The tale of the wildly divergent paths that brought the two Borises to this battle has the flavour of the synopsis for a novel Jeffrey Archer was too ashamed to show his publisher.

The stone part of the drawbridge with its barbican and the bartizans of the gatehouse are in good repair. […] There was a large hidden trapdoor in the floor of the barbican, which would let them into the moat after all.

a monstrous height

Their contravention of the treaty increased international tensions.