The report reached the Winter Palace wrapped in red ribbon and silence.
Not the silence of ignorance—St. Petersburg had heard the rumors days earlier—but the heavier kind, the kind that settled when men finally understood that events had outpaced language.
Couriers had been arriving at all hours, boots echoing through marble corridors, clerks sleeping at their desks, ink freezing in wells as maps were revised and revised again.
But this document was different.
It bore the combined seals of the Foreign Ministry, the General Staff, and the Black Seas Fleet.
It was not speculation.
It was confirmation.
Emperor Alexander II received it in his private study, the tall windows admitting a pale winter light that reflected off polished floors and icons lining the walls.
He waved away the attendants with a small motion of his hand.
Only Count Milyutin remained, standing stiffly near the door, his face betraying nothing.
The Tsar broke the seal.
Reading the contents of the missive carefully.
Not because the text was dense, but because every paragraph overturned an assumption his empire had carried for generations.
In the span of a single document, his empire became aware of a great many shocking things.
The fall of Ottoman Europe to the Kingdom of Montenegro
The fall of Constantinople.
The capture of the Ottoman Sultan.
And lastly the call for the cessation of hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and all parties involved in this current Russo-Turkish War.
Alexander set the paper down.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
The news contained within was just that shocking.
Across from him, the bureaucratic machine of the empire held its breath.
The ministers had prepared for rage.
They had prepared for disbelief.
They had even prepared for humiliation.
They were not prepared for the smile.
It was not broad.
It was not triumphant.
But it was unmistakable.
"So," Alexander said at last, his voice calm, almost reflective, "they have done it."
Milyutin cleared his throat. "Yes, Your Majesty. And in months, not years."
The Tsar's gaze drifted toward the map mounted on the far wall—one that showed the eastern front where Russian armies still sat mired in mud and blood, fighting Ottoman formations that still held even after months of warfare and freezing winter temperatures.
"Our armies bleed at Kars and Erzurum," Alexander murmured, "while our cousins in the west march unopposed into the Queen of Cities."
There it was.
The unspoken comparison, finally voiced.
A younger official might have bristled at the implication.
Alexander did not.
"Does this displease you, Sire?" asked Gorchakov carefully.
The Tsar looked at him, then laughed softly.
"Displease me?" he repeated. "No. It relieves me."
The room stirred.
Alexander rose and walked toward the map, tracing the coastline with a gloved finger—past the Black Sea, through the Bosphorus, into the blue expanse beyond.
"For centuries," he said, "we have battered ourselves against the gates of the south. How many lives? How many rubles? How many winters spent preparing fleets that rot in the ice, only to be sunk before they could ever taste true freedom?"
He turned back to his ministers.
"And now the gates are open."
There was no triumph in his tone—only certainty.
The Kingdom of Montenegro was a relatively new kingdom, only elevated to the status of a kingdom recently after decades of being a mere Princedom.
A nation who has close ties to both their neighbors, but also remembers their roots as Slavic settlers, and beholden to the rule of the Russian Emperor himself.
Of course Alexander never fully believed this Kingdoms king would bend the knee to him.
But even just being friendly enough to open the passageway allowing for trade and his military ships to escape the inland sea would be more than enough for him, as this would allow his Navy a larger functioning role, should another war open up with the Ottoman Empire, keeping their own fleet tied up, allowing for his army to march virtually unimpeded.
With days, the Black Sea Fleet had already begun preliminary planning for sustained Mediterranean operations, not in defiance, but with the quiet confidence of men who had waited their entire careers for permission history had finally granted.
At the same time with the end of the war, reports from his military commanders and generals were pouring in from the Western Front.
"Our losses," Milyutin continued, "are… acceptable. High, but within projections. And with the Ottoman European army shattered, their eastern forces are already withdrawing, obeying the armistice making the lands open for the claiming, while the Montenegro army is merely continuing to hold their previous positions."
Alexander nodded.
"So the war ends," he said, "as all wars should—quickly, and with someone else paying the price."
A dangerous statement, perhaps.
Especially for a man whose very own empire waged war with a concept of mass mobilization and victory measured in the number of corpses sacrificed by their own people.
But spoken in a room where no one would dare repeat it.
The Russian Empire stunted for generations finally had a means with which to grow, more than just expansion through conquest.
The Emperor was being celebrated by his people as they cheered in the streets.
His people who beyond even the british had a stiff upper lip capable of enduring great sacrifice without many a complaint.
Now had a glimmer of hope missing from their lives.
Talk of opening trade routes into the Mediterranean rather than having to pay the high prices demanded by the French, and British who delivered goods but at inflated prices they had no ability to refuse.
Then there was the news about the end of the war, and the return of their fathers and sons.
This being one of the fastest wars, and the one creating the least loss of life in the long span of the empire, at least when considering a conflict between respected nations.
The people saw the fall of their longstanding rival as the onset of a Golden Age, the reputation of the Emperor Soaring to the great heights attained by Catherine the Great herself.
And only the times would tell if this change in history they lauded as an achievement would one day be known as the first stepping stone to the fall of their own Empire, just not in the way that history had planned.