Recaps

Joseph maneuvered to end tax farming, expose its abuses, and build a replacement trade network despite the Guild’s attacks and obstruction. The Tax Bureau arrested nearly a thousand Tax Farmers and accomplices, and Joseph ordered their trials to begin.

• Styler won London’s gas streetlight contract for Lightning Coal Company and delayed construction while arranging subcontractors.
• Tipu Sultan secured a ceasefire with England while agreeing to territorial and alliance terms with Hyderabad and Carnatic.
• The Tax Farmers Guild resisted Joseph’s reforms, but Tax Bureau officials fought off attacks and Joseph exposed Charles’s financial support for rebels.
• Corsica’s Parliament stripped Paoli of his citizenship and outlawed the National Guard, which Napoleon defeated after landing with French troops.
• Gordmide revealed that the Guild had hidden forged tax records, and Joseph’s agents seized them and arrested the Tax Farm Office heads.
• Joseph confronted the Count of Artois over his support for the Guild and mobilized officials and merchants to counter its planned disruption of trade.
• Citizens appealed past taxes, and Robespierre brought Joseph reports of abuses that prompted Joseph to order arrests, sentences, and executions of guilty Tax Farmers.
• Shawn Met arrested Boka amid armed resistance, officials arrested Lecornu and other Tax Farmers, and Joseph ordered the trials to begin.

Joseph crushed the Tax Farmers, redirected their wealth, and advanced new weapons and vocational schools while Napoleon tightened control over Corsica. Britain’s leaders began shaping a strategy to counter France, and Baron Corsepé discovered that his new appointment was only auxiliary.

• Judge Fusne sentenced Boka to death, and Joseph’s crackdown exposed the scale of the Tax Farmers’ crimes as magnates blamed the royal family and considered fleeing.
• Gerard Bona brought Marie’s wine into the French Trade Alliance, while a police operation broke the Marseille dock strike and Joseph pursued the Tax Farmers’ conspirators.
• Joseph rejected special treatment for noble prisoners and oversaw the executions, then helped Guillotin and Louis XVI develop the Guillotine and the August 1790 Rifled Gun.
• Joseph arranged a settlement that forced the Tax Farmers to pay heavy fines, while Harper and Vankiewicz escaped to Britain and Borolei’s conviction exposed a smuggling ring.
• Crowds celebrated the Tax Farmers’ downfall as Napoleon arrested Corsican legislators, imposed martial law, and helped secure election victories for his allies.
• Joseph reprimanded Napoleon but kept him in command of the Corsican garrison, while Britain’s Pitt the Younger and Wellesley began planning a response to France’s industrial and military growth.
• Grenville and Wellesley proposed drawing Prussia and Austria into conflict with France over Poland and the Southern Netherlands, and the British Cabinet considered their plan.
• Pitt requested Henry Harper’s advice on France’s vulnerabilities, while Baron Corsepé learned his appointment carried the lesser title of Auxiliary Administrative.

Joseph introduced the Value-Added Tax, then uncovered a British-backed fraud targeting French factories and secured compensation for the losses. As Britain pursued new alliances and unrest in Saint-Domingue, Joseph recognized Franz Achard’s sugar-beet research as a way to prepare France for a possible wartime loss of Caribbean sugar.

• Barnel explained how abolishing Rouen’s entry taxes could expand trade, while Chaban evaded local taxes and saw merchants resisting tax officers.
• After national revenue fell amid tax evasion, Joseph proposed the Value-Added Tax, using numbered invoices, reimbursement rules, and an invoice lottery to track transactions.
• Grenville and the Duke of Leeds arranged British-backed French orders through Austrian merchants, while Joseph prepared to expand France’s military, industrial, and diplomatic strength.
• Joseph ordered an investigation into suspicious foreign orders, and Mesmer and Calonne traced the scheme to Austrian merchants connected to Klester.
• Joseph used completed French goods and discounted sales to pressure the fraudulent buyers, but Graz and Klester fled Vienna and Klester was murdered after the scheme collapsed.
• Versailles arranged compensation for affected factories and promised increased investment and tax relief for businesses that had reduced production.
• Grenville urged the Duke of Leeds to draw the United States away from France and fund an uprising in Saint-Domingue, while the Duke proposed assassinating Vincent Auge and blaming France.
• After Joseph learned that Franz Achard had developed sugar beets with more than eight percent sugar content, he brought Achard in and asked him to breed a twelve-percent variety.

Joseph advanced sugar beet breeding, promoted French goods abroad, and expanded France’s gas and steam-powered naval projects. As Austria and Prussia made peace, he backed Poland’s preparations and reforms, while Stanisław II courted Catherine II and Prince Poniatowski maneuvered to secure the Great Sejm’s constitutional convention.

• Joseph taught Achard about heredity, and Achard began breeding sugar beets while learning Marian had chosen Bourget and Ariel had become his fiancée.
• Joseph funded Achard’s research and promoted sugar beet cultivation, then refused to send troops to Saint-Domingue and sent Brisot to pursue his alternative plan.
• Calonne and Mesmer raised funds for Lightning Company through gas-lamp sales and bonds, while Kaunitz resigned and Tugut negotiated an Austro-Prussian ceasefire.
• Joseph developed plans for steam-powered frigates, a naval training camp, and government-assisted smuggling, then sent Sieyès to help Poland prepare for possible war.
• Sieyès urged Stanisław II and Prince Poniatowski to strengthen Poland’s defenses, while Joseph sent LJ52 engines that drained the flooded Tarnowskie Góry silver mine.
• Prince Poniatowski used the mine’s expected revenue to support military expansion, and Kościuszko led Polish troops into Slavonia as Stanisław II traveled to cultivate Catherine II’s favor.
• Prince Poniatowski shaped constitutional proposals to win conservative support, and the Great Sejm convention began amid a concealed assassination and Count Branicki’s delayed arrival.