Chapter 352: Napoleon’s First Relatives

Chapter 349 Napoleon’s First Relative
As night fell, Louis Bonaparte ended his busy day riding a carriage back to the Golden Lion Hotel.

Due to his sensitive status, he was not sent by Arthur to deal with the Liverpool City Council and the Port Authority, but was given the task of overseeing the cholera control efforts.

I do not know whether it is because of the two hundred thousand pounds of Liverpool city center renovation plan has worked, or Liverpool departments because Arthur assassination case heart guilty can only find compensation in other areas.

All in all, Louis today this circle look down, cholera control work done quite well.

Liverpool’s Board of Health, in addition to strictly enforcing the provisions of the Cholera Handbook, had carried out painting work on crowded or dirty areas, and large quantities of lime had been put into sewers and drains for disinfection purposes.

Moreover, they flexibly drew on the experience of India, the birthplace of cholera, in the prevention and control of the disease.

The Hindus often burned resinous substances, and the fumigation method, which produced a strong, pungent, foul odor, was a traditional way to combat disease or plague.

In Britain, municipal authorities, on the advice of experienced doctors, switched from resin to bitumen, tar or sulphur.

Of course, this has to be done by professionals, and the other day the Board of Health in Oxford had an unfortunate street explosion as a result of burning tar barrels to prevent an epidemic.

The Liverpool authorities, who are extremely sensitive to explosions, had to bite the bullet and replace the cheap tar with the more expensive sulphur in order to prevent another local explosion.

When to save money, when not to save money, they are still relatively clear.

At Arthur’s suggestion, the wells in the area of the cholera outbreak were also closed for the reason of exploring the source of the disease.

Several local Liverpool porter breweries generously took on the responsibility of providing clean, reliable drinking water for the people living near the wells, and one brewer was so excited that he published an infectious speech in the pages of the local newspaper.

–When cholera struck, we were overwhelmed, we didn’t know what we could do. But when, a few days ago, the Board of Health informed the Liverpool Brewers’ Association that the beer of Liverpool was suspected of having curative properties, we decided not to hesitate to come forward. We depend on the city of Liverpool for our wealth, and our wealth is derived from the public’s recognition of our products. If Commissioner Hastings has to say that beer can save Liverpool, then why should we refuse to offer the citizens of Liverpool this cure? On behalf of the Liverpool Brewers’ Association, I hereby declare that during the period of the cholera all our beer will be sold at half price, and that that which is supplied to the Board of Health for the relief of our poor fellow-citizens will be supplied at cost. Folks, lost your job because of the harbor quarantine? That’s okay, even if you’re in a poorhouse, you’ll get at least two free pints a day from the Board of Health!
Louis wasn’t very medically savvy, but it seemed to him that while these beer makers were more or less suspected of false advertising. But seeing as these guys did provide a lot of clean drinking water, and even took the initiative to donate money to the health committee’s medical funds, there shouldn’t be any need to go after them.

Besides, there were plenty of people looking for trouble with them, and the clergy could barely stand the beer merchants’ ‘beer cure theory’. Even when cholera didn’t occur, they often listed alcoholism as an unforgivable evil in their bulletins. The clergy had always had an attitude of getting rid of those advertisements that encouraged people to drink alcohol.

Even more recently, they have targeted Arthur, who closed the wells and served beer instead.

They sneered at the young Scotland Yard superintendent as – rolling down the tracks from London – a cask of Royal Britannia, with even a St. Edward’s badge on the logo.

But Arthur didn’t take the clergyman’s attacks too seriously; after all, on the tiny island of Britain, all had to be attacked, whether it was God, Jesus or the King. If you didn’t get scolded, it would rather look as if you didn’t quite fit in as a person.

Besides, there was really nothing wrong with what the clerics were saying; alcoholism really wasn’t a good habit. Even the other claims of the clerics made sense to Arthur.

Other things aside, at least this group of very old-fashioned and not-so-short-lived conservatives were indeed worthy of learning from most people when it came to their habits.

If the timing hadn’t been inappropriate, perhaps Arthur would have considered embracing their initiative to advocate the prohibition of alcohol, opium, gambling, prostitutes, and so on.

But for now, in order to get the brewers to generously cooperate with the epidemic prevention efforts, it would have to be the clergy cursing during church bulletins for a while longer first.

The Royal Britannia cask with the St. Edward’s coat of arms on its logo was naturally larger than the average cask, and it was no problem at all to fill it with Liverpool’s clergy.

Louis went back to the hotel, hastily greeted his colleagues around him, and went straight to Arthur’s room on the second floor.

To his surprise, before he knocked on the door, he saw a step by step Dumas passed by him.

The fat Frenchman playfully joked, “I advise you not to just go in, perhaps there is still a wealth of health care special funds for the criminal investigation department this year.”

“Huh?” Louis raised his eyebrows and a wacky smile hung at the corner of his mouth, “No way? Arthur caught the Liverpool vice so quickly?”

