Shadow of great britain

British foreign policy was, is, and will be: to maintain Britain's position as the arbiter of Europe, and then as the arbiter of the world. Whether such a position can continue to 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, at the British Privy Council in 1831

Today's weather in Paris is sunny, and the cloudless sky is blue.

Looking from the north bank of the Seine, although it is still morning, you can already see many dock workers like ants carrying goods from the ship 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 transport 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 the upper class gather, along the main traffic arteries such as Avenue Louis XIV and Avenue Montmartre before breakfast.

At this time, Arthur was leaning against the stone fence on the New Bridge, holding a pipe and looking at the various carriages passing by him.

Although the name of this bridge is the New Bridge, it is actually the oldest bridge in the whole of Paris.

This bridge, which spans the left and right banks of the Seine River, 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 river channel of the Seine River and leads to the Paris City Hall.

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

However, although the New Bridge is just a bridge, I don’t know if Parisians are born to like to nitpick in all aspects, even if the construction of a bridge has to be related to art.

The bridge piers are densely covered with various mask carvings, including mythological figures such as Poseidon, 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.

From these carvings, it can be seen that the bridge was probably built in the late 16th century, because this is a typical French Renaissance carving style.

Of course, with Arthur's level of artistic appreciation, it is probably 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 381 mask carvings on the bridge.

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

There is only one reason why he is so free, that is, the current development of things is not bad, so there is no need for him to intervene and help.

With the help of Mr. Dubrese, the judge of the court, many names of royalists were mixed into the list of the Young Italy. According to the regulations of the French government, this group of Young Italy members must leave France within a limited time. If they refuse to leave, the government will send a special escort car 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 do not continue to cause trouble, the French Ministry of the Interior will not leave them no way out.

Just last week, after the Paris police hastily arrested several criminals, they hurriedly sent them to court for sentencing, and then rushed to announce that the bombing of the Kaidao Sai Mansion had been solved, fearing that the case would be delayed for too long and would arouse the king's anger and 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 the two have different ways of enforcing the law, their attitudes towards the case are the same - no one cares about the truth, as long as the case can be closed normally.

After meeting with Mr. von Kromer of Austria, Mr. Kromer, who was short of money and owed a lot of debts, readily agreed to Arthur and Schneider's request.

After all, according to what Arthur and Schneider said, Kromer did not have to pay money or the effort of running a bank. He only needed to send an intelligence document to Vienna to receive tens of thousands of francs.

For him, this not only had no risks, but it might 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, took his report seriously, then Mr. Kromer would naturally be credited with a great contribution in the fight against Italian nationalists.

And if Young Italy launched an expedition and the Mainz intelligence office ignored his intelligence, Kromer would be even more pleased. Because this is definitely a major intelligence error, someone must be held responsible for it, at least the person in charge of French intelligence must resign.

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

After a long conversation with Arthur and others, Cromer, an Austrian intelligence officer, turned out to be a staunch supporter of Young Italy.

He was more eager than anyone else to launch an expedition for Young Italy, and he prayed to God from the bottom of his heart for his comrades in Young Italy, hoping that God would bless them: the old intelligence bureaucrats in Mainz would never find out that such an important piece of information was mixed in the intelligence documents sent from Paris.

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

He didn't want to tell the Ministry of Foreign Affairs directly that Young Italy was about to launch an expedition.

But if Arthur didn't write this report and showed that he knew nothing about the expedition, then his previous behavior of volunteering to be responsible for 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 representative of incompetence and dereliction of duty.

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

He wanted to write a diplomatic report in an ingenious way, starting with a long introduction, followed by a rambling about what he had seen in Paris in recent days, until three-quarters of the full text, Arthur finally began to talk about the expedition of the Young Italy.

——Recently, some of my personal information channels indicate that in the coming months, there may be violations of Articles 45, 46 and related supplementary provisions of Part IV of the final version of the Treaty of Vienna in 1815.

——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.

——Because 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 if it has been written so obscurely, Arthur is still quite worried that the Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmerston will see the clues.

Because everyone knows that guy is a workaholic. Maybe ordinary people don't know what is written in Articles 45 and 46 of Part 4 of the Treaty of Vienna, but people like Viscount Palmerston at least know that the main content of Part 4 is about the territorial division of the various states in Italy and the restoration of their original rule.

If he is bored and has to ask someone to read the contents of the treaty again, then things will 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 Mazzini and others' plan to overthrow the rule of the Kingdom of Sardinia immediately.

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

Without this funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the "dividends" promised to Mr. von Krommel could not be redeemed.

And if this Austrian intelligence chief in France was angered, Arthur and Schneider's little calculations would be completely unsuccessful.

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

The delivery of this diplomatic report will first be undertaken by Rothschild's delivery department, and after arriving in London, Arthur asked 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, and they hadn't sent the letter to Whitehall yet.

And in order to prevent Viscount Palmerston from denying his responsibility, Arthur also borrowed the special nature of his position as "Police Advisor for Constitutional Reform of the Kingdom of Hanover" and sent a copy of the same document to His Majesty the King at St. James' Palace and the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street.

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

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

Viscount Palmerston couldn't say that they were also dereliction of duty, right?

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs received the intelligence in a "timely" manner. Sir Arthur Hastings and August Schneider's work was effective. The royalists could get out of France openly by using the expulsion list of Young Italy. Mazzini and Garibaldi could continue the expedition to Sardinia-Piedmont in the way they liked. Mr. von Krommel would be promoted by this. After the expedition, the French government would also handle the shell bank in a low-key manner due to diplomatic influence.

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

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

This is not because of any selfishness, nor is it because of greed.

Rather, from a macro perspective, if someone traces it later and finds that this bank has a French business license and the money came from the UK, then not only the French government will not be able to clear itself of the responsibility, but even the British government will be involved.

So in order to prevent diplomatic disputes and then extreme events such as war. Only from the perspective of the overall situation, it is safest to put this aid worth about 10,000 pounds (200,000 francs) into the pockets of Sir Arthur Hastings and others.

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

Seeing this, the red devil on the side couldn't help but tease: "For the peace and stability of Europe, for the Vienna System, and for the unification of Italy, you can only sacrifice yourself this time. Arthur, since you came to Paris, you have made great progress. Things are changing rapidly. Is it because the artistic atmosphere in Paris is so 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 are never needed for wearing a top hat, I can do it myself. ”

As soon as Arthur finished speaking, he saw a guy with a red face walking over from the bridge.

That was Mr. Schneider who was excited about the money that was about to arrive.

But it’s no wonder that Schneider is so complacent, because once this business is completed, his personal account will receive at least two thousand pounds. His salary from working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to now is not even one with Arthur. Earn more per month.

When Arthur first entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Schneider didn't take this little brat from Scotland Yard seriously, and even wanted to give him some advice as a senior.

But now, Schneider only feels that there is absolutely a good reason for this young man Arthur Hastings to do so well at Scotland Yard.

Scotland Yard is just a small organization with an annual budget of 300,000 pounds, and Arthur can thrive there.

Now that he has entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he grabbed ten thousand pounds from the head of young Italy on 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 Italian unity!"

Arthur joked: "It's best not to let the Austrians hear what you said. If you were in Vienna, just these two slogans would be enough to keep you squatting for two days."

"So what?" Schneider replied with a smile: "You haven't seen von Crommel. He, a true Viennese, is shouting more enthusiastically than me."