After thinking for about a minute, the League of Orthodoxy's representative signed the document and stamped it with the seal symbolizing the League's supreme authority.
Upon returning to Lucerne, the representative had handed all his powers over to Constantine Siegwart, who was then the Secretary of State.
A month later, Free League tax officials began entering the League of Orthodoxy's cantons to take over their tax affairs.
Only then did the cantons of the League of Orthodoxy discover that their state representative had actually sold their fiscal authority to the enemy.
By the time the furious people began searching everywhere for the representative, he had already made it to the United States and settled into a wealthy, leisurely life.
Naturally, the money had come from the League's reserve funds. Half the funds raised for the war had been taken outright.
To avoid alerting the banks, the representative had gone out of his way to hire a French black-market dealer to help him. The middleman's fee alone had come to nearly a million Swiss francs.
This incident had thrown the League of Orthodoxy into a difficult position. Fortunately, only the state representative himself had signed the document; none of the cantons had approved it.
Since fiscal authority affected the livelihoods of the cantons, it was not something they would give up easily. The Free League tax officials were therefore turned away, and not a single canton in the League of Orthodoxy was willing to relinquish its fiscal authority.
This situation could not go on forever. The League of Orthodoxy proposed resolving the matter through negotiations, but the Free League clearly had no interest in talking. Just as the former thought the stalemate would continue, the latter issued an ultimatum.
"If the two sides cannot reach an agreement, the Confederation will declare