In the middle of the northwest coastline of France, at the mouth of the lower Seine, the famous port of Le Havre, the outer port of Paris.

Le Havre is a coastal city in northern France, located in the north side of the mouth of the Seine River, one of the five major water systems in France, bordering the English Channel, is the second largest port in France, the largest port on the Atlantic coast, and the nearest large port from the French capital Paris.

Juan Carlos Gasol stood far away by a pier near the shipyard, occasionally looking out of the corner of his eye at a new slipway under construction in the distance.

He has been observing here for several months, and the port of Le Havre, one of the largest in France, connected to Paris inland by the Seine, is one of the largest and most prosperous ports in France, and is also the center of French shipbuilding.

It's just that this shipyard that Gasol observes, not only because the shipyard is building warships, but also because there are many oriental faces in this shipyard. They are clearly Chinese!

Britain noticed early on the Chinese who came to Heaven from China and then from the Mediterranean through the Ottomans into France.

They are technicians in Chinese shipyards!

Because before these people came to France, they had built a new steam shipyard in the Ottoman Golden Horn.

Today, the Ottomans are rampaging through the Mediterranean in paddle steamers with hybrid sails, like the battlecruisers of a hundred years later, and they can't catch up with it; Those who beat it can't catch up with it.

As long as they don't run into sail battleships above the third class, paddle steamers with hybrid sails will dare to provoke even fourth-class sail battleships.

Of course, in the long run there will be unlucky paddle steamers, the steam power has been broken or damaged by itself, and only one sail remains, thus being captured by the British. But not right now, right?

This paddle steamer with hybrid sails has been around for several years, but it is still mysterious, and for outsiders, there are countless secrets on it.

The shipyards in the Ottoman Golden Horn were controlled by the reformers themselves, and some information was almost transparent to the British, such as how many paddle steamers with hybrid sails and sails there were, how many guns did each ship have, what was the approximate speed, and how far could the voyage be? None of this is a secret to the British. Even the departure times and transport routes of some paddle steamers with the French were known to the British. It can only be said that Ottoman is rotten up and down.

As the maritime hegemon of Europe, the British have a certain courage in applying new technologies, and steam ships have not appeared in Britain, but they have not yet reached the situation of mass production. The speed is not as fast as China's sail hybrid steamers, as well as poor wind and wave resistance, unsolid hull structure, poor safety, poor durability and so on. Of course, the British would like to be able to get their hands on Chinese sailboats and learn from them.

If China could sell them ships, they would rather pay three times the price.

But such ships Chen Han just did not sell them to the British. The excuse is that the wind and waves are poor, and the sailing ship can not reach the UK. And the country urgently needs such ships!

Although he was told countless times by the British that he didn't mind, Chen Han just didn't give it. On the contrary, they hyped up in the newspapers the British self-built sailboats, and boasted that their performance was on a par with the Chinese paddle steamers, which deceived many of their own people.

This kind of sailing ship is rolling in the big bathtub of China's coastal waters and the South China Sea, and it does not go to North America, nor to the Strait of Malacca, or even to the Jinghai Sea. [Jinghai is the Andaman Islands] let the British have no two tongue handles, and the British can only make external moves.

Gasol was not Anglo-Saxon, he was a native of Barcelona in Spain, but now he worked for the British, and he was ostensibly a Spanish employee of a French trading house. But almost every day he would go to the dock next to the shipyard several times, and from time to time he would eat at the restaurant next to the dock or pass by the shipyard's door. Then, each time he was able to get a big gain, and when he returned home in the evening, he quietly recorded it in his diary.

His diary is now full of copies, and while much of the information is superficial observations of the shipyard, the educated Juan Carlos Gasol has also observed many of the shipyard's key aspects in detail.

Gasol handed over a lot of this information, but there were also some that he didn't.

In his line of work, you need to keep a hand in everything you do. And he made notes one by one, hoping to sell them a second time in the future.

Gasol didn't know if the information he handed in was of great use, and several of the items in his report were about the identity of the shipyard's technicians, not names, of course, but relatively realistic portraits and descriptions of age and body shape, and whether the British could find people on French territory was up to them. He didn't know if the British had already started to act. He doesn't care about that!

"Mr. Abifar......" Gasol expertly greeted a Frenchman. Outwardly, he was an employee of a French merchanthouse, and this dock was just one of many in Le Havre, which was small but had the same foreman and merchants.

Abifar was one of the largest foremen here. There are not only dozens of people under his hands, but also a cement warehouse. He is one of Gasol's business partners, and he has a good relationship with Abifar.

Since the summer of 1806, when the time entered the Western calendar, the atmosphere in Europe has become tense again. Franz II officially abdicated the throne of the Holy Roman Empire and became Emperor Franz I of Austria, ending the 850-year Holy Roman Empire. The small French-controlled states of southwestern Germany formed the Confederation of the Rhine under French protection, with Bavaria, Württemberg, Mainz, Baden, and eight small principalities participating.

This seriously threatened the interests of Prussia.

The Kingdom of Prussia, which had been out of the woods, had been pushed to the opposite side by Napoleon, who also put his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Naples and sent his third brother Louis Bonaparte as king of the Netherlands. These actions were unbearable for the European countries, and Napoleon also violated the Treaty of Fontainebleau with Spain and took advantage of the Spanish coup d'état to collude with Manuel Godoy to control all of Spain.