Dumas shrugged his shoulders, “How do you know he caught it in Liverpool? Perhaps the habit was picked up in London. Working inside the government really tends to corrupt people, it corrupts them as fast as hell. Look at our Sergeant Hastings, I wonder how disappointed those of his supporters would be if they knew what he had become?”

Louis just smiled at that and said back, “Come on, Alexander. Lord Byron, Paganini, etc., these people’s private lives are much more messed up than Arthur’s. I told you, how can an outstanding artist who can write books and play the piano be too tidy in his relationships. It’s not called a scandal, after all, he wasn’t originally selling purity as a selling point, and what the guys appreciated about him was the talent.”

At the end of his sentence, Louis then gently pushed open the door of the room full of mischief, “Let’s see, it’s about time to finish, isn’t it?”

However, the room was clearly a huge disappointment to him.

A sofa, a desk, a tea set, a chair, except for the missing coffee table for some reason, everything in the room was normal.

Perhaps there was something out of the ordinary here, but Louis, who had been spoiled by the smell of sulfur all afternoon, could no longer tell if there was a psychedelic odor here that shouldn’t be there or not.

Arthur, who was reading, looked up toward the door, “Alexander, Louis, you two are just in time.”

“Hmm? What can I do for us?”

The two of them walked familiarly to the desk, Louis poured a cup of tea while Dumas took the tray with the snacks straight away.

“Whoa?” Before Arthur could say anything, the sharp-eyed Dumas spotted the book in his hand, “A biography of Napoleon? I can’t imagine you’re actually interested in this kind of book.”

Louis heard the title of the book, also could not help but look at the book cover, he shook his head and said: “These biographers are all writing nonsense, some of them have never even met Napoleon, how much real stuff can they write? Arthur, if you want to know about Napoleon, you might as well just come and ask me.”

Arthur closed the book, “Of course I know you’re much more reliable than a biographer. And I didn’t buy this book, but one of the ladies who came to see me today left it behind.”

“Wow …… madam ……”

Louis’ eyes changed as he smiled and spoke, “She’s an admirer of Napoleon? That’s actually quite normal, many ladies worship strong men like Napoleon. The world doesn’t know how many centuries later, Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great were finally succeeded. So it’s not unusual for ladies to have a preference for him. You know what? The ladies who favored him, although there are still many of them now, are still nowhere near as many as when he was alive.”

Arthur asked with his teacup in hand, “I remember he had relationships with many lovely ladies besides Josephine, didn’t he? What was the name of his first love …… Wow! That’s right, Eugenie. Desiree Eugenie Clary, the young lady of the wealthy French merchant Clary family. Napoleon also wrote her a book, “Clisson and Eugenie,” which sounds pretty Romanticist for expressing love in a novel.”

Louis nodded, “That’s right, my uncle got his start on Eugenie. Her sister later married my uncle Joseph Bonaparte and became the Queen of Naples and Spain. My uncle, you remember him, don’t you? The one who lives in the Regency Crescent.”

Arthur nodded slightly and said, “Sounds like a bit of a complicated relationship.” “Of course, it’s confusing to sort out the Bonaparte family connections.”

Louis spoke, “But my uncle’s first love is still quite important to him. If it wasn’t for Eugenie secretly giving him 98 gold coins in private, my uncle, as a mediocre little officer, would definitely not have been able to make it to Paris in time, and naturally, there wouldn’t have been the subsequent Misty Moon Coup, much less the Emperor of the French Empire, Napoleon Bonaparte I.”

Arthur asked, “So it seems that Napoleon was being a negative? It seems that after he became enamored with Joseph, he dumped this first love. However, he always had a guilty conscience about it, so he arranged a promising husband for his first love. This husband became the adopted son of King Carl XIII of Sweden, and when he became powerful, he turned against Napoleon and led Sweden to join the anti-French alliance. And Eugenie, Napoleon’s first love, transformed into the Queen of Sweden and her son became the Crown Prince of Sweden? What is this? A ladylike mix of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet?”

Dumas laughed out loud and said, “Maybe I can write a novel based on that experience.”

“Uh ……”

Louis wasn’t sure how to answer the awkward question, and he turned the tables, “That was all last generation. But as of now, Eugenie’s end is definitely better than marrying my uncle. My uncle did do a lot of things wrong when it came to relationships between men and women, and many of the ladies he kept relationships with were actually quite nice. Not only Eugenie, but actually the Polish lady was very nice. My mother said that she was a very kind and gentle person, much more forgiving than my grandmother.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Oh ……,” Louis explained, “I don’t suppose you know that. Napoleon’s Empress Josephine was my grandmother, and my mother was the child of Josephine and her ex-husband, Alexandre de Beauharnais. She was persuaded by my grandmother to marry my father, Napoleon’s fourth brother, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the former King of the Netherlands.”

