The Radiant Republic

Like Paris, London’s autumn always swept past in a blink, fleeting and abrupt. In October, the gentle breeze off the Thames had only just coaxed Hyde Park’s leaves into a riot of colour, and then—almost at once—those leaves were already falling. Fortunately, dusk still did not come too early; the backlight cast a soft halo, and it was hard not to be intoxicated by it.

At Number Ten, Downing Street—the official residence of the British Prime Minister—there was, almost every day before tea, a man who would stand on the broad second-floor balcony. He had a long neck, a sharp, straight nose, and a face of austere authority. Through dusty glass, he would look west, towards the lawns and the lake of the park by Buckingham Palace. Strictly speaking, in the eighteenth century, thirty-four could no longer be called “young”—especially not for this man, William Pitt the Younger, who had already served nearly ten years as Prime Minister of the British Empire and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

To gaze at greenery and water at fixed hours each day was advice given to Pitt the Younger by the royal physician: it would help preserve his eyesight, so that he would not be forced too early to perch a heavy pair of spectacles upon that handsome bridge of his nose. When Pitt the Younger was fifteen, a congenital cardiovascular condition had caused him repeated bouts of pain. His parents therefore invited a French doctor of considerable reputation to treat him.

In the prescriptions that doctor left behind, the young patient was to drink Bordeaux red wine daily as part of the treatment. The result was that Pitt the Younger developed a long-term habit of heavy drinking. The cardiovascular pain seemed to have vanished; yet alcohol brought its own punishment. His liver and stomach deteriorated, and from time to time, in the dead of night, they would torment the young Prime Minister—until…

“Damn the Frenchman. They should all go to hell!”

That was the curse Pitt the Younger would mutter after each bout of drinking—directed, without end, at that French doctor. And the next day, the young Prime Minister would still drink down five or six bottles of costly Bordeaux, as usual. In time he sank under a mountain of debt, owing tens of thousands of pounds in total. Fortunately, he was close to the King. George III arranged for William Pitt the Younger to hold a sinecure—Governor of a Port—paid for doing nothing, which brought him an extra three thousand pounds a year and spared him outright bankruptcy.

Though personally drowning in debt, William Pitt the Younger was a master of state finance. When he first took office, he was hemmed in on every side. He had to outmanoeuvre parliamentary colleagues who mocked and looked down on him, and he also had to soothe George III’s anger towards the Commons. After that, under pressure from every quarter, the young Prime Minister began adjusting excise rates and the national debt, and he launched vigorous efforts to curb governmental corruption.

One measure in particular—pushed through over the fierce objections of wine importers and their spokesmen—was a special tariff on the very Bordeaux red wine he adored, a levy that would, in later ages, be called an anti-dumping duty. It was designed to protect the growth of Britain’s domestic wine trade. In only a few years, William Pitt the Younger had filled the vast fiscal hole left by the American War of Independence, allowing his cabinet to keep winning re-election in the House of Commons for nearly ten years.

Yet despite his political success, William Pitt the Younger was still seen by many as cold, distant, and ascetic—an unfeeling man. As if to cater to readers, a recent issue of The Times printed a famous playwright’s satirical jab at the young Prime Minister’s character:

“He has not sponsored science; he has never raised a single talented man from among those of low station; he believes there is no outstanding genius among his friends. He feels no attachment to women, dislikes children, and has no sense of beauty in natural scenery; yet he likes to abandon himself to indulgent banquets and revelry, because that kind of stimulus gives him an inexpressible sensation, persuading him that he is remarkable, that he possesses some inner strength…”

William Pitt the Younger treated such slanders from political enemies with open contempt. The Prime Minister of the British Empire would rather brood over London’s fog, which once again reduced the city’s chaotic traffic to complete disorder. With so little sunlight and such heavy mist, the servants’ clothes hung outdoors seemed never to dry.

There were troubles in the House of Commons as well. With Fox and the parliamentary opposition entrenched, the gentlemen of the Commons rejected a cabinet proposal: a restriction order aimed at the London Corresponding Society, a group that proclaimed its mission to improve the lives of the poor and to win universal suffrage. In the eyes of London’s conservative forces, the London Corresponding Society was simply Britain’s Jacobins—a gathering place for the mob.

