Chapter 189: Declaring War on the Catastrophe (Please Subscribe)

Afterward, Charles hurried to the Palace of Versailles, where he was received by the assistant to the French Naval Minister and was given a small commendation ceremony, along with a reward of 500 livres.

Charles indeed deserved such recognition—without the pirate intelligence he had purchased from the smugglers, the Combined Fleet might still be blindly searching the vast Mediterranean.

However, after the ceremony, a French official informed him that there had been a change of plan regarding his scheduled testimony at the public trial of the pirates; he now needed to return immediately to Algiers to help the French "diplomats" make contact with Pasha Eunice.

...

Bourges, in the north-central part of France, is an extremely impoverished area, and Labourn Parish is one of its poorest villages.

Sharecropper Alberic sat on a wooden barrel, inhaling the dry, hot air, his face showing a look of utter despair in front of the cracked earth.