'Bland calm' is the phrase Lesley Blanch used to describe one of Russia's most adept generals and one of the country's all-time most powerful people, Count Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov. He fought Napoleon; he was commander of the Russian forces occupying France after Waterloo; he personally settled the debts his officers ran up in Paris from 1815 to 1818; he took on and defeated the countries of the Caucasus. In The Sabres of Paradise (1960), Blanch described Vorontsov as 'the apotheosis' of his family: It was as if many generations were all embodied or crystallised in this arrogant, astute and ruthless yet high-principled man. He was an enigmatic figure, coldly handsome, a great milord in the English manner, haughty and reserved. He seldom smiled and never lost his air of bland calm.