Once, at the Louvre Museum, Georgiana met the Russian ambassador's wife—a woman built almost as sturdily as a bear.
She told Georgiana about Paul I's "India Plan." Perhaps because it was so mad, the ambassador's wife spoke of it as if it were a joke, as if it could never be carried out.
Before ascending the throne, Paul I had publicly opposed expanding Russia's borders, believing order first had to be established within Russia's existing territories. He had been especially opposed to the partition of Poland.
Yet the purpose of an empire was expansion. Besides the "India Plan," the Russian Empire also had a "Greek Plan." Tsar Alexander I had already expelled the Turkish officials and replaced them all with people from Greece and Armenians.
The Balkans had originally referred to the ancient Hemus Mountains, but later came to mean the region stretching from the Peloponnese to the Danube.
The Thracians had been Bulgaria's earliest inhabitants, but around the seventh century, the Thracians and Slavs established the Slavic Bulgarian Kingdom along the Danube. Bulgaria and Byzantium soon realized each other's importance. Byzantium wanted to tame these Slavs through the Church, while the Bulgarians initially adopted an anti-Church, anti-Byzantine policy.
It was not until Simeon the Great ascended the throne that he accepted the Church and set his sights on the "City of Emperors." He did his utmost to imitate the Byzantine Empire, while yearning to defeat it and ultimately possess it. He even had Patriarch Nicholas, then still a cardinal, crown him as the earliest "Caesar" (Tsar).
Though he wanted even more to become Emperor of the Romans, he gave his daughter in marriage to Constantine VII, who had been born in the Purple Palace, even though the sickly boy was only seven at the time.
Justinian had promulgated laws