Just when the struggle in Paris was about to enter a white-hot stage, in Toulon, Joseph had just given himself a day off and took his mother and all his younger brothers and sisters to fish in the Fortress of Malgrave to celebrate the family reunion a few days ago. Napoleon had just sent someone to pick up Louis from Paris.

After punishing Lucien last time, Joseph was quite satisfied with his prestige among his brothers. But he also felt keenly that the distance between his brothers and sisters seemed to be a little further.

This is a very easy situation. As the saying goes, "The cute ones do not have to be respectable, and the fearless ones are no longer friendly. It is not difficult to cause or be both in fact." But if the elder brothers are only "respected and awesome" in the eyes of the brothers, then it is difficult to guarantee that there will be no rift in the future. Therefore, in order to rebuild his image of "lovely and awesome" in everyone's hearts, Joseph took the time to arrange this event.

Of course, according to Joseph's habit, this kind of thing is of course necessary to be used for public welfare. Therefore, although this event is read as a family gathering, it is written as "technical experiment" in many places in order to reimburse some reimbursement expenses.

Of course, the content of the experiment cannot be written as fishing and grilling fish, but must be written as "the navigation state of high-speed communication ships at low speeds and related experiments to strengthen their self-sustaining capabilities at sea."

When we see the name of this experiment, we know that this family gathering will be held on this newly built small boat of only 100 tons. This small boat, which is also painted gray-blue, looks particularly short from a distance because it has two hulls, but in fact, the two hulls, and the gap between the hulls, are also laid with decks, so at least the deck space is quite spacious. If you look down from a high place, the square deck of this boat has a bit of a raft.

But this boat is much more expensive than a raft. Even larger "black pearls" are expensive...

For example, connecting two large buoys under the water surface and supporting the structural parts of the entire hull, in order to ensure their strength and resistance to seawater corrosion, they are all made of bronze. It costs a lot of money to open molds and cast. As for buoys, each buoy is made of three thick light wood. Light wood is the lightest wood in the world, and the density is half that of the cork we usually use to make water bottle plugs. Moreover, the wood is balanced and has good corrosion resistance. It can provide considerable buoyancy.

Light wood itself is not precious, but this thing is a product of South America. The French have no inventory. So they can only smuggle in from the Spanish by smuggling. Even the Spanish usually only have light wood boards sawed into wooden boards, and the finished clumps are thick, and dry light wood is difficult to find. As a result, the black-hearted smuggling merchants sold the light wood to the price of Brazilian mahogany. Then they wrapped a layer with copper leather to reduce resistance, which increased the cost.

There are also boat boards and so on. Joseph can use it as good as he can, even if it can only bring a slight improvement in performance. Joseph doesn't care about the cost of the ship, anyway, he doesn't use his own money.

The family got on the boat, and the boat spread its sails, as fast as an arrow.

"How fast can this ship run?" Napoleon asked.

"Above the fifteenth quarter." Joseph replied, "It is faster than any other ship now. At sea, no ship can catch up with us. Moreover, the control of this ship is relatively simple, and only two people can control it, and even one person cannot control it. In addition, have you noticed it? Although this ship is not big, it is more stable than many much larger ships."

As the two chatted, the boat sailed into the bay below the Malgrave Fortress. Lucien volunteered to help put away the sails and watched the sailors get anchored. Then everyone took out the fishing rod and started fishing. Well, this is the so-called "an experiment to strengthen the ability of self-sustaining at sea."

Napoleon was not thinking about fishing. He randomly put a small piece of sardine on the hook, then threw the bait into the sea, and said to Joseph: "Joseph, something seems to be wrong in Paris recently."

The situation in Paris is indeed not right. As for the news they have received now, Robespierre first joined forces with Danton to kill Eber and the others who were infuriated; then turned around and killed Danton and the others. Then he started a lot of extreme economic policies, and some actions were even more extreme than Eber and the others.

"It's wrong," said Joseph. "Theoretically, our 'uncorrosive person' is about to go to destruction. Napoleon, you know, there is a saying that 'God wants to destroy it, he must first make it crazy'. Then do you know why he is crazy?"

"Why?" asked Napoleon.

"Because he has no way out," Joseph smiled, "He killed Eber, lost the support of the trouserless man, he killed Dandong, lost the support of the merchants and the factory owners, and now he can only rely on terror itself to maintain his rule. So he has to go crazy, because he is full of enemies everywhere, and his eyes are full of hatred. If he shows even a little bit of weakness, those people will rush up and tear him to pieces. With his current madness, he will not live long; but if he is not crazy now, he may not even live today."

"Then why don't you go back to Paris? You will have huge political benefits when you go back at this time." Napoleon asked.

But before Joseph answered, he smiled himself: "Ah, Joseph, I forgot that you are not me. If it were me, I would definitely go back at this time. You... you are not willing to take any risks at all."

"It's not the time to go back." Joseph shook his head, "This is not a question of whether to take risks, but a question of whether the risk and the return are not proportional. Napoleon, first of all, we must admit that Robespierre is indeed a very powerful guy. I think you shouldn't object to this, right?"

Napoleon did not make any sound.

"The reason why amazing guys are great is that they are good at using the resources in their hands, even with extremely limited resources to create miracles." Joseph continued, "What is Robespierre going crazy now? The economic resources he can mobilize are not enough to support his policies. He is doing this now in a hurry to buy the bottom, but his policies are unsustainable, which means he will soon face the problem of economic resources exhaustion. Without money, there is no money, just like if the math problems cannot be solved, it is just that he cannot do it. He will definitely take a large-scale adventure before the capital chain breaks and try to start another big purge. If he can really succeed, the resources obtained by the big purge will be enough to support him for a while. So it is very risky to go to Paris at this time."

