After the French Revolution ended, a prophecy spread through many regions: a prince would arise in war-ravaged Europe. He would resist the obscurantism and political persecutors who threatened us without restraint, becoming the protector of humanity, justice, and culture.
The scattered royalists added the word "Bourbon" before "prince." Thus, every male aristocrat with even the slightest blood relation to the Bourbon royal family became someone the royalists could rally around.
In Britain, there was Count Athos. The British helped him fund assassins and rebels. In 1792, during the Battle of Valmy near Strasbourg, Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien, led Prussian exiles in an invasion of France. He was later driven out of French territory and lived in Baden along the French border.
Georgiana had once gone to the staff officers for a map and asked where Baden was. She had asked so calmly, as if she truly did not know that the Duke of Enghien lived there.
Whether it was Leoncourt or Gaston Martin, they were exceedingly deferential toward Napoleon. That was how one had to deal with men who reeked of gunpowder. Chanon Transport Company had originally shipped goods from the Rhine River into the French interior, but now its business was constantly being squeezed by Beaune. Under the shadow of the East India Company, who still remembered the smaller shipping companies?
A man who held such immense power lived in such a dilapidated little house, and his only hobby was collecting socks. The old clingy man was not as fond of fighting as young men were, and Leoncourt was an aristocrat who had once served a king. After enduring the pressure Napoleon initially exerted, Mr. Martin explained the entire course of events.
He had done nothing shameful, though he had overstepped his authority a little.
Napoleon treated fear