Excerpt from My Mission to Russia and Other Diplomatic Memories, Vol. 2 Meanwhile tlie Emperor at the beginning of February had parted with Goremykin and appointed Stiirmer President of the Council. Stiirmer's grand father had been Austrian Commissary at St. Helena during Napoleon's residence on that island, and he had himself successively held the posts Of Director of the Ceremonies at the Russian Court and of Governor of Jaroslav. With but a second-rate intelligence, without any experience of affairs, a sycophant, bent solely on the advancement of his own interests and extremely ambitious, he owed his new appointment to the fact that he was a friend of Rasputin and that he was backed by the Empress's camarilla. I shall have more to say about him later on, but I may mention, as showing the sort Of man that he was, that he chose as his chef de cabinet a former agent of the okhmna (secret police), Manouiloff by name, who was a few months afterwards arrested and tried for blackmailing a bank. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.