Fox of France

Although Napoleon was extremely angry about the situation of the Battle of the North Sea Strait, Sci-Pravda reported the "decisive and brilliant victory" won by the French Navy at large length. Of course, this report focuses on discussing the decisive strategic significance of this battle from a strategic point of view, that is, after this battle, the British Navy, as a strategic force, no longer exists.

"England's hegemony at sea, which has begun since the time of the pirate chief Drake, can be said to have sounded the death knell."

In England, the king of England has gone mad, so the crown prince has to act as king. Although the final decision has not yet come out, in terms of publicity, the British media has already started. All the papers proclaimed the decisive victory of the British Royal Navy and described their achievements. But one thing is very interesting is that in the propaganda of this battle, the British, like the French, have a lot of space and introduce many heroes, but they keep secret about the specific process and results of the battle.

In the French reports, you can only know which warships the British lost; in the British reports, you can only know which warships the French lost. Didn't know the "Cressy" had sunk. And count her as a serious injury.

After serious discussions with the ministers, the crown prince finally made a final decision, that is: to protect the decent people, not to protect the British.

"Now the French don't know that our 'Cressy' has sunk, and the French have suffered heavy losses. Your Royal Highness, I suggest that we take this opportunity to make peace with the French as soon as possible."

"What is peace, isn't this surrender?" The crown prince was still a little unwilling.

So everyone looked at the Earl of Liverpool together.

The Earl of Liverpool was a little uncomfortable watching everyone staring at him, but he still stood up and said, "His Royal Highness, there are some things that you may need to know. Well, this is some information collected by our intelligence department. "

While speaking, the Earl of Liverpool handed a large document bag to the Crown Prince.

The crown prince glanced at the prime minister suspiciously, then took the file bag, opened it and read it. Looking at him, his hands trembled, as if he couldn't restrain his anger. In the end, his whole body trembled, so that some ministers were worried that the crown prince might have inherited his father's problems, right? When at last he raised his face, it was not a clouded face of anger, but a pale face contorted with fear.

"How could this be, how could this be..." The Crown Prince's voice could even hear the "giggle" sound of the upper and lower teeth colliding with each other, "Are you lying to me, are you saying that on the streets of our Great Britain, all It is a mob ready to rebel at any time, and the army of the kingdom, especially the army, is also very unreliable. Many dangerous elements have already mixed into the army, and dangerous ideas are spreading everywhere in the army... As long as there is a slight disturbance, they will be like The French rebelled like that, and then sent us all to the guillotine? How can our army, our police, and our special departments let things go to this point?"

"My esteemed Highness, there is really no way to do this, because the army, the police, and even people from special departments cannot get money, at least not enough money, and the naval blockade has hit us too hard. Your Highness, since the beginning of the war, the domestic economy has been sluggish, but the government and the army have been spending more and more. Our normal income cannot support such a large expenditure. Your Highness, build a fleet, prepare for anti-landing, and prepare enough to fight against the French Army The army fighting on the island of Great Britain needs to spend a lot of money.

Faced with such a deficit, the government has no other way but to solve the problem by issuing excessive currency. Over the years, our money printing machine has never stopped, and a large amount of money has been printed. Most of our government's expenditure today is not maintained by taxation, but by excess currency.

Your Highness, you know that if there is no corresponding collateral behind the issued banknotes, such as gold, then such banknotes are waste paper. To issue such banknotes and force the people to use them is actually plundering the people by the state. It's like what Robespierre did in 1993. Therefore, the same situation as at that time also appeared in our UK.

In recent months, we have withdrawn part of the banknotes in the name of "special national debt", which is actually just replacing more waste paper with another kind of waste paper. Maybe you have heard such a joke that a person goes to the market with a basket of pounds, and because of something, he puts the basket of pounds on the side of the road and goes away by himself. After a while, when he came back, he found that the pound had been dumped on the ground and the basket was missing. Now, the British pound has completely become a waste paper. As for the 'special national debt', it is because the people still hope that our navy can break the blockade. And once this hope is shattered, I dare say that its value is not even comparable to the same weight of blank paper without printed patterns and words-at least the blank paper is still somewhat useful.

My esteemed Highness, nowadays, most of the employees of our military, police and powerful departments are paid such waste paper. So they are also dissatisfied with the government and the kingdom. If there was no hope of breaking the blockade, they might have rebelled long ago. Now if we don't prepare early, by the time they learn the truth, we'll be all over, and Britain will be turned into a republic without a king and a father.

I can say that if we do not take steps to change all this, there is more than one Bonaparte hiding in every barracks of our army; behind every window of our police and special services. Robespierre and Saint-Just. At our crossroads and in every square there are plans for where to erect the guillotine. "

"So, Prime Minister, what should we do now? Are we going to flee abroad?" the crown prince asked hurriedly. The king of England knew more about civil strife and cutting off the king's head than Louis XVI. After all, in Europe, the first king whose head was beheaded was the king of England.

"Of course we need to prepare, but this is not the most important thing to do at the moment. The most important thing to do now is to stabilize the situation as much as possible. It is not yet a time of complete despair, my lord."

"So, what shall we do now?"

"Peace, we need to appeal for peace, and we need to negotiate with the French on peace issues." The Earl of Liverpool said.

"Count, I heard that before this, we have actually been in contact with the French, and we have been talking about peace with them, right?" the crown prince asked.

