shadow of britain

Chapter 524: Ideology? Business!
British foreign policy has always been, is and will always be: to maintain Britain's position as an arbiter in Europe and then in the world. Whether this position can be maintained will be determined by Britain's economic and military strength.

— Viscount Palmerston, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, speaking at the Privy Council in 1831
The weather in Paris today is sunny, and the cloudless sky is blue.

Looking from the north bank of the Seine, although it was still morning, you could already see many dock workers carrying cargo from the ships like ants and vendors selling food along the dock streets.

Several bridges on the Seine, whether it is the Royal Bridge, the Louvre Bridge or the Art Bridge, are all crowded with carriages coming and going. In order to ensure the food supply of restaurants in central areas such as the Saint-Germain district, these agricultural product buyers from the suburbs of Paris usually have to get up early.

Because only in this way can they deliver the food from the suburbs to the city center such as Saint-Germain where the middle class and upper class gather along the main traffic arteries such as Avenue Louis XIV and Rue Montmartre before breakfast.

At this time, Arthur was leaning against the stone fence on the new bridge, smoking a pipe and looking at the various carriages passing by him.

Although the name of this bridge is Pont Neuf, it is actually the oldest bridge in Paris.

This bridge, which spans the left and right banks of the Seine, is 278 meters long and 20 meters wide. It was built in 1578 during the reign of Henry IV.

Its eastern section crosses the main channel of the Seine and leads to the Paris City Hall.

The western section crosses a small tributary connecting to the Île de la Cité and leads to the most chaotic area in Paris.

However, although the Pont Neuf is just a bridge, I don’t know if Parisians are born to be picky about everything, so even building a bridge has to have something to do with art.

The bridge's piers are densely covered with a variety of mask carvings, including mythological figures such as Poseidon, the god of the sea, Dionysus, and fantasy creatures such as winged elves and demons with fangs and horns. Of course, there are also human faces, including nobles, merchants, farmers and soldiers.

It can also be seen from these carvings that the bridge was probably built in the late 16th century, because this is a typical French Renaissance sculpture style.

Of course, with Arthur's level of art appreciation, it would probably be difficult to distinguish the difference between the Italian Renaissance style and the French Renaissance style.

Even though Agares was seriously commenting and explaining the differences to him, Arthur's mind was not on it at all.

While Agares was talking nonsense, Arthur finally confirmed that there were a total of 381 mask carvings on the bridge.

As a British diplomat, especially one involved in the assassination at Kedoux and the Young Italy expedition, Arthur should not have the time to do such stupid things as carving.

There is only one reason why he is so free, and that is that things are currently going well, so there is no need for him to interfere and help out.

With the help of the court judge Mr. Dubrese, many names of royalist party members were mixed into the list of young Italy. According to the regulations of the French government, this group of young Italian party members must leave France within a limited time. If they refuse to leave, the government will send a special escort vehicle to send them to the border between France and Switzerland.

As for Thiers, the new Minister of the Interior also fulfilled his promise. As long as the royalists did not continue to cause trouble, the French Ministry of the Interior would not leave them any chance to survive.

Just last week, the Paris police hastily arrested several criminals and hurriedly sent them to court for sentencing. They then announced that the bombing at the Chateau d'Azur had been solved, fearing that the case would be delayed too long and would incur the king's wrath, who would hold them accountable for their low efficiency in handling the case.

In this respect, the Paris police are not much different from the London police. Although their law enforcement methods are indeed different, their attitudes towards cases are the same - no one cares about the truth, as long as the case can be closed normally.

After meeting with Mr. von Krommel of Austria, Mr. Krommel, who was short of money and in debt, readily agreed to Arthur and Schneider's request.

After all, according to what Arthur and Schneider said, Krommel did not have to pay any money or put in the effort to run a bank. He only needed to send an intelligence document to Vienna and he could earn tens of thousands of francs.

For him, not only is this risk-free, it may even be of great help to his career.

If Young Italy really launched an expedition to northern Italy, and the Austrian intelligence agency MIB, headquartered in Mainz, happened to pay attention to the report he submitted, then Mr. Kromer would naturally be credited with a great contribution in this action to stop Italian nationalists.

And if Young Italy launched an expedition and the Mainz Intelligence Office ignored his intelligence, Cromer would be even more pleased. Because this would definitely be a major intelligence error, and someone must be held accountable for it. At the very least, the person in charge of intelligence in the French direction must resign.

In this way, Kromel's career may be better than in the first case, because he will have an opportunity to be promoted immediately.

After a long talk with Arthur and others, Kromer, an Austrian intelligence officer, turned into a staunch supporter of Young Italy.

He was more eager than anyone else to have Young Italy launch an expedition, and he prayed to God from the bottom of his heart on behalf of his comrades in Young Italy, hoping that God would protect those old intelligence bureaucrats in Mainz from discovering that such an important piece of intelligence was mixed in with the intelligence documents sent from Paris.

As for Arthur, he had almost the same idea as Cromer.

He did not want to tell the Ministry of Foreign Affairs directly: Young Italy was about to launch an expedition.

But if Arthur did not write this report and acted as if he knew nothing about the expedition, his previous act of volunteering to take charge of Young Italy would become a joke in the eyes of his colleagues in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the name Arthur Hastings would become a symbol of incompetence and dereliction of duty.

Therefore, in order to prevent this situation from happening, Arthur can only use his brain more when writing diplomatic intelligence reports.