Back in June of this year, although influenced by Edmund Burke, William Pitt the Younger did not like France’s violent revolution or a Jacobin government. Even so, within his cabinet he overruled dissent and refused the conservative demand that Britain join the European anti-French coalition.

To that end, he first chose—at the cost of aligning with his political enemy, Fox, who was said to have been bought by the French—to issue a temporary order: it restricted the plots and intrigues of French émigré nobles throughout Britain and within the Electorate of Hanover, including fundraising for the French émigré corps in rebellion.

After the Hundred Years’ War, Britain—separated from the European continent by a channel it could not cross at will—had little appetite for competing over land on the mainland. It focused instead on the sea and the colonies. Even so, Britain watched continental affairs closely, fearing that any one power becoming too strong—or collapsing into extreme weakness—might threaten Britain’s security and overseas supremacy. From the sixteenth century onward, the “balance of power on the continent” became a basic principle of Britain’s European diplomacy.

It was on this basis that, in June, when nearly every European monarchy was shouting against revolutionary France and the Prusso-Austrian Coalition was preparing to invade French soil, William Pitt the Younger persuaded George III to “keep the calmest of minds, and sit as a leisurely spectator watching the fire from the opposite bank.”

As for the French Revolution itself, Fox displayed ardent enthusiasm, while Edmund Burke offered sharp criticism of what he called a mob’s revolution. Meanwhile, William Pitt the Younger and his cabinet maintained a neutral, non-interventionist stance, hoping Britain’s foremost rival on the continent would grind itself down in a death struggle with the Prusso-Austrian Coalition.

By late August, when one hundred and forty thousand foreign intervention troops had driven deep into France and the French armies fell back step by step into Champagne, William Pitt the Younger even told the pro-French Fox in private that Britain could sell its stockpiled saltpetre and cannon to Paris—so that the Jacobins would keep resisting the European coalition, rather than suddenly capitulating.

And then October brought a stunning reversal. The French war turned on its head: one hundred and forty thousand foreign intervention troops were almost annihilated. The French not only recovered all lost territory, but pursued the retreat, driving the front into the Austrian Netherlands and western Germany. Before long, Austria’s rule in the southern Netherlands was reduced to only two cities.

In light of this, William Pitt the Younger and his cabinet adjusted their European policy. Their earlier neutrality, which had leaned towards France, shifted into a posture of restraining revolutionary France. As a preliminary probe, he instructed his cousin—thirty-three-year-old Grenville, the Minister of Foreign Affairs—to summon the French ambassador in London, the Marquis de Chauvelin, and demand an immediate halt to French bombardment of the port on the Antwerp river. The French navy was also to be forbidden from attacking the port via the mouth of the Scheldt. Britain declared that such actions gravely harmed British commerce and would inevitably provoke retaliation by the Imperial Navy.

In response, André—the supreme commander of the French armies—actually swallowed the insult and accepted the British “ultimatum” in full. This left the British cabinet dumbfounded and momentarily at a loss. In the script they had imagined, the hot-blooded French Marshal was supposed to refuse in fury, continue pounding the most important commercial port in Belgium, mass troops on the frontier, and threaten Britain’s ally the Netherlands at point-blank range—thus whipping every class of the island kingdom into hatred of revolutionary France under Jacobin rule, and laying the groundwork for the next stage of propaganda in support of further intervention on the continent.

With no better option, William Pitt the Younger could only grit his teeth and keep to the existing neutrality policy. For that purpose, he went to Buckingham Palace three times a week, patiently explaining the cabinet’s position to George III. If Britain were to shift its stance towards France without a clear cause, it would provoke severe dissatisfaction among many voters—wealthy taxpayers.

Pro-French commercial magnates, represented by the Watt steam engine company and the industrial-and-commercial federations of Birmingham and Manchester, along with their supporters in Parliament—and above all Fox, the majority leader in the Commons—would seize the opportunity to strike. They could throw forward a motion of no confidence, forcing William Pitt the Younger’s cabinet out early.

