On August 26, 1805, a post chaise left the town of Mainz and rolled east toward the Rhine River. Inside the carriage sat a man, 6 English feet in height, with black corkscrew curls tumbling over his suit collar, dark flashing eyes and a black mustache. He had a handsome face, marred only by a scar on his lower jaw, the result of a bullet wound. In his hands he held a book by Marshal Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, comte de Belle-Isle, describing the French campaign in Bohemia in 1742. On the man's passports was the name Colonel de Beaumont....
