SGB Chapter 304

## Chapter 304: The King’s Power (4K6)

Louis stood by the window, watching Becky Sharp disappear into the bustling street, her skirt billowing and umbrella held high against the rain. When he finally snapped out of his reverie, he turned to see Arthur hunched over his desk, scribbling away.

Louis leaned closer, taking a peek at the paper. It wasn’t the latest installment of “The Hastings Detective Series” nor the electrical paper Faraday was urging Arthur to submit, but a swordsmanship manual, complete with illustrations and detailed descriptions.

“Arthur, look what I’ve found!” Louis exclaimed, leaning against the wall with a playful smile. “A scholar of encyclopedic knowledge, a modern-day Aristotle! Are you not content with leaving your mark on the literary and scientific worlds? Now you’re aiming to conquer the realm of swordsmanship as well? Aren’t you being a little too polymathic?”

Arthur, unfazed by Louis’s jest, continued working on the manual, even finding time to explain his reason.

“While I don’t consider myself on par with Aristotle,” he said, “it doesn’t stop me from quoting his famous words: ‘All men think all men mortal but me.’ I’m not doing this because I’m exceptionally intelligent, but because of His Majesty’s command.

“At the theater the other day, the Duke of Wellington, trying to please the King, urged him to revive his martial spirit from his days in the Royal Navy. He suggested that the King leverage his resources to revise and update the basic swordsmanship training for the Royal Navy, Army, and Police Force. The Angelo brothers, two of Britain’s finest fencing masters, were in the box, so I wouldn’t normally have a say in such matters.

“But perhaps the excessive carbon dioxide we released in the theater that day clouded His Majesty’s judgment. Or maybe it was because he values my experience at Scotland Yard, believing a current police officer would have more expertise in street brawls. Whatever the reason, I’m now one of the drafters of the ‘Basic Swordsmanship Training Manual for the Police Force.'”

“So that’s why you can’t even rest despite calling in sick?” Louis asked, his amusement bubbling over. “The King’s command? If you really didn’t want to do it, just come up with an excuse and refuse, wouldn’t you? After all, Britain is ruled by Parliament, not the King. We lowly police officers aren’t like judges who need royal approval to take office. As long as we don’t offend the Home Secretary, we’re good, right?”

Arthur, putting down his pen and stretching, replied, “Perhaps the British King doesn’t hold as much power as the French King, and certainly not as much as the Russian Tsar, who reigns supreme. But if you truly disregard His Majesty, you’ll face consequences, Louis. You can’t take everything those European newspapers write as truth.

“Those crazies who lavish praise on Britain don’t necessarily understand the island. Most of them are simply venting their frustrations with their own countries by flattering others. We saw this with Heine, the one we met earlier. You’ve been reading his books lately. How much of his praise for France do you think is genuine?”

Louis, pondering Heine’s famous quotes, furrowed his brow.

Heine’s compliments about France were naturally pleasing to Louis, a descendant of the Bonaparte family. But what he couldn’t tolerate was that Heine not only praised Napoleonic France but also frequently sang the praises of the current July Monarchy.

Heine even described his decision to move from Düsseldorf to Paris after the French July Revolution as “leaving the muddy swamp to breathe fresh air in the woods.”

To vividly illustrate his attitude towards this pilgrimage-like move, Heine told Arthur and Louis a story from his journey.

When Heine reached a seaside town in northwestern France, he saw many farm wagons slowly moving along the road, filled with women, children, and elderly people. The men walked alongside the wagons, and surprisingly, they all spoke German.

Heine claimed, “At that moment, I felt a sudden, violent spasm, a sensation I had never experienced before. All the blood in my body surged towards my heart, pounding against my ribs, as if it were about to burst out of my chest, as if it had to rush out. My breath stopped in my throat. Yes, what I encountered was my homeland itself.”

In Germany, Heine frequently railed against the inherent mediocrity and spinelessness of the German people in newspapers and magazines. He came to France to escape his stagnant homeland.

But when he encountered these people who spoke his language in a foreign land, saw them covered in dust, with more than ten people sharing less than a pound of black bread to sustain them, he said, “This scene moved me with painful emotion. All the memories of exile, of hardship, of seeing my homeland in distress, vanished from my mind. Even its flaws suddenly seemed to me worthy and lovable. I even reconciled with its shallow and narrow political views. I shook hands with it, with every farmer who came from Germany, as if I were shaking hands with the homeland itself, expressing a return to harmony.”