Each time he thought of this, William Pitt the Younger’s mind would churn in vexation. He would fling up a balcony window, wanting a breath of fresh air—and then remember, too late, that this was industrial London, not a pleasant country estate. The damp air carried coal grit and dust; his throat tightened, and he coughed repeatedly.

A servant hurried over to close the window, then brought a cup of boiled water, which eased the Prime Minister’s coughing. Since the French “Fourier cholera map” had been confirmed as credible by the Royal Society, Britain’s parliamentary government and the royal household had gradually accepted a new medical concept: personal and environmental hygiene.

From the second half of 1791 onward, most daily drinking water among the upper classes was drawn from clean rivers and springs outside London—and it had to be boiled and served warm. This followed the advice of Doctor Edward Jenner, one of the inventors of the cowpox vaccination, who had been admitted as a member by both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The results, after more than half a year, were plain: among those who drank such water, few suffered intestinal diseases such as dysentery, and the number of infant deaths fell by more than thirty percent.

In recognition of Jenner’s two major contributions—cowpox inoculation and the discovery of “healthy water”—George III decided that on Michaelmas in September 1792, which was also regarded as a harvest festival, he would confer upon Doctor Jenner the honour of a knighthood in the Royal Gallery at Buckingham Palace. Yet the taciturn British doctor posed a problem that left both the royal household and Parliament in a difficult position.

Jenner insisted that, in the credit for cowpox inoculation and “healthy water,” the Frenchman André Franck deserved at least sixty percent. Therefore, the honour granted by the Crown must include André’s share; otherwise, Jenner would rather refuse it. If André Franck had been merely a French scientist or an ordinary physician, the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh would long since have sent an invitation for him to join—and the Crown could have added an extra honorary title, for life but not hereditary, without much trouble.

The problem was that André—one of the Jacobin leaders—was now France’s supreme war commander, and had even once become France’s head of state. A mere knighthood would look laughable for such a dictator. Headache mounting, George III promptly tossed this hot potato to the cabinet.

Fortunately, when André learned of it, he did not strike a lofty pose. He immediately instructed the Marquis de Chauvelin, the ambassador in London, to handle the matter with full authority, and he agreed to accept both a British honour from the Crown and foreign membership in the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He only emphasized that he had no time to come to London, and could authorize the Marquis de Chauvelin to stand in for him. Thus, through discreet handling by diplomats on both sides, the knighthood affair was quietly covered over.

Now the European problem facing Pitt the Younger was how to prevent French forces from pushing onward into the Netherlands. That very morning, the British ambassador in Paris, the Duke of Dorset, had sent a report to Whitehall: the Jacobin government’s chief minister, Georges Danton, had publicly declared that the Rhine, the Atlantic, the Alps, and the Pyrenees were France’s natural frontiers. In other words, the Netherlands—within that “natural frontier”—should also belong to France.

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We must have that young, elegant French ambassador come to Number Ten again, William Pitt the Younger thought—yet he hesitated whether to receive him personally as Prime Minister, or to delegate the task to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Grenville, who would be the more suitable figure.

Before William Pitt the Younger could decide, a royal court attendant arrived at Number Ten in great haste. He bore an oral message from George III: the King invited the Prime Minister to Buckingham Palace for afternoon tea.

Among the more than ten prime ministers of George III’s reign, none had enjoyed a relationship with him so close and harmonious as William Pitt the Younger. Not only tea—there were even occasions when the young Prime Minister slept in the palace overnight. Parliamentary enemies sneered that the handsome young Prime Minister was merely a flattering boy behind the King, and they even commissioned a political cartoon, intending to spread it widely through Britain’s newspapers. In the end, George III swallowed his pride and spent heavily to buy off major press outlets—including The Times—thus calming the political storm. True story.

The Prime Minister’s carriage followed the palace attendants into the inner court of Buckingham Palace. When he alighted, before William Pitt the Younger had even stepped through the solemn main entrance of that four-storey, grey, cubic building—hung with the royal arms—he noticed at once that the palace was loose outside but tight within. Guards had been doubled—some posts even tripled—and the rule was simple: entry permitted, exit forbidden. His heart jolted. He knew some major event had occurred inside. Yet his face remained composed until he reached the King’s private apartments, where he found the Queen—Queen Sophia Charlotte—with tears still clinging to her lashes.

