Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [566]
“You have seen how the Revolution and Napoleon have turned poor Europe upside down,” he reminded him. “You know it is true that the Corsican adventurer has caused the death of nearly one and a quarter million men. Can you not see that, even if the old regimes were imperfect” – this was an astonishing admission from Porteus, Ralph had to admit – “yet the legitimate monarchs of Europe at least preserved order in the world?”
“I agree that all Europe believes so,” Ralph replied. “And that itself may be enough to preserve peace.”
In a way, he knew it was so. For a generation and more, the cause of “legitimacy” – invented by the subtle brain of France’s great statesman Talleyrand – was something more than a reactionary love of the old monarchic regimes. Legitimacy meant order; it meant that upstart adventurers could not overturn the world; it meant a return to peace and prosperity. In good conscience the monarchs of Europe, glad to be rid of Napoleon who had so humiliated them, and destroyed their people, formed new general alliances to preserve a permanent peace throughout Europe, and the religious-minded Czar even tried to start a Holy Alliance dedicated to Christian principles.
But as the years passed, the legitimist cause of the monarchies led to other, less attractive results: the revival of the Inquisition in Spain; the attempt by the Bourbon rulers to return all the South American trade to the old Spanish monopoly, and a general suppression of all dissidents because they might be revolutionaries. They were dark, repressive times.
At home, not even Porteus could pretend that Britain’s own monarchy gave any cause for joy. While Wellington was still struggling to wear down the French in the Iberian peninsula, George III finally went mad and his extravagant son became Regent. The Regency and reign of George IV were marred not only by his wild spending but also by his separation from and quarrels with his wife Queen Caroline. When, at his coronation in front of a large and delighted crowd, she tried to force her way into Westminster Abbey but was turned away at the door, even Porteus acknowledged to Ralph:
“It is hardly surprising that the republicans are encouraged when our monarchy allows such scenes to take place.”
“I’m not sure George IV isn’t a little mad like his father,” Barnikel confided. “His fantasies and vanities grow even stranger than the palace he’s built at Brighton. You know that although he never set foot over the Channel, he has so persuaded himself he fought Bonaparte that he even told Wellington – Wellington if you please – that he led a charge at Waterloo!”
It was in the second decade of the century that a sad rift took place in the Shockley family.
“The truth is that Napoleon broke our friendship with our cousins,” Ralph said generously. He could have blamed Porteus.
For during the long years of Britain’s isolation, Napoleon tried to bring her to her knees by enforcing a trade blockade. Thanks to her navy, the island could block Napoleon’s trade in turn; and for years the extraordinary system continued whereby both sides tried to block trade with third parties while, unofficially, enough English cloth was still getting through to the continent to clothe Napoleon’s armies, whom they were fighting.
The British Navy stopped and searched all merchant shipping including American vessels.
“They don’t admit it, but they want a crack at Canada,” Mason observed, “and they’ll complain about our search ships just to pick a quarrel.”
Whether this was fair or not, it was an added irony that the inconclusive war, in which the United States unsuccessfully attacked Canada and British ships fired upon Washington, actually began after an agreement between the disputing parties had been reached but before news of it had cross the Atlantic.
With the start of hostilities