Napoleon set off, his guardsmen closed up around him, cautiously watching the civilians milling around the parade ground. Those who had witnessed the assassination attempt looked on in silence as the French Emperor and his escort hurried by, and then turned their attention to General Rapp and his small party as they dragged the young man away.

‘Death to tyrants!’ the youth cried out. ‘Death to Napoleon!’ Rapp leaped to his side and smashed his fist into his jaw, silencing him.

A short distance away, Napoleon glanced back at his assailant, and then noticed that his hands were trembling. With an angry frown he clasped them together behind his back and strode towards the palace.

Late in the evening Napoleon descended into the cellars of the palace. General Rapp had taken his prisoner to one of the empty storerooms beneath a little-used section of the palace. There Napoleon found him, with three burly sergeants of the Old Guard, stripped to the waist as they sat on stools around the youth, who was tied into a chair. His coat had been removed, and his white shirt and breeches were spattered with his blood. Rapp’s men had beaten him severely about the face, and by the light of a lantern hanging from a beam above him Napoleon could not recognise the features of the man who had tried to kill him earlier in the day. His lips were cut and swollen, his nose was broken and bloody and his forehead was grazed and cut in places.

Rapp and the sergeants rose to their feet as their Emperor crossed the room towards them, his footsteps echoing off the cold flagstones.

‘Well? What have you got from him?’

‘Not much, sire.’ Rapp pursed his lips. ‘My boys had to work him over before we began to loosen his tongue.’

‘So I can see.’

‘He says his name is Friedrich Staps. He’s from Saxony.’

‘Who sent him to kill me?’

Rapp shrugged. ‘He says he was acting by himself.’

‘A likely story!’ Napoleon snorted. ‘Someone sent him. Someone who was too cowardly to face me in person. This boy must have had accomplices. I must have their names.’

‘He denied there was anyone else, sire.’

‘Then he’s lying.’

‘I don’t think so, sire. He was questioned for over eight hours. If he was trying to hide anything he would have said something by now that would have given the truth away.’ Rapp paused and regarded the youth frankly. ‘He stuck to his story through it all. He says he acted alone.’

‘I see,’ Napoleon mused. ‘What else did he say?’

‘He is a clerk in a trading company. He believes in a greater union of the German states, and he accuses you of standing in the way of the destiny of the German people.’

‘What about his family? Did he confess any links to the Prussian court?’

‘Hardly, sire. Staps says that his father is a parson.’