The whole of Europe was afraid, Napoleon's ambitions had been leaked, and he wanted to build a Napoleonic empire, which was intolerable to countless continental countries, and the balance of power on land and sea in Europe was once again broken.

Great Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and three of the four first-class powers tied with France sided with France, with the exception of Austria, which had been badly damaged in the last war. And then there's Sweden, a second-rate country! Although it cannot be said that this lineup must be stronger than the third anti-French alliance. But it is definitely comparable to the third anti-French alliance!

The Fourth Anti-French Coalition had not yet been formally established, but the clouds of war had already hung over the skies of Europe.

The most important point is that after winning the Battle of the Three Emperors, Napoleon came up with an unbelievable economic policy against Britain - the Continental Blockade Order.

The purpose of this was to keep the British Isles in lockdown. Napoleon's attempt to use violence to force Britain, which was far more economically powerful than France, to surrender in an economic war made the entire European continent bear huge sacrifices, violating the law of capitalist economic development, which harmed the interests of countless people, which made Napoleon have countless more enemies.

In a word, this year was a turning point in Napoleon's fate, a year in which he began his own path to death, and everything he did laid the groundwork for his final defeat.

If you don't die, you won't die, Napoleon is dying in tricks!

The foreshadowing of the Spanish War, the Continental Blockade Order, the contradictions with Russia......

The naval blockade of France by the British and the continental blockade by France against Britain made many ports in Europe seem quite idle, including Le Havre, the famous 'outer port of Paris', which is far from being compared with the Bourbon dynasty. Therefore, Abifar has a very close relationship with Gasol's firm.

Business partners in the 'economic crisis' must be close.

But today is destined to be a day that Gasol will remember vividly. While he and Abifar were chatting about merchant ships and business, one of Abifar's subordinates came to the dock with two French policemen with batons, pointed to a middle-aged painter who was very cleanly dressed but also very ordinary, and said: "Mr. Policeman, this is him!" I've been spotting him spinning around here for days on end! ”

"He wasn't interested in painting people to make money, but he was interested in the shipyards and the ships on trial. I've seen him painting ships a few times. The drawing is still very realistic! ”

Just as Juan Carlos Gasol was about to continue chatting with Abifar about business, and then turn the conversation to the shipyard next to him, this scene suddenly happened next to him. In a trance, a bucket of ice water was poured over his head, and the ice Gasol was piercing.

Abifar looked at the 'dumbfounded' Gasol, smiled nonchalantly, and patted Gasol on the shoulder: "Friend, don't be afraid. It's just a small episode in everyday life. ”

"As a Frenchman who loves his country, I want to contribute to my country."

Abifar spoke lightly, but in fact he was quite proud, and his face was full of glory, and it was obvious that he was in good spirits now.

The painter denied it, and opened his mouth to speak fluent Parisian dialect, Gasol had learned Parisian dialect, but he had spent more time in Le Havre, and his accent became more and more Le Havre.

He looked at the protagonist and the supporting character in front of him, the worker who reported to the police, he recognized, remembered that the name was Henry, a very ordinary French name, and he was also a very ordinary dock worker. I didn't expect him to be able to send one of his 'peers' to prison today.

Gasol has a feeling of 'biting dogs don't bark', which is so exciting.

Once a homeless man in Le Havre, Batum, now the police chief of Le Havre, narrowed his eyes and stared at the painter in front of him, with a grim smile on the corner of his mouth.

"Don't panic, sir, the police of the empire will not frame a good person. But we also don't let go of a bad guy. "This phrase comes from the East, and it began with 'the police of the republic'." Now please show your identification. "The ID card is also a new thing from China, and it has been in force in France for several years after Napoleon came to power.

Another little policeman walked over and blocked the painter's back path, one hand touching the baton on his waist. The painter froze, looking left and right at a loss, but Gasol knew that this time the painter had to make a trip to the police station.

If he's not a spy, that's fine; And if he were his own companion, Gasol felt that the painter would not be able to get out of the police station.

Batum grinned and pointed to the police badge on his chest, "Police, in charge of law and order, understand, sir?" Your actions have caused unease among the nearby workers, and I think I need you to visit the nearby police station. ”

A painter who speaks Parisian dialect has no deterrent power in Batum's eyes. On the contrary, it's okay. He now suspected that the painter in front of him was a member of the royal party.

Although the painter's dress is very undignified, and his face is a little depressed, his body is unusually clean and unusual, and he must be straightened. After Batum suspected that he was a member of the royal party in front of him, the more he looked at the painter, the more he tasted of aristocratic decay.

The painter was taken away very directly.

Because he was not only reported, but also suspected by Batum, the ID card he took out was also found to be fake by Batum. Because the ID card was issued in 1801, but it is so new.

"Mr. Painter from Paris, I suspect that your ID card is fake. You will need to come with me to the police station, where we will verify the authenticity of this ID card. Batum's hand touched the other side of his waist, and instead of a baton, a pistol hung there.

"God, it makes no sense!" The painter's cries were weak and timid, and Gasol was now almost certain that the artist was his peer.

This hapless fellow!

Gasol drew a cross on his chest. It looks like a prayer, but it's actually a surprise.

The artist is active in the docks, so would such a person know about him? Even if he didn't know Gasol's specific information, as long as he knew that there were their accomplices on the dock, it would be a huge threat to Gasol.

At this moment, Gasol thought of leaving. Fear was like a large, invisible hand that gripped Gasol's heart tightly. He had a strong sense of crisis.

He's getting out of here!