“My God!” Arthur covered his head in feigned surprise, “I thought that mess Portugal made with Brazil was confusing enough, but the Bonaparte family as well?”

“It’s no big deal.”

Louis scratched his nose, “You have to realize that things are always so messy with nobles, there are too many interests at stake. To be honest, I sometimes actually envy commoner families, at least the element of falsehood in there isn’t as much as it is in the court. I don’t want to deny …… that my mother and father’s marital relationship …… isn’t very happy, but both of them are very good parents, they just don’t fit together.”

“Well ……” said Dumas, his eyes suddenly becoming strange and the corners of his mouth twitching when he heard this.

Arthur gave him a strange look, “Alexander, what’s wrong with you?”

“Ah ……” Dumas swung his head to the side and pointed at the landscape painting on the wall, “Very nice painting, I hadn’t noticed this before, the owner of the Golden Lion Inn has good taste. ”

Louis, on the other hand, glared at Dumas with a mischievous face when he saw this, and although Arthur wasn’t sure why Dumas was laughing, he knew exactly why.

This fat man was doubting his pedigree.

Because his mother and Count Charles Joseph of Flao once maintained a reckless extramarital affair, so the streets of Paris from time to time circulated such a rumor – Louis Bonaparte is not the seed of the Bonaparte family, his body is flowing with the blood of the Périgord family.

The reason why he was a Périgord was that the Comte de Flaux had always been considered the illegitimate son of the French ambassador, Monsieur Talleyrand.

So if this is true, then Louis is equal to Talleyrand’s grandson.

This was something that Louis could not accept in any way.

It was hard enough to admit that he wasn’t a noble Bonaparte, but if he was Talleyrand’s grandson, he would have to commit suicide by jumping into the Thames.

For this reason, the young Louis has repeatedly questioned his mother face to face, whose child he really is.

The answer from his mother’s mouth, on the other hand, reassured him every time that he was a noble Bonaparte.

But although the words are so, but the issue of blood is always a pimple in his heart.

He also often compared his father’s and uncle’s portraits back and forth, trying to find similarities, but the sad truth was that he did look a little more like his mother.

Arthur also noticed a change in Louis’ emotions.

It was the first time since being released from his cell by Scotland Yard that he had noticed that the lad could actually be depressed like this.

In order to take care of his mood, Arthur could only suppress his curiosity and turn the conversation to the right path.

“That Napoleon’s lover you were talking about, Mrs. Poland, is she well?”

Seeing Arthur asking the question, Louis could only put the unpleasantness aside for the time being, “Mrs. Marie Walewska was indeed a very gentle woman, and her fate was far more bitter than that of my uncle’s first love. If I remember correctly, she was supposed to have been born of the famous Polish family, the Rasinskas, and had just come of age when she was arranged by her family to be married to Count Szwaleski, who was a powerful man in Poland ……”

“Isn’t that nice?”

“If we just look at the power, it is indeed quite good.”

Louis spoke, “But at that time, Count Svaleski was already over 70 years old, while Mrs. Walevska was only 18 years old. But although Mrs. Valewska was reluctant, after the marriage she abided by her duties as a wife. When my uncle led his army into Warsaw and fell in love with her at first sight, she was also unwilling to violate basic Catholic morals, and she refused my uncle’s advances many times.”

Dumas marveled, “Wow, that does seem like a lady of integrity. But why did she then fall into Napoleon’s arms?”

“Well ……”

Louis shook his head, “I can’t say she fell into my uncle’s arms, but the Poles pressed her into Napoleon’s arms. They’ve been trying to restore the Kingdom of Poland ever since it was divided between Prussia, Russia and Austria.

So when those Poles found out that Napoleon was in love with Marie, they began to send people to lobby the lady constantly. The whole patriotic people of Poland ran out and they wrote letters to persuade Mary. They said, ‘If you were a man, you would give your life to your country. As a woman, you can make other sacrifices. Although the sacrifice will be painful, you must force yourself to do it.’

And Marie’s husband, Count Swaleski, began to persuade her and voluntarily signed the divorce papers with her, willingly giving her up to Napoleon. From this time on, Marie also finally began to accept my uncle.

She lived in Paris and gave my uncle a son, who, in deference to the Poles and to Marie, was not named after Bonaparte, but took the old count’s surname, Walewski. My uncle promised Mary that after the restoration of Poland, this child would be king of Poland.

And Mary rewarded my uncle with a lifetime of unfailing devotion, never saying a word of complaint or anything else out of place, even when Josephine stepped down as Empress while my uncle decided to marry the Austrian Princess. She was really a very kind and considerate lady, and even such a lively and critical person as my mother spoke very highly of her.”

Arthur nodded slightly as he heard this, and turning to the title page of Napoleon’s biography, he pointed to the name on it and said, “I’m probably clear about Marie. But about her child, the King of Poland, is he not in London now?”

(End of chapter.)