The Shadow of Great Britain

Chapter 982: Chapter 51: I Am Bonaparte

“The Juans of Vendee?”

When Louis heard this term, he did not show the joy that Arthur had expected.

On the contrary, this young ambitious man appeared very hesitant, so much so that he didn’t even question Arthur about why he would make such a suggestion.

Although Arthur did not understand the reason for his hesitation, it did not matter, because ever since joining the Foreign Office, Arthur’s intelligence sources were no longer limited to his personal relationship with Louis.

As a senior intelligence officer stationed overseas by the Foreign Office, Arthur enjoyed considerable confidentiality privileges.

Therefore, he could easily acquire information about the Bonaparte family that the spies of the Foreign Office had painstakingly gathered.

After Napoleon’s son passed away from tuberculosis in Vienna, the position of the head of the Bonaparte family naturally fell to Louis’s uncle—Joseph Bonaparte, the former King of Spain residing at Regency Crescent in London.

To take care of the Bonaparte family’s interests, Joseph had invited family members last November to London for a family meeting.

The attendees of this family meeting typically included Napoleon’s two brothers: Jerome Bonaparte, the former King of Westphalia, and Lucien Bonaparte, the former President of the French Republic, French Empire Home Office Minister, and Prince of Musignano. Napoleon’s youngest sister, Caroline Bonaparte, the former Queen of Naples, was also among them.

However, due to his father’s poor health, Louis was deputized as his representative to attend the family meeting.

But the young Louis clearly had little influence in front of his uncle and aunt. Worse still, his involvement in the Charcoal Party uprising in Italy years earlier also aroused suspicion among the elders, who felt this young nephew was simply too reckless; hence, he was excluded from many of the discussions on important issues.

Therefore, during this grand family meeting, which even featured an opening ceremony, Louis spent most of his time accompanying his cousin Achille Murat, who had come all the way from Italy, to tour the sights of London.

The two young men attended many upper-class salons in London and even found time to make a special trip to Liverpool to visit the Golden Lion Inn, where Arthur was attacked.

However, those attending this Bonaparte family internal meeting were not limited to just the members of the Bonaparte family; the invitees also included leaders of the French republicans and Polish and Italian nationalists exiled in London.

Of course, this also naturally included some spies that had been bought by Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and other countries.

According to the intelligence feedback from the spies, although the republicans once harbored deep hatred for Napoleon, at least at this point in time, the French republicans and the Bonaparte family, if not allies, were at least on the same side.

The opposition to the republicans was the Royalists, whose hatred for the Juans in the Vendee and Brittany regions surpassed even that of Louis Philippe.

If Louis were to secretly connect with the Juans now, it would obviously conflict with the policy direction collectively set by the Bonaparte family.

Although Louis was extremely frustrated by his uncle and aunts not allowing him to participate in family affairs and did not agree with their passive policy of waiting for an opportunity to act, he even secretly and discreetly sent someone to Paris to contact the French republican leader, Marquis Lafayette.

However, Louis’s actions were not only discovered by the British intelligence agencies but also detected on the spot by his uncle Joseph.

In a letter intercepted by the British Post Office that Joseph wrote to Louis’s father, the current head of the Bonaparte family subtly admonished this nephew, expressing hope that Louis’s father would strictly discipline Louis to prevent this reckless youth from going down a wrong path.

——Louis’s contact with Lafayette this time was without my consent. I had hoped that this young fellow could have as little contact as possible with those in Paris and those young people who often trouble him, but he repeatedly went against my wishes. You and I both know that in a great city like Paris, filled with intrigue, at his age, it is not easy to avoid falling into traps.

It was naturally impossible for Louis to be happy about being reprimanded by his uncle.

However, what made him most unhappy was the preliminary draft of the fundamental laws for reinstatement that his uncles and the republicans had negotiated.

——The administrative power of France will be entrusted to a Directory elected for a 10-year term or for life, or to an Emperor who can nominate a successor, but this successor must not be a relative of the Emperor, nor can the Emperor’s relatives hold high military command positions.

As for why Arthur felt that Louis disliked this fundamental law, that was because of Louis’s debut work “Political Dreams” published in “The British”.

In that article, Mr. Louis Bonaparte was quite straightforward in expressing the idea that administrative power should rest in the hands of an Emperor—the genius of Napoleon or the will of the National Convention, as a powerful means to overthrow the tyranny of enslavement with the despotism of freedom.

Although Arthur couldn’t see any difference between the despotism of freedom and the despotism of enslavement besides the adjectives used, at least at this time, it was clear that Louis was on poor terms with his uncles.