After the attendants closed the door, the Queen revealed the bad news.

“His Majesty has relapsed.”

Half an hour earlier, at tea, George III had suddenly erupted. He struck the Prince of Wales repeatedly and even tried to smash the Prince’s head into the wall. When the attendants pulled them apart, George III kept muttering without stop. At last he collapsed into unconsciousness, froth at his lips, eyes bloodshot—like two purple grapes…

Compared with several previous British monarchs, who had been condemned as debauched and corrupt, George III was almost a model king, a gentleman among monarchs. He had inherited the blue eyes and fair complexion of the Germans, stood tall and broad-shouldered, and carried himself with imposing presence. He seemed perpetually rosy and vigorous. Even to the lowliest servant, he could be kind and approachable. He also lived frugally and opposed extravagance.

Rarer still was George III’s absolute fidelity to marriage and family; the German-born Queen Sophia Charlotte was the same. Throughout his reign, the King had no mistress—a sharp contrast to the previous two Hanoverian monarchs and to his own son. Husband and wife enjoyed a genuinely happy marriage and raised fifteen children in all: nine sons and six daughters. Had he not, by a mishap, lost the thirteen North American colonies, George III might have ranked among the top five monarchs in Britain’s long list of rulers.

Perhaps guilt over losing those thirteen colonies gnawed at him. Perhaps he was disgusted by the rebellious behaviour of the Prince of Wales, who wallowed in luxury. Perhaps he was tired of the scheming and hypocrisy of Britain’s popular politics, and of Parliament’s disrespect towards the Crown. Or perhaps it was something else. From the summer of 1788 onward, the once cheerful George III changed sharply in temperament and even fell into heavy drinking, which did grave harm to his health and destabilized his mind. Once, the imperial monarch even stood before a great oak and talked to it for half a day, as if no one else existed.

After repeated examinations by Sir George, the royal physician, and Reverend Willis, the Prime Minister accepted the terrifying fact that George III’s old illness had returned. The damage such a condition could do to the nation was far greater than the health of one king. In the Middle Ages it would have been labelled a vampire’s disease: sleeping by day, roaming by night, fearing sunlight; the face and exposed skin severely corroded; an intense craving for blood.

Witches, vampires, stake-burnings, and the Black Death had been gone from Britain for centuries—but if the public learned the King’s true condition, a political storm would erupt like a tidal wave. Those British extremists who aped the French Jacobins would certainly spread rumours that George III was a vampire reborn, smearing the royal household as a nest of vampires…

In truth, George III suffered from a rare hereditary blood disorder—porphyria—which drove his abnormal behaviour. It manifested as a preference for darkness and fear of sunlight, weakness in the limbs, abnormal urine colour, and conspicuous scarring across exposed skin. The illness could cloud thought and disrupt speech, producing hallucinations and delusions, hysteria, paranoia, and symptoms akin to psychosis.

With Queen Sophia Charlotte’s formal authorization, William Pitt the Younger immediately issued instructions to the palace’s senior attendants in his capacity as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal—a post that could also be entrusted to a Prime Minister whom the King and Queen trusted. He also announced to the public that George III, suffering from throat discomfort, would recuperate at Windsor Castle for three or four weeks, and would not miss the opening ceremony of the “Great Parliament” scheduled for November fifth.

As for the Prince of Wales—extravagant, indulgent, addicted to drink, unruly, and the man who had brought a gaudy mistress, likely a prostitute, into the palace and thereby triggered the King’s relapse—Queen Sophia Charlotte, on the Prime Minister’s strong recommendation, placed him under confinement within Buckingham Palace for at least three weeks, until the uproar could be suppressed.

…

In 1792, the French embassy in London stood south of Hyde Park, beside a small church. It was a grey stone complex, three storeys high, square and solid, ringed with iron railings. The front and rear courtyards were arranged as gardens of conspicuous refinement; in the rear yard in particular, a clear pond of substantial size had been preserved. To the north, a narrow, winding channel linked it to the lake inside Hyde Park. Wild ducks often gathered on that clear pond by the grass—though “wild” was not quite accurate: most were domestic ducks and their descendants.

