As Jerome Bonaparte was secretly meeting with Metternich, a meeting concerning the survival of the entire Balkan region was secretly being held at Catherine Palace in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, thousands of miles away.
The attendees of the meeting included Tsar Nicholas I, Count Orlov, head of the Third Department, Prince Menshikov, and Prince Paskevich, who had hurriedly returned from the Two Danube Principalities.
The subject they needed to discuss was the measures and punishments that the Russian Empire should impose on the Ottoman Empire.
Ever since the 25th of last month, when the Great Ottoman Council harshly rejected all the proposals put forward by Menshikov, the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire plummeted to a freezing point.
