Shadow of great britain

The Metropolitan Police, 4 Whitehall Street, Westminster, London.

Arthur sat at his desk, staring at the report recording the shareholder list of George Wilkinson Company without moving his eyes for a long time.

It is not appropriate to say that he was looking at the document. To be precise, Arthur was reading it.

Even excluding other shareholders, the first name on the shareholder list alone is enough for him to enjoy it for several days.

It is not accurate to say that it is the first name, but in this document sent by the French Embassy, ​​these people in the front row can be summed up by one name - Lloyds Insurance.

As the most successful insurance company in the world today, and perhaps the most successful insurance company in the three hundred years from the 19th to the 21st century, the name of Lloyds Insurance has gradually become a keystone of the British and even the world's shipping industry since the 17th century. A golden sign.

But most people would never imagine that Edward Lloyd, the founder of this insurance giant, was actually a small self-employed businessman who ran a coffee shop in the 17th century.

In its earliest days, Lloyd's Café was located on Tower Street near the banks of the River Thames.

Since Tower Street is adjacent to the docks in London and is close to important maritime departments such as London Customs, the Admiralty and the Port Authority, and their coffee may be full of the smell of the sea, Mr. Lloyd is also a talkative person.

Therefore, over time, this place became a place where captains, sailors, small loan company owners, insurance merchants and other people related to the shipping industry who made a living at the dock gathered to brag and discuss tips for making money.

Some insurance merchants even put their offices directly on the dining table of Lloyd's Cafe because of the heavy traffic here. They drink afternoon tea here while signing insurance policies and doing business with customers.

A few years later, because Mr. Lloyd made some money by running a coffee shop, he moved the location of the coffee shop to a more high-end and classy place with stronger customer spending power, Lombard Street and Feng En Road. The confluence of - home to the Royal Exchange in London.

As a successful cafe operator, Mr. Lloyd's top priority after the move was how to attract new customers while retaining those old ones.

He was keenly aware of the thirst for the latest news among the insurance brokers who came in and out of the place. Due to poor communication conditions at the time, most of the businessmen sitting in the shop drinking coffee could only wait silently for news. They were not waiting for the imminent arrival. The merchant ships were exchanging information and discussing international news, and those whose lives were hanging by a thread would come to Lloyd every three to five minutes to ask whether Captain XX's merchant ship had arrived.

In order to better serve customers and expand his customer base, Lloyd began to take the initiative to ask waiters to pay attention to businessmen coming and going, and record the most timely shipping information from them, including major maritime and inland rivers. Shipping information at ports and terminals, international and domestic situations, new trends in the business world, etc.

In the evening, Lloyd will compile these latest news and write them on the bulletin board in the store for customers to browse.

Not only that, Mr. Lloyd also thoughtfully set up a podium in the most prominent position in the cafe, where the waiter reads shipping information aloud to the businessmen every day. After all, not all insurance people are literate, right? In this era of widespread illiteracy, in every industry there will be those little nouveau riche who step on shit and become famous.

However, not every insurance businessman will visit Lloyd's Cafe every day, and there may be something bad going on in anyone's family.

In order to solve this problem, Mr. Lloyd published a newspaper called "Lloyd Shipping News" so that businessmen who had missed the news could check past information.

In this way, the small Lloyd's Cafe slowly became the main trading market in London's insurance industry. By 1719, the value of marine insurance transactions completed in the coffee shop reached an astonishing £9 million.

"Lloyd's Shipping News" also developed into "Lloyd's Shipping Daily". This newspaper's authority in the insurance industry is second only to the "London Gazette", which is specially used by the British government to publish major political news. Even "Lloyd's Shipping News" The Times and the Manchester Guardian are no match for this.

Regular customers of Lloyd's Cafe also voluntarily organized an organization called Lloyd's Register of Shipping. Their main business is to evaluate the safety level of ships and register them in the "Lloyd's Ship Register" 》For the reference of major ship owners and insurance merchants.

If that were all, the name Lloyd was obviously not worth writing about.

The reason why Lloyd's Insurance should be separated out is because in 1771, insurance merchants found that the small Lloyd's Cafe was increasingly unable to support the large group of insurance merchants to discuss business.

Therefore, a regular patron of the coffee shop, Dutch insurance businessman Van Meer, proposed to everyone to establish a ‘New Lloyd’s’ firm as a trading platform for marine insurance.