Heine asked, “Why did you leave Germany?”

They answered, “The land is good, we would like to stay there.”

“But we can’t stay.”

These honest and hardworking farmers who fled Germany obviously lacked Heine’s eloquent words. They simply told Heine about the hardships of living in Germany, about the various schemes of the German rulers, in simple language.

An eighty-year-old man explained to Heine that they left their homeland for the sake of their children, who were still young and more adaptable to life abroad, and might find happiness there: “Otherwise, what could we do? Should we start a revolution?”

Their pleas and lamentations made Heine feel as if his heart were being torn apart. He felt anger, but also a sense of tragedy.

As he wrote in his upcoming “Travel Sketches,” “I dare to swear before all the gods in heaven and earth: the tenth part of the suffering these farmers endured in Germany would have been enough to ignite thirty-six revolutions in France, causing thirty-six monarchs to lose their thrones and heads. Yet, tragically, not even one such revolution occurred in all thirty-six states of Germany.”

Louis felt a knot in his chest when he thought about this.

On one hand, he empathized with Heine’s words, but his thinking on the issue was clearly different.

As a young man with liberal views, Louis understood Heine’s feelings. But as a proud Bonaparte, he found it difficult to accept Heine’s constant calls for the beheading of kings.

Louis shook his head, “While I don’t dislike Mr. Heine, his demands seem excessive to me. He believes Germany needs not only the open atmosphere of Paris but also the parliamentary system of London. All this, in my opinion, is virtually impossible.”

Arthur, hearing this, didn’t deny it. He was reluctant to reveal his own opinions. He preferred to listen than to state his own views.

Besides, Arthur always maintained a high priority for observing his emperor’s secretary.

Arthur simply smiled and asked, “Then what do you think Germany needs?”

Louis, placing his hands on the windowsill, gazed at the cold rain outside, and responded decisively, “I think the answer is simple, Germany needs a Frederick the Great.”

“Oh…” Arthur drew out the word, as if teasing Louis. “You’re talking about that tyrant from Prussia?”

Louis, not denying the nickname Arthur had bestowed upon Frederick the Great, defended him by quoting Voltaire: “As Voltaire said, ‘A thousand rats’ democracy is not as good as the autocracy of one lion.’ As the death of Socrates also shows, so-called universal democracy is nothing but a terrifying folly.

“Therefore, from the ancient Greek period of Plato and Aristotle, all the way to the Renaissance, people have been searching for the existence of a philosopher-king. As long as they can implement religious tolerance, reform education and law, achieve administrative rationality, and improve people’s living standards, then this is a philosopher-king who is in line with the national interest. Frederick the Great undoubtedly achieved this in Prussia.

“Although he couldn’t abolish serfdom throughout Prussia due to the obstruction of the nobility, he at least succeeded in doing so in his own domains. Granted, the military regulations he established were extremely strict, and he launched many wars, many of his actions could be considered tyrannical. But we must not forget that he was the first monarch in Europe to achieve limited freedom of the press, a truly enlightened tyrant.”

Seeing his resolute stance, Arthur had no interest in engaging in a heated debate on this issue.

He did have some minor disagreements with Louis on this matter, but he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it.

As Arthur’s other good friend, Mr. Disraeli, said, “If you want to win a person’s heart, whether it’s friendship or love, the easiest way is to allow them to refute you.”

Arthur nodded slightly, “Frederick the Great does have many admirable qualities. And in my opinion, he was at least better than his father. After all, his father spent seventy percent of his state revenue on expanding his army. What’s even more unbearable is that he not only liked kidnapping strong young men across Europe to join the Prussian army, but he also frequently kidnapped tall women in the same manner to breed with them, aiming to create the invincible elite soldiers of his dreams, like the cyclops of Greek mythology.”

Louis, upon hearing this, his spirits, which had just risen, instantly plummeted. He looked awkward, wanting to laugh but feeling it was inappropriate.

“Is the historical education at the University of London all about teaching you these obscure, bizarre, and ancient knowledge?” Louis asked.