He wanted to write a diplomatic report in an original way. It began with a long introduction, followed by a rambling about his recent experiences in Paris. It was not until three-quarters of the way through the text that Arthur finally began to talk about the Young Italy expedition.

- Recently, some of my personal information channels have shown that in the coming months, there may be violations of Articles 1815, and related supplementary provisions of Part IV of the final version of the Treaty of Vienna in .

——However, it must be emphasized that the known intelligence is very limited and the relevant situation is difficult to determine to some extent. Therefore, in this case, I suggest that the relevant intelligence officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should take effective measures to verify it. ——Because the preliminary evidence shows that we may need to deepen our understanding in order to decide whether to conduct further investigation on such information.

But even though it was written so obscurely, Arthur was still quite worried that Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmerston would find out.

Because everyone knows that guy is a workaholic. Maybe ordinary people don’t know what is written in Articles 45 and 46 of Part IV of the Treaty of Vienna, but people like Viscount Palmerston at least know that the main content of Part IV is about the territorial division of the various Italian states and the restoration of their original rule.

If he was bored and asked someone to look at the contents of the treaty again, then things would be serious.

Although Palmerston acquiesced to Arthur's suggestion and agreed to provide a certain degree of funding to Young Italy.

But this does not mean that he would agree with the actions of Mazzini and others to immediately overthrow the rule of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Therefore, if he had known about the actions of Mazzini and others in advance, he might have immediately cut off the funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Young Italy.

Without this grant from the Foreign Office, the 'dividend' promised to Herr von Krommel would not have been paid.

Arthur and Schneider's plans would fail completely if they angered the Austrian intelligence chief in France.

So in order to prevent this from happening, even though Arthur had written the report in a very obscure way, he still left something in reserve.

The delivery of this diplomatic report will first be undertaken by Rothschild's delivery department. After arriving in London, Arthur instructs them to switch to registered mail from the British Royal Mail for security and confidentiality reasons.

Given the efficiency of the Royal Mail, Mazzini's uprising might have failed before they had even delivered the letter to Whitehall.

In order to prevent Viscount Palmerston from denying his responsibility, Arthur used the special position of "Police Advisor on Constitutional Reform of the Kingdom of Hanover" to send a copy of the same document to His Majesty the King at St. James's Palace and to the Prime Minister's official residence at 10 Downing Street.

Based on Arthur's understanding of His Majesty the King and Prime Minister Earl Grey, although both of them were the most respectable gentlemen in Britain and had received traditional British classical education, diplomatic reports were still too modern for them.

In this way, even if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched an investigation, Arthur would be innocent, and he would have the guarantee of His Majesty the King and the Prime Minister.

Lord Palmerston couldn't then accuse them of committing dereliction of duty as well, could he?
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs received the intelligence "in time". Sir Arthur Hastings and August Schneider's work was fruitful. The royalists got on the expulsion list of Young Italy and could "get out" of France openly. Mazzini and Garibaldi could continue the expedition to Sardinia-Piedmont in the way they liked. Mr. von Krommel took this opportunity to be promoted. After the expedition, the French government would also handle the matter of the shell bank in a low-key manner due to the diplomatic impact.

As for the aid to Young Italy in the shell bank...

Sorry, just in case, this money must not be handed over to Young Italy.

This is not out of any personal selfishness, nor is it because of greed for money.

Rather, from a macro perspective, if someone investigates later and finds out that this bank has a French business license and the money was transferred from the UK, then not only will the French government be unable to clear itself of the blame, but the British government will also be involved.

Therefore, in order to prevent diplomatic disputes and extreme events such as war, it is safest to put the aid worth about 1 pounds (20 francs) into the pockets of Sir Arthur Hastings and others from the perspective of the overall situation.

Arthur leaned against the fence, took a long puff of his cigarette, and sighed from the bottom of his heart: "Making a revolution makes more money than writing books!"

Seeing this, the Red Devil at the side could not help but tease: "For the peace and stability of Europe, for the Vienna system, and for the unification of Italy, this time you have no choice but to sacrifice yourself. Arthur, since coming to Paris, your progress has been rapid. Is it because the artistic atmosphere in Paris is too strong that it has infected you?"

Arthur glanced at the Red Devil, put his top hat back on, and hid his eyes in the shadow under the brim: "Agares, you don't need to wear a top hat. I can do it myself."

As Arthur finished speaking, he saw a guy with a ruddy face walking towards him from the bridge.

That was Mr. Schneider who was excited about the upcoming payment.

But it was no wonder that Schneider was so complacent, because once this deal was done, he would have at least two thousand pounds in his personal account. The total salary he had earned in the Foreign Office so far was not as much as he would earn in a month working with Arthur.

When Arthur first entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Schneider did not take this young peasant from Scotland Yard seriously, and even wanted to give him guidance as a senior.

But at this point, Schneider only felt that there was definitely a good reason why Arthur Hastings could do such an outstanding job in Scotland Yard.

Scotland Yard is just a small agency with an annual budget of 30 pounds, but Arthur can thrive there.

Now that he has joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he squeezed 10,000 pounds out of the head of a young Italian man in his first appearance.

This kid definitely has a bright future!
Schneider came to Arthur with a cane, took off his hat and saluted in Latin with a smile: "Long live republicanism, long live the unification of Italy!"

Arthur joked: "You'd better not let the Austrians hear this. If you were in Vienna, these two slogans alone would be enough to keep you in jail for two days."

"So what?" Schneider replied with a smile: "You didn't see von Krommel, a real Viennese, who is now shouting more enthusiastically than me."

(End of this chapter)