The library of the project “History of the Russian State” is the best monuments of historical literature recommended by Boris Akunin, which reflect the biography of our country from its very origins. This is the story of adventures and friendship-hate of two extraordinary people, each of whom left a bright mark on history his country. Count Pavel Aleksandrovich Stroganov, a good friend of Emperor Alexander I and a talented military leader who withstood Napoleon himself in the Battle of Craon, received a very unusual education in his youth. His tutor Gilbert Romm, a failed scientist, freemason and spy, and later a prominent revolutionary and “regicide” who voted for the execution of the king, tempered his ward like a blade of Damascus steel. He traveled with the boy across Russia from the White Sea to the Black Sea, from Karelia to the Ural Mountains, took him to world-famous Swiss scientists in search of knowledge and finally plunged him into the fiery whirlpool of the French Revolution...