He issued shares in the new firm at a price of 100 pounds each and quickly raised nearly 10,000 pounds of capital. John Angerstein, a Russian insurer from St. Petersburg, proposed that the company should rent office space at the Royal Exchange. .

But although the merchants were satisfied with the location of the Royal Exchange, they were not happy with its use as a lease.

Therefore, they directly took over the Royal Exchange office building with full payment and used it as a trading venue for Lloyds Insurance.

The difference between Lloyds Insurance and other insurance companies is that it is not like a company in the popular sense, but more like a public trading platform for individual insurance merchants.

If we apply the concept of later generations, Lloyds Insurance is a complete syndicate-type monopoly organization.

In terms of independence, although the participants in the syndicate remain independent in terms of production and law, they are commercially completely controlled by the head office and cannot act independently.

The various members of the syndicate must be highly unified in business. They cannot have direct contact with the market and can only negotiate business through the syndicate.

And if a syndicate member wants to withdraw, it will need to pay considerable costs, including rebuilding the buying and selling organization and reorganizing its connections with the market.

In addition, withdrawal may be blocked and excluded by the syndicate.

Lloyds Insurance is such an insurance syndicate. It is composed of thousands of insurance merchants from all over the world, all of whom undertake independent or joint underwriting through the Lloyds Insurance platform.

In the underwriting business of Lloyd's Insurance, there may be only a few people underwriting, while for some large projects, hundreds or even thousands of people may underwrite the project.

The special structure of Lloyd's Insurance has also enabled the number of its members to grow rapidly since its inception.

Here, as long as you can produce proof of assets of five hundred pounds, you can become an insurance partner of Lloyds Insurance.

This special development model also enabled Lloyds Insurance, after more than half a century of changes, to capture 90% of the insurance business in the British shipping industry and 50% of the world's shipping industry.

It is no exaggeration to say that almost all ships berthed in London docks are insured by Lloyds insurance.

Moreover, due to the huge cash flow held by Lloyds Insurance, it is a force that cannot be underestimated on the London Stock Exchange. Even in political circles, the big shots in London have always valued this group of insurance businessmen who supported the maritime empire.

There is no other reason, because this group of people can earn millions of pounds of wealth for Britain from overseas every year, and send a steady stream of gold and silver into Britain.

Moreover, the partners of Lloyd's Insurance also became very interested in politics after they gained money. They like to sponsor MPs and will also elect MPs themselves.

As for their political views, aside from other aspects, at least in terms of foreign relations, they, like most businessmen, uphold the principle of peace as the most important thing.

We all know that wealth is inherently risk averse. Therefore, except for a few industries, war is usually kept at a distance.

As for which type of wealth hates war the most, there is no doubt that it is the group of insurance sellers, especially large multinational insurance companies like Lloyds Insurance.

When two countries go to war, no matter which side wins, they basically lose money.

In the list in Arthur's hand, there were many names that looked familiar to him, and he even met them directly when he was listening in the House of Commons that day.

Since the Polish issue emerged last year, this group of MPs closely connected with Lloyds Insurance have been calling in the House of Commons for Poland and the Russians to exercise restraint.

When the Westminster Union hoped that the government could send troops to intervene in the Polish issue, the reaction of these guys was quite fierce.

Thinking about it now, although Lloyds Insurance does not want Poland to go to war with Russia, since this has become an established fact, their top priority now is to coordinate the relationship between Britain and Russia as much as possible to avoid further conflicts between the two world powers.

After all, the destruction of Poland by the Russians did not actually have much impact on Lloyd's Insurance, but once Russia and Britain got into trouble, it would be difficult not to remind these insurance businessmen of the Napoleonic Wars, when merchant ships came from time to time at sea. News of being sunk.

The Seven Anti-French Alliance was not only a disaster for France, but also a disaster for Lloyds Insurance.

For these insurance brokers, it is simply a crime to throw all their free money at the gunpoint!

Facing this group of 'pacifists' with strange views, Arthur couldn't tell what he felt in his heart.

If Lloyds Insurance was deeply involved in the Liverpool assassination, then many problems can indeed be explained.

With the strength of this group of insurance businessmen, it would be easy to figure out Arthur's whereabouts in a port city like Liverpool. It can even be said that it is a miracle that Arthur was not killed in this assassination.

