Prussian head: Lee was evidently enclosing an issue of the Argus, an English-language newspaper published in Paris. In a letter of 10 July 1805, Russian diplomat Nikolai Novosiltsov (Novoritzoff), then in Berlin on his way to Paris, reported to the Prussian foreign minister, Karl August von Hardenberg, that the French annexation of the Ligurian Republic had made planned negotiations between France and Russia impossible. He asked to return French passports issued to him through the good offices of Prussia. Napoleon subsequently expressed indifference at the termination of Novosiltsov’s mission (Catherine Charlotte, Lady Jackson, ed., The Diaries and Letters of Sir George Jackson K.C.H., from the Peace of Amiens to the Battle of Talavera, 2 vols. [London, 1872], 1:299-301, 303-6, 311, 458-61; Augustus B. Paget, ed., The Paget Papers: Diplomatic and Other Correspondence of the Right Hon. Sir Arthur Paget, G.C.B., 1794-1807, 2 vols. [London, 1896], 2:186-7; Brendan Simms, The Impact of Napoleon: Prussian High Politics, Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Executive, 1797-1806 [Cambridge, Eng., 1997], 172-6; Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I: Political Attitudes and the Conduct of Russian Diplomacy, 1801-1825 [Berkeley, Calif., 1969], 132-4; Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser. description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962– : Sec. of State Ser., Pres. Ser., Ret. Ser. description ends , 10:448-9).