Because the previous British ambassador had enjoyed duck meat, the kitchen staff had kept domestic ducks at the embassy for years. Last October, when Chauvelin returned to Paris to report and then rose to become ambassador in London, the young French noble announced that the kitchen’s remaining five live ducks were to be released—so that, reborn, they might live freely on Hyde Park’s Serpentine. Yet when the next spring arrived, the ducks cheerfully swam back to the embassy pond—and even brought with them several beautiful female ducks from the park…

After scattering bread crumbs to the happy ducks in the pond, Chauvelin turned to leave. A second secretary hurried over to report that Lieutenant Colonel Lozère had returned from outside and was waiting in the small study on the second floor.

What new crisis will it be this time? Chauvelin wondered. Please, let it not ruin my evening appointment with the Danish ambassador’s wife.

That morning, Lieutenant Colonel Lozère—the embassy’s military attaché—had collected two hundred pounds from the accounts office. He claimed it was to pay a secret informant he had cultivated inside Buckingham Palace, someone who could provide major news concerning the royal household.

News about George III was always major news—not least because the King not only suffered from an illness with “vampire-like” symptoms, but had also beaten the foolish Prince of Wales so savagely that he nearly left the heir unable to function for the rest of his life.

“Is it true?” Ambassador Chauvelin asked in astonishment. Rumours of George III’s mental illness had circulated in London’s high society for years, but no one had spoken of such specific “vampire-like” symptoms.

“Absolutely true,” Lieutenant Colonel Lozère replied with certainty. “It happened yesterday at a quarter past four in the afternoon. Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger arrived at Buckingham Palace half an hour later to handle it. While George III and the Queen go to Windsor Castle to recuperate, the Prince of Wales will be confined within the palace.”

“Should we use this to strike?” Lieutenant Colonel Lozère asked.

The purpose of such a strike was obvious: to embarrass the royal household and bring down William Pitt the Younger’s cabinet. London’s major newspapers might not dare to trumpet a palace scandal, but the military attaché had methods enough to ensure that most of London learned the story within forty-eight hours. If the matter were widely spread, it would drag Britain’s political world into a royal scandal and might well topple the Pitt cabinet—creating an opening for Fox, who was on good terms with André, to form a government.

Ambassador Chauvelin did not answer at once. He told his colleague that Gensonné, the diplomatic plenipotentiary and representative of the French National Convention sent to London, had bypassed the embassy and, in private, successfully bribed Fox and a large bloc of British industrialists and merchants by promising to purchase goods worth five million pounds over three years.

In other words, the fall of William Pitt the Younger and the rise of Fox would not necessarily be good news for the Northern Command Headquarters. Chauvelin and Lozère knew in detail the internal truth of André’s uneasy relationship with the Jacobins. They were, after all, die-hard members of the André faction, and would never be tolerated by the ruling Brissot faction. Gensonné’s purpose in London was likely to prepare the ground for replacing the Marquis de Chauvelin as the next French ambassador, and to set up certain preliminary arrangements for the future.

Factional struggle. As core members of the André faction, Chauvelin and Lozère naturally had to serve André’s interests with full devotion. As for the Jacobin government in Paris, at present it could represent only the broad populace of France’s central and southern regions. No intelligent man would do the work of fishing chestnuts from the fire for a political enemy.

“Keep that line for now. Not today—but it will be useful later.” After weighing the balance of gains and losses, Chauvelin made his final decision as the embassy’s policy-maker. As for André’s instruction—that Britain must not join the European war before 1793—that task was essentially complete.

Hannoverian merchants, fearing that a clash between Britain and France would expose Hanover to the threat of the superior French armies, strongly opposed any deterioration in relations between London and Paris. Therefore, entrusted by George III, William Pitt the Younger assured Hanover’s political and commercial representatives that so long as France’s ruling government was not controlled by rioters, Britain would not intervene, and would adhere to its neutrality policy.