This can only show that they did not intend to make the relationship with the government too tense, nor did they intend to kill Arthur. Or maybe they had negotiated with their superiors early in the morning and stopped everything, just to come up with some shocking news headlines.

After all, if the superintendent of Scotland Yard really died in Liverpool, without a serious explanation, it would actually make the cabinet unable to step down.

Thinking of this, Arthur finally understood the slow progress of the investigation by the House of Commons Investigation Committee.

With this assassination, the Ministry of Internal Affairs promoted the legislation of the Municipal Police Act.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs achieved public opinion to suppress calls for aid to Poland, and Lloyds Insurance reduced the risk of potential war between Russia and Britain.

In terms of cholera prevention and control, the cabinet also has a legitimate reason to increase the screening and isolation of foreign immigrants, and it can also hammer the Liverpool municipal government, which has been acting on various issues in recent years.

As for the Russians, they can calmly deal with Poland without worrying about Britain stabbing them in the back. As for the Poles’ allies, the French…

Judging from the fact that Talleyrand would take the initiative to contact a little person like Arthur, their situation is indeed very bad. The old cripple did not go to his old friend the Duke of Wellington, but chose to start at Arthur's level. This in itself shows that he just wanted to make a last effort before things went completely wrong.

When Arthur thought of this, he suddenly picked up the document and threw it into the fireplace in the room.

He watched the paper burn, curl, and burn away bit by bit in the flames. He just smoothed his hair from his forehead and muttered: "Sorry, Mr. Talleyrand, I'm afraid I can't help you this time. But I'm afraid I can't help you this time." An outstanding person like you should understand that this is not because I don’t value our friendship, but because this question has been a multiple-choice question from the beginning.”

Arthur was talking when suddenly, the door of the office was pushed open.

"Arthur..."

Louis held the document he had just received, with a gloomy face and said: "Mr. Harrison, he..."

Arthur seemed to have a premonition about this, so he just poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Louis.

"What's wrong? Hanging, jumping into a river, jumping off a building, you can't just follow the old Russian methods and have a stroke, right?"

Louis was silent for a while and replied: "He committed suicide with a letter opener. Before committing suicide, he left a handwritten letter in which he admitted that he hired a killer to go to Liverpool to assassinate him. And the investigation committee is still in Harrison Several remittance notes he gave to the killer were found in his mansion."

Upon hearing this, Arthur drank all the wine in his glass, and then opened the drawer of his desk. There were four investigation reports that he had written in advance. This time, he chose the top one.

Arthur raised his hand and handed the document to Louis and ordered: "There are two copies inside. One copy should be given to Director Rowan. Please forward the other copy to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and present it to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Viscount Melbourne."

Louis didn't even need to read what was written inside, he fully understood what Arthur meant.

But at this time, he still hopes to fight. Louis hinted: "According to the internal training manual compiled by you, if the victim's body has more than two fatal stab wounds, and the wound distribution is relatively messy, it will be more difficult to understand. Yes, the handle of the knife..."

"Louis." Arthur put down his glass and asked, "What is the full name of the training manual?"

Louis blurted out: "Report! "Criminal Investigation Manual."

"That's right." Arthur shrugged: "This is a political crime, not a criminal crime, so the manual is not applicable in this case. As for why there were multiple fatal stab wounds on Mr. Harrison's body, I tend to think of him as a stronger person."

When Louis heard that Arthur had already said this, he finally stopped insisting.

He sighed and nodded: "Okay, I understand."

He picked up the document and turned around to prepare to go out. His hand rested on the door handle for a long time. The more he thought about it, the more uncomfortable he felt.

How could members of the Napoleon family tolerate such anger?

While he was still digesting his emotions, he only heard Arthur's voice coming from behind him.

"In some cases, there is no rush. Although there is only one truth, in most cases, people will transform it into multiple forms. Clay figures cannot withstand the rain, and the truth cannot withstand investigation. We still have a long way to go. Well. If they urgently need the truth now, then give it to him. Next, we just have to wait quietly and see what finally comes to the surface, and see what else they want to do."

When Louis heard this, he suddenly turned to look at Arthur and asked, "What do you think they want to do?"

"I don't know." Arthur held the wine glass and looked up at Whitehall Street outside the window: "I just feel that the disputes between the Whigs seem to be more hidden and complicated than those between the Tories."