Though she had been prepared for it, Georgiana still could not help grumbling inwardly when she saw the municipal guard near the carriage.
Such a grand display—she had originally wanted to keep a low profile.
But Laplace had personally opened the carriage door for her, so she had no choice but to get in.
Boston produced a kind of red lobster, so the citizens called these municipal guards in red uniforms "Bonaparte's Little Lobsters."
Besides maintaining municipal facilities, the senior officials of the Seine Department had another task: coordinating Paris's "Six Corps."
After the guilds gradually disintegrated, private chambers of commerce founded on commercial towns emerged again. They all had representative offices in Paris, though Paris itself had no chamber of commerce.
In 1790, the Constituent Assembly passed the so-called Chapelier Law, which prohibited all associations. They intended to establish administrative bodies in major cities to meet every need of the commercial and other civic classes.
The "Six Corps" was a collective name for the representatives of the most powerful chambers of commerce. They could appoint two representatives, while the other chambers could appoint only one.
They gathered to discuss industrial development, foreign trade, commercial practices, and other matters. Bonaparte and Chaptal occasionally went there, but he had never visited the agricultural association.
He valued agriculture greatly, but he truly knew nothing about it. Most of his soldiers, however, were farmers.
The French word négociants meant merchants. Originally, it referred to Burgundy wine traders. They were not responsible for growing or making the wine; they merely bottled it, labeled it, and sold it.
Another kind of wine merchant, an éleveur, literally meant a breeder. They bought grapes or unfermented grape juice and made the wine from the beginning.
Sometimes customers encountered this situation: they bought a bottle of Burgundy wine,