Conflicts and Consequences

Europe is at war with Napoleon, while Britain stands aloof behind an unassailable navy. Social unrest is exacerbated by the unpopular government’s imposition of naval blockades and slave trade abolition law on neutral states, causing economic distress and anger among merchants and shipowners. We are there in the Cabinet Room, with Wellington’s army in Portugal and at a reunion of religious abolitionists. We watch Lucas, the son of a well-connected wine merchant with connections in Porto, as he leaves school, shuns Oxford, falls in love and joins Wellington’s army in Portugal. Wounded, he convalesces with the family of a Portuguese comrade, whose sister he marries before returning to England to join the family firm. He moves to Liverpool, from where he reports to the Home Secretary on a trader, whose bitterness about the Government’s indifference towards his claim for compensation, leads to the Prime Minister’s assassination. Lucas’s activities are discovered.