However, such peace could not last much longer. News from home had arrived: the Jacobin left wing, led by Robespierre and Marat, was pushing in the National Convention for a public trial of the former King Louis XVI. Brissot and his associates did not resist too strongly; many within the Girondins also supported putting the King on trial. The Mountain wanted Louis XVI sent to the guillotine, while the Girondins merely wanted to exile the King and his family.

“Our time in London is running short,” Chauvelin said, his expression full of helplessness and regret. In truth, if only Paris would refrain from reckless provocations, he believed he could keep Britain’s confused government neutral in the “European War of Liberation” for a long time.

Yet even André, commanding two hundred thousand troops and backed by fifteen provinces, could not change the majority’s thirst for revenge against Louis XVI within the National Convention. France was now a republic—what offering could be more fitting for the republican altar than the supreme head of a king of the old age?

Lozère nodded without expression. He remembered a matter André had conveyed in a confidential letter, and said, “In a few days, I will make a secret journey for a time. To Ireland—to Dublin—to visit the political leader of the Society of United Irishmen, the lawyer Theobald Wolfe Tone.”

As the embassy’s military attaché, Lozère needed Ambassador Chauvelin’s full assistance for his movements. Under normal circumstances, Chauvelin did not pry into Lozère’s secret missions. Each man had his own duties.

The London Corresponding Society, founded earlier this year, had received secret funding from the French embassy. On January twenty-fifth, 1792, nine men led by Thomas Hardy met at the Bell Hotel on the Strand in London to discuss economic hardship and rising prices, and to debate how to relieve the sufferings of the poor. Hardy was chosen as the first secretary and treasurer. Later, the lawyer Maurice Magrath became the society’s first chairman.

On the advice of Lozère’s agents, when the London Corresponding Society drafted its political programme, it did not confine itself to the problem of the poor’s livelihood. It also called for universal suffrage, annual parliaments with elections every year, redistribution of electoral districts and seats, reduction of seats in rotten boroughs, and an increase in seats for large cities.

The London Corresponding Society promoted its platform nationwide and recruited broadly. With the help of agents from the Military Intelligence Office, it established a relatively strict organisational system from the very beginning. By September 1792, it had grown to eight thousand members in London’s city districts alone, within a population of eight hundred thousand. It also had nine branches elsewhere—Leeds, Derby, Nottingham, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Dundee, Glasgow, and Stirling—with total membership reaching twenty-five thousand. Most were left-leaning intellectuals from relatively higher social strata; only the remaining one third were small and middling shopkeepers, artisans, and craftsmen. There were almost no ordinary labourers or farmers.

With the energetic involvement of the French Military Intelligence Office, and with more than ten thousand pounds poured in before and after, the London Corresponding Society’s scale was five to six times greater than in another timeline. Lieutenant Colonel Lozère, however, was not satisfied. He knew these people looked imposing in numbers and noise, but in reality they were fragile. Perhaps all it would take would be for London’s troops and police to fire a few volleys into the air, and the society would lose its nerve and scurry home.

Using the London Corresponding Society to cause occasional trouble for William Pitt the Younger’s cabinet in the House of Commons—that was feasible. Anything beyond that could be forgotten. Accordingly, André wrote to Lozère and suggested shifting the revolutionary focus to Ireland, to the Society of United Irishmen founded in October 1791.

If there were a people in this world who hated the English most, it was not Spaniards, Frenchmen, or Americans—it was the Irish, separated from Britain by only a strip of water. The interwoven conflicts of history, religion, and nation were too deep to be reconciled. For a long time, the Irish had tirelessly pursued a struggle with clear aims: to liberate Catholics through a Catholic relief bill, to reform Ireland’s separate parliament, and ultimately to break free from Britain and become independent.

In another timeline, leaders of the Society of United Irishmen such as Tone, Tandy, and Russell even travelled openly to Paris and begged the French revolutionary government—under the Director Carnot—for military aid, setting off a second great Irish uprising.

Moreover, more than a million Irish refugees lived in exile across Spain, France, Austria, and the Italian peninsula. In another timeline, the Irish, together with the Poles, became the finest foreign cannon fodder of Napoleon’s First Empire—followed, after them, by the people of the Netherlands formed from Belgians and Dutch.