"What about the small profit?" asked Napoleon.

"I don't understand yet?" Joseph raised his eyebrows. "When you went to Paris at this time, can you become the person who has made the most contribution to overthrowing him? Do you have enough resources to control this government with internal and external troubles? You don't have it. Since that's the case, you are in a hurry to run over and have sex? Do you still remember Napoleon? I told you that we don't need to take sides. A truly powerful person never needs to take sides, because wherever he stands, he is a team. Now that person has reached the end of his journey, but who can replace him, is there any amazing person?"

"Haha..." Napoleon just laughed twice and said nothing, but his attitude was already very obvious.

"Then don't worry," said Joseph. "Even if these people win, they will definitely not be able to control the current situation. We just need to wait and wait for France to need a real hero."

"Okay." said Napoleon, "What if Robespierre wins?"

"If? Let's first see if you can control the army. If you are as incompetent as Dimurier, then we can only use this boat to escape to the New World. But don't worry, with your brother, I will have food wherever I go."

"Ph!" said Napoleon.

At this time, the bell on the fishing rod beside Joseph suddenly rang.

"A fish is on the hook!" said Joseph.

...

In Paris, the situation has reached its most critical moment. Just a day ago, a man attacked Kudong with a pistol. However, the gunman's shooting skills were really not very good. He failed to hit Kudong even if he fired two shots. The people around him reacted and surrounded him, and then the man swallowed the poison and committed suicide.

This unsuccessful assassin caused a stir. First, the identity of the assassin was confirmed. He was a subordinate of Ebert in the past, and when he shot at Cudong, he shouted: "Kill the tyrant's lackey and avenge Ebert!"

Robespierre has been working hard these days to try to win over the trouserless man, but this assassination has torn apart the wound that looks healed again.

Robespierre realized that if he pursued this matter, it would destroy his ongoing efforts to repair his relationship with the trousers. But if he did not pursue it, it would obviously make people feel weak and, therefore, inspired his enemies and dared to unite and fight against themselves. Therefore, he fell into a dilemma. However, after deep thinking, Robespierre decided that he must investigate the matter.

This is because his current status is completely dependent on people's fear of him, or, "terror becomes a means of protecting oneself, thus becoming a ridiculous thing." (Engels) Any practice that weakens horror is weakening his status.

Secondly, he also realized that if the remaining Eberites could not be eliminated, his plan to win over the trouserless man would be difficult to succeed.

At the same time, the sharply declining quantity of material reserves began to sound a wake-up call for him. In order to please the trousers without condoms, the price of food that had risen was forced to suppress again, and the behavior of mixing chalk, talc and wood chips into the flour was also stopped. The behavior of selling grain to neutral countries in exchange for some necessary materials was also stopped, but the grain inventory in Paris was still falling rapidly.

But on the other hand, the food sent to Paris from other regions is rapidly decreasing. Some central changes have reduced their control over other provinces, and the intentional passive slackness of some people has exacerbated this problem. Therefore, it is difficult for Paris to continue to support Robespierre's policy now.

If it were a few months ago, Robespierre could have sent special commissioners to other provinces to crack down on passive slack work and supervise the recruitment of food. But at this time, he could not do so. Because at this time, there were very limited people he could still trust. Sending these people would reduce his control over the situation in Paris.

However, he also knew that letting such a phenomenon continue will only lead to his demise. In this situation, he had to take risks.

In early June, under the arrangement of Robespierre, Kudong submitted a so-called document to the National Assembly called the "Punishment of the Enemy of Revolution" to the National Assembly. This bill further simplified the trial process of the Revolutionary Court, abolished the defense lawyer, and stipulated that the court would no longer require evidence from human and physical evidence. The court could use the method of free evidence and only need to infer from common sense to sentence the prisoner. At the same time, the punishment was also simplified, and the Revolutionary Court would only make two kinds of judgments: acquittal or death penalty.

The National Assembly trembled with the will of Robespierre and passed the bill. Even Carno, who is now the most unruly in front of Robespierre, did not oppose this obviously unreasonable bill. Because Fouche had greeted him in advance, that is: "The moment that everyone is looking forward to is coming."

As soon as the bill was promulgated, it immediately caused tension, and the entire National Assembly was panicked. Everyone knew that Robespierre was preparing for another major purge, and everyone could see from this murderous bill that the number of heads Robespierre was going to cut off this time was probably much higher than the previous few times.

Moreover, this bill caused controversy in Robespierre's own team. For this bill, Saint Just had a fierce quarrel with Robespierre for the first time. It is said that after this quarrel, Robespierre returned to his residence and said to his landlord, "I have no one to believe except you."

The Punishment of the Revolutionary Enemies Act is certainly not for fun. Robespierre had to destroy all enemies who might oppose him before the food supply in Paris collapsed completely. So the guillotine began to run wildly, and on average, it would cut off the heads of eighteen to twenty people every day.

Among these people are businessmen, small workshop owners, and even many of the lower classes because they are suspected to be related to the assassination.

During these days, Fouche was not idle either. He disguised himself, constantly contacting the members of the parliament and told them: "Your name is on the next list!" Sometimes, he even deliberately took some traces so that the people of Robespierre could know who he might have met.
Chapter completed!