Soft Power and Steamships
Napoleon was busy with his legal code, which now had an additional task: preparing for the future of his family's control from behind the scenes. Lucien was busy with church affairs, and of course, various entertainment activities enjoyed by the people. The Consulate had just passed the "French Cultural Development Promotion Plan." According to this plan, many lands and buildings that originally belonged to the royal family would be converted into various public entertainment facilities to meet the growing spiritual and cultural needs of the people.
"The importance of recreational facilities cannot be overstated." In the Ministry of Truth, Lucien was emphasizing the importance of this work to his subordinates. "There are always many unsatisfactory things in the world. Even those who seem to have a good life to others experience various misfortunes, let alone those who are struggling."
These emotions accumulate and grow stronger, like a flood that accumulates and grows larger. Simply suppressing them with force can only hold them in place temporarily; once they break free, a major disaster will ensue. Therefore, one of our responsibilities is to prevent such emotions from building up and to allow them to be released in a harmless way. Art and entertainment are such ways. Therefore, we must understand our work from a political perspective, from the perspective of ensuring the long-term stability of the country, and not merely as a superficial exercise to whitewash the situation.
The founders of the Roman Empire understood this principle deeply. Therefore, if you visit the ruins of Rome, you will find numerous such facilities, such as theaters and Colosseum. They staged various tragedies and comedies in theaters and displayed various battles in the Colosseum, effectively guiding and releasing the people's emotions. As a result, the people were satisfied, smiles increased, and the people became more united and efficient, thus Rome grew increasingly powerful... Therefore, we must also build more stadiums and opera houses! This is a need of the nation and its people, and a requirement of the Manifest Mandate that France inherited from the Roman Empire!
Furthermore, our propaganda efforts should not be limited to the domestic market; we cannot neglect our international outreach. This propaganda must be strategic and not just mindlessly chant, "France is good, France is good, it's just good!" Instead, we must use more sophisticated methods to promote the positive image of France ideas, France art.
We want all of Europe to admire France, to take pride in speaking French, eating France cuisine, watching France plays, and using France goods; we want all of Europe to believe that France is the Rome of civilization, and that all outside of Rome are barbarians. We want all of Europe to feel that only by being with France, learning from France, and following France can they move towards civilization, and that anyone who opposes France is a self-degrading barbarian. France will not only rely on its invincible military and other hard power to dominate, but also on our culture and our soft power to influence Europe.
Ladies and gentlemen, our hard power is immense; it can compel our enemies to submit to our will. But hard power alone is far from sufficient.
In world history, in terms of military achievements alone, no one has surpassed the fearsome Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan and his descendants. However, their empire was short-lived. Why? Because their empire was crippled, possessing nothing but military might.
We cannot follow the same path as the Mongols. Our hard power must be enough to make them dare not disobey us, while our soft power must be enough to make all of Europe willingly submit to us and put our interests first.
Therefore, we must become messengers of civilization, we must cooperate with universities throughout Europe, and... ultimately, we must cultivate a large number of spiritually France people in Europe, as well as a large number of revolutionaries willing to lead the Europe people down the France path—of course, the so-called 'following the France path' refers to the 'France path' that we make them believe to them...
To achieve this goal, Lucien was naturally extremely busy, to the point that some tabloid reporters even observed that Mr. Lucien Bonaparte's rate of changing girlfriends had decreased by 40%.
As for Joseph, things are actually going smoothly now. His research projects are mostly on track, and he no longer needs to oversee them personally. Joseph secured himself a professorship at the University of Paris, then recruited over twenty doctoral students, dumping a huge amount of the operational details of his own projects onto them. Later, Mr. Ampère, a double member of the French Academy of Sciences and the Roman Imperial Academy of Sciences, recalled his time as Joseph's student:
"Professor Bonaparte was a remarkable man, and what was most admirable about him was his keen eye and that strange intuition. Back then, some of us students would spend day and night by the experimental equipment, recording a mountain of messy data, without any sense that it proved anything. Then Madame Bonaparte, who was also his secretary, would come in, take our data back, and often within a day or even less, Professor Bonaparte would spot something amiss and immediately assign a new research direction. Sometimes, in our research, we would encounter various points of divergence, forks in the road, unsure which direction to pursue. At these times, the professor would often quickly point us in a direction based on his intuition, and the accuracy of his intuition was astonishingly high..."