"Yes, Your Highness, His Majesty has also approved this matter." The Earl of Liverpool said quickly.

"I'm not talking about this, I'm saying, what kind of conditions do they have? Can we reach peace? After reaching peace, can we still maintain the system of the kingdom?" the crown prince asked.

"Your Highness, it was really difficult for us to agree to the conditions they proposed at that time." The Earl of Liverpool replied.

"What conditions did they propose?" asked the Dauphin.

The Earl of Liverpool waved his hand, and a servant wearing a wig came over with a silver plate, on which was a memorandum, which was the relevant record of the negotiations between the British and the French in the "work of the sycamore tree" .

The crown prince picked up the document and looked at it, and frowned slightly when he saw the "Twenty-one Measures to Destroy the United Kingdom", but then he put down the document and said to the Earl of Liverpool: "Mr. On the basis of this request, make peace with us?"

"Your Highness..." The Earl of Liverpool smiled wryly, "You know that when the French made this request, our fleet was still there...and the French have always been very greedy..."

So everyone was silent. After a while, the crown prince said: "Resume negotiations with the French as soon as possible. If necessary, some concessions can be made. You know, what is the difference between a UK without a king and no nobles and no UK for all of us?" ? Keeping the kingdom system is our bottom line. For the rest, let’s see if we can satisfy the French with all our strength in England.”

Generally speaking, when facing internal and external enemies at the same time, that is, when there are people rebelling inside and allies aggressing outside, most of the guys in the upper ranks will naturally choose to "better to give to allies than to be with domestic slaves." "The national policy, ancient and modern Taiwan, is nothing like it. Even I Dameng, who is known as "the emperor guards the gate of the country, and the king dies in the country", finally became "pirates guard the gate of the country, and bandits die in the country". And most of the original Dameng officers and soldiers have changed into Daqing officials, and those high-ranking officials and dignitaries of my Dameng, after solving the problem of scalp itching, are still masters. Another example is that I, who started my career by usurping the throne, would rather "report to the fourth prince at night in the juniper book, and the ministers will pay homage to him from now on" rather than eliminate any possibility of usurping the throne by internal slaves. In the Republic of China, there was even a story about the puppet army taking double pay to "save the country with a curve". Counting it, only the Minister of Military Aircraft was resolute and honest, and said this sentence honestly.

Now that he had obtained the approval of the crown prince, the Prime Minister, the Earl of Liverpool, naturally acted quickly. Through a special channel in a neutral country, he contacted the French again, expressing that England was willing to "pursue peace between the two countries with greater sincerity".

Of course, this news was quickly spread to Napoleon, which finally made Napoleon, who was sullen because he had awarded Admiral Brues an honor and promoted him to admiral, finally smiled a little. Just now when Napoleon awarded the Marshal's scepter to Admiral Brues, Napoleon opened his eyes wide and held the scepter in his hand. When he strode over, Admiral Brues even stepped back involuntarily He took half a step, and shrank his neck at the same time, as if he was a little worried that Napoleon would stick his staff directly on his celestial cap.

According to Alexandre Dumas in his novel, Napoleon said to Joseph afterwards: "At that time, I really wanted a stick on his forehead." Joseph replied: "I can fully understand your feelings." , I know how much willpower it took you to restrain this impulse. Because every time you submit a mathematics paper that you don’t know whether it was written by Laplace or Fourier for you, I also really want to find a stick, a guy to stick on your forehead."

So Napoleon called both Joseph and Lucien to discuss peace talks.

"Britain, of course it's better not to have revolution." As soon as he spoke, Joseph exposed the essence of counter-revolution.

"This is our consensus. The question now is what do we need from the UK. Under the original conditions, do we need to go further?" Napoleon said.

Joseph shook his head and said: "This foundation is already enough. If we go further, the British government may not be able to stand. If there is a full-scale resistance, the British government will sign an agreement with us in the first step, and the London government in the second step." The people have revolutionized, so aren’t we doing it for nothing? Do we still want us to help them suppress the revolution?”

"How is that possible?" Napoleon opened his eyes wide, with a sparkle on his forehead, "Then we are completely bankrupt in terms of reputation! Our progressive image is very valuable! Only those foolish businessmen who will go bankrupt as soon as they start a business will be able to do so." Will you not take this golden signboard seriously? Just for the sake of a small profit in front of you, you will destroy the image that the country has accumulated over the years. Moreover, once a country like Britain has a full-scale revolution, we will suppress them. How much did it cost? Can it be recovered? How is this possible?"

"So, we need to ensure that the British government can still stand after signing the agreement. Therefore, in this agreement, in some places, we even have to go back a little bit. Some clauses, to put it another way, at least seem to be equal Fairness; some clauses must be kept secret; some clauses must be amended... Ah, by the way, we should indeed add a clause, that is, the war between us and Britain is not because we have any malice against the British people. So We are willing to contribute to the post-war reconstruction of Britain, and we are willing to provide loans to the British government in a relatively favorable manner for the aftermath. Of course, we still have the authority to supervise the use of loans. And the loans also need mortgages .Well, this loan is called the Napoleon Aid Plan..."

The three brothers conducted in-depth discussions on how to make the de facto unequal treaties appear extra fair in terms of their provisions, and how to provide assistance for the reconstruction of Britain, etc., and finally formed a guiding opinion. Transferred to the hands of Minister Talleyrand.