Dislocated to Success by Iain Bowen Read Free Book Online

questions. He seemed rather pleased about at least a partial Conversion of England, but he did say that our lack of eius regio eius religio would cause problems to other states. I countered with Electoral Saxony, and he said that they did not have tolerance, but an unusual situation - the effects of which might not be determined for many years.
     
    Fleury was, as far as we were concerned, an entirely rational actor and a long-term thinker.  With the two exceptions of Jansenism and Lorraine, on which he is clouded by emotions, he has otherwise taken everything on its merits and assessed in in a very cool and collected manner. Unfortunately, sometimes he has been overruled by the King or by collections of powerful magnates and there was a considerable period when he was out of favour and did not act as the primus inter pares of France. The Lorraine compromise of the Treaty of Birmingham [33] has satisfied neither side, and may well lead to further problems in a decade or two. Philibert Orry, his finance minister, was another such exemplar of rationalism; and whilst I doubt if Orry will ever rise to be primus inter pares , he is virtually irreplaceable as finance minister - possibly because no one else fully understands his investment and taxation policies. Fleury’s sheer pragmatism, and his ability to discard his self and place the long term duty to France to the fore, is impressive and he has served France well. This was why Margaret Thatcher decided he was “ A man we could do business with” - and she was right about, that particularly with regards to affairs in North America.
     
    Our session, which lasted a couple of hours, did not lead to anything concrete. We simply introduced ourselves and stated what treaties we felt we were bound by. Fleury was amused that so many provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht had lasted until 1980, and that we wanted trade, primarily in foodstuffs, and that we were willing to make all sorts of interesting items available. He did, of course, ask the question about our military; I just smiled and pointed out that 250 years’ progress which included horseless carriages, aircraft and men on the moon obviously meant significant progress in military science. He smiled very thinly at that; I was not one to try and force the issue, although some people did need it explaining that we possessed an immense amount of unstoppable force. He had an excellent poker face, only looking very surprised when I said we were 55 million in population. The one thing that surprised us was when he asked for a trip in the Land Rover, so we drove him around Versailles as the light faded to his delight. He did ask us if we needed to stay, but we demonstrated the lights on the vehicle. It was no surprise that he became one of the first users of a motorised vehicle outside of the UK, although due to his age he did mainly use a chauffeur except when driving around Versailles.
     
    My return to the UK was the next morning, and I took a list of items that were required in addition to make the new Embassy function properly. I also took some notes on what should be supplied to embassies, including a suggestion of an increased number of “guards”. Quite large crowds had gathered outside of the embassy at a couple of points, and we had not considered the possibilities of the mob. I will admit, I looked forward to my 24 hours’ quarantine on return as a chance for some peace and quiet; sadly, I had forgotten that the telephone would not be in quarantine as well - the calls were fairly constant, as were the red boxes.
     
    In fact, I didn’t really understand the amount of trouble we were actually having. It was that second weekend that the clampdown started, after the problems with the Hungarians trying to leave the UK without permission and with a number of other groups who had become restless; the fact that the entire staff of the Vietnamese embassy had done a bunk - and only turned up in the East End about 18 months