulders and pulling him to the ground, ended up with the American writhing on top of him, furious and yelling. Then Mr Hendrik, half strangled, gasping, rolled over and, before Krüger knew what was happening (he was still pinned under the American), Mr Hendrik thrust a knife into Wesley Lewis Jr’s chest. Then he pulled it out and stabbed the American again, right through the ribs and into his heart.

Wesley Lewis Jr choked on the blood filling his throat (his eyes were wide, horrified, there was a thick, liquid sound coming from him) and then the colour in his face drained away and, a few moments after that, everything in his body stopped and he was dead.

Krüger felt the weight of the man pressing down on him. He breathed heavily and then realised his hands were wet, something warm, and when he brought his right hand up and saw it was blood, he pushed Wesley Lewis Jr off in a panic and rushed to his feet.

‘My God!’

With his leg broken, Mr Hendrik couldn’t move and groaned quietly with the pain, lying beside the dead American. Krüger tried to fathom what had happened. It was tremendous, unbelievable. A maelstrom of incomprehension.

THE COMTESSE D’ANJOU AND THE GIRL FROM ANGOULÊME

After peace was brokered and signed with the Russians (on a ridiculous canopied raft to which the Emperor and the Tsar were rowed on the river at Tilsit, in early July 1807), the Emperor returned to Paris to discover the Portuguese had changed their minds and their allegiances and were flirting with the English once again. In truth, they’d never stopped flirting, but now it was out in the open, and right in the Emperor’s face too, and that just wouldn’t do. So Bonaparte sent Général Jean-Andoche Junot and about twenty-five thousand men down to the Iberian Peninsula to sort the Portuguese out. Johannes Meyer and the 4e Régiment Étrangers were among the marching columns.