However, perhaps because Professor Bonaparte was so busy, we rarely saw him, mostly only during the monthly progress reports. Even so, many of the various problems we had accumulated over the month were solved by Professor Bonaparte in just a few minutes..."
Because he left these tasks to his students, Joseph only needed to control the nodes, which greatly reduced Joseph workload. In addition, there was nothing for him to "officially put into production" during this period, so Joseph was unusually free. This period of leisure lasted for about half a month, until Fulton, the United States engineer he had exceptionally hired, informed him that the new steamship could "officially go on trial."
In the original history, Fulton is considered a key figure in the development of steamships. As in the original history, Fulton came to Paris in Ninety-Three, trying to find someone to fund his steamship development. However, he was unlucky; his steamship sank in the Seine River due to a strong wind before it was completed. Because the shipwreck blocked the waterway, he was also fined a huge sum by the revolutionary government.
As a result, Fulton, who had nowhere else to turn, was recruited by Joseph to the Military Technology Research Institute at a low price, and later he was taken to Toulon to join the Naval Research Institute.
At the Military Technology Research Institute and the Naval Research Institute in Toulon, he didn't perform particularly well because his areas of expertise didn't receive much investment. However, when the Military-Industrial Consortium began its steamship research project, this United States, who was considered to have weak fundamental knowledge and was more suited to being a technician than an engineer, demonstrated his strong hands-on skills, initiative, and ability to coordinate and compromise, becoming the deputy chief engineer of the steamship project. Who was the chief engineer? Of course, it was Joseph, who held the title but didn't really do much.
Since it is now ready for "official sea trials," it means that the ship has already completed all the "informal sea trials" and is essentially successful.
The test voyage took place on the Seine River. Qing Dynasty, Joseph, accompanied by his secretary and wife, and her secretary's secretary, arrived at a shipyard belonging to Military-Industrial Consortium in the western part of Paris.
When they arrived at the shipyard's dock, they could see from afar that a ship was emitting smoke.
"Joseph, is this a replica of the Britain ship you made?" asked Pauline, the secretary's secretary. The captured Britain steamship was eventually towed to Paris by the France for further research, and then handed over to Lucien for public exhibition to flaunt the France victory. To this end, Lucien also arranged for the story of Morel and others to be adapted into a play and performed in Paris.
Pauline had naturally seen the Britain steamship, which had undergone some restoration. Unlike most people, who generally thought the Britain ship was incredibly ugly, Pauline felt that the steamship with its two large wheels and tall black smokestack possessed a "unique, clumsy yet wickedly powerful beauty," even comparing it to Vulcan standing beside the goddess of beauty. Therefore, Pauline quite hoped that the France would simply replicate the ship.
"How is this possible? How could we possibly build something so outdated?" Polina's words immediately reminded Joseph of his 50,000 francs from the Hundred Flowers.
The carriage stopped directly on the dock. Several people got off the carriage, and a long, slender ship with two masts and two funnels was moored in front of them.
Fulton was already waiting for Joseph and his group. As soon as they got off the carriage, he quickly came to greet them.
"Professor, everything is ready, we're just waiting for you to board," Fulton said.
"Very good. Are all the lifeboats on board?" Joseph asked.
"Everything is in place," Fulton said.
"And are the life jackets all ready? You need to know that everyone on this ship is an invaluable treasure to the consortium; we must protect them. Safety is paramount."
"Professor, please rest assured, we are always very careful about safety precautions. There are enough lifeboats on board for twice the number of passengers, and life rings or life jackets are within easy reach—Professor, look, there's a whole row of them over there."
Joseph looked over there and saw a row of life rings hanging there, so he nodded and then turned to the others and said, "Okay, let's get on the boat."