Arthur shrugged, “No, Louis, this knowledge isn’t obscure. The really obscure stuff, I haven’t even told you yet.”

“Hmm?” Louis asked curiously, “What else is even more bizarre?”

Arthur took a sip of tea, “Because of my connection with the Royal Society, I have access to some of their lesser-known collections. I happened to find some articles written by Sir Isaac Newton, the former president, attacking Mr. Leibniz. It mentioned that when Frederick the Great’s father, Frederick I, was in power, he once called Leibniz before him and harshly reprimanded him, saying, ‘You’re a complete waste of space, you can’t even stand guard.'”

Louis, expecting Arthur to reveal some earth-shattering secret, was taken aback by this sudden turn of events. He couldn’t hold back his laughter and burst out laughing. “I thought your collection of anecdotes about my uncle was already rich enough. But it turns out you not only like to collect strange stories about French emperors, but you’re not letting the Prussian kings off the hook either?”

Arthur looked innocent, “Who knows? Maybe my future collection will include the Russian Tsar as well. But come to think of it, whether it’s a king or an emperor, they’re all human beings after all. I always thought everyone has one nose and two eyes, so there shouldn’t be much difference. Louis, maybe you can become an emperor in the future. You might not be able to catch up to Frederick the Great, but I think you’d be a better emperor than Frederick I. After all, any normal person wouldn’t interrupt a priest’s prayer as he lay dying.”

“Interrupt a priest’s prayer? What’s that about?”

Arthur began, “At that time, Frederick I was about to breathe his last. The court chaplain was reciting beside him, ‘Naked I came into this world, and naked I shall depart.’ But when Frederick I heard this, he struggled to get out of bed. He said, ‘No! Don’t let me go to God completely naked, get my uniform!’ ”

Louis, hearing this, laughed so hard his eyes narrowed. He leaned against the window, arms crossed, “Arthur, you clearly don’t take these emperors and kings seriously at all. If that’s the case, why are you reluctantly carrying out the British King’s orders, writing that ‘Basic Swordsmanship Training Manual for the Police Force’? After all, both the French emperor and the Prussian king have much more power than the British king.”

Arthur took a sip of tea, put down his cup, and said calmly, “Louis, you’ve been at Scotland Yard for a while now. Have you studied the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 in detail?”

“That…” Louis felt a bit embarrassed, “I’ve memorized all the management regulations of Scotland Yard, but I haven’t studied the Metropolitan Police Act that thoroughly.”

Arthur simply smiled, “That’s alright, I’ll recite it to you. Article 1 of the Metropolitan Police Act: ‘His Majesty shall have power to establish a new police force for the preservation of the peace of the Metropolis and surrounding districts. His Majesty shall appoint two persons to be the chief officers of such police force, who shall, under the immediate direction of a Secretary of State, have the management of the police.'”

“Hmm…” Louis frowned, “What’s so special about that?”

Arthur shook his head, “That part isn’t special, but it clarifies one point, and it’s also logically stipulated in the General Provisions of the ‘Metropolitan Police Act Regulations.’ Legally speaking, the Metropolitan Police and its subordinate Metropolitan Police Force swear allegiance only to the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and are not directly under the government.

“As for the Home Secretary, the reason he can manage Scotland Yard is because he’s been appointed by His Majesty as the temporary chief executive of the Metropolitan Police. Therefore, me following His Majesty’s order to write the ‘Basic Swordsmanship Training Manual for the Police Force’ has nothing to do with whether I take anyone seriously or not. I’m simply accountable to the source of my power.”

Louis, hearing this, was taken aback for a moment, then thoughtfully stroked his chin. After thinking for a while, he suddenly broke into a smile, “Interesting.”

Arthur smiled back, “There are many interesting things in this world, this is just one of them. I told you, even His Majesty, the King of Britain, is not as weak as you think. It’s just that in Britain, the King and our Cabinet have gradually formed a delicate balance over the past half-century, so they’re usually reluctant to use their power.”

Louis opened the window and took a deep breath, “Arthur, I always learn something from every conversation with you. But let’s not talk about this anymore. You promised Faraday a paper when you borrowed the performance equipment from him at the Royal Society. How’s that going? I’m planning to go there today, should I take it along for you?”

(End of Chapter)