Chapter Summaries

The Royal Guard Legion shattered the Albanian Army with disciplined volleys, a bayonet charge, and a cavalry pursuit. As Albanian troops fled, Lefebvre and Anatole’s companies moved ahead to block the retreat of one large group.

• Semiz watched the Albanian cavalry break under French volleys and cannon fire as the Royal Guard Legion advanced on the disordered army.
• The Royal Guard Legion’s rolling volleys and Lefebvre’s and Anatole’s flanking attacks drove the Albanian front into collapse, prompting Semiz to order a retreat.
• Joseph suggested that the two skirmisher companies cut off the enemy’s escape, while Berthier ordered a bayonet charge and prepared the cavalry to pursue.
• The Royal Guard Legion charged the Albanian line, while Lefebvre chose to lead his company west to block the retreat instead of chasing the fleeing troops.
• Fates’s reserve briefly resisted the French advance, but Davout and the Police Academy Students charged them and broke their rear guard.
• The French cavalry pursued the routed Albanians, while Lefebvre and Anatole’s companies formed a line on a hill ahead of a large fleeing group.

Joseph's forces defeated the Albanian Mercenaries, and he promoted François Lefebvre for his command in battle. After learning that Doctor Perna had prevented a dysentery outbreak by having soldiers drink heated water, Joseph asked her to establish a Battlefield Hospital and train nurses.

• Lefebvre's 220 soldiers held back thousands of fleeing Albanian Mercenaries until Police Academy Students arrived and captured them.
• Berthier reported that the army had captured over 3,000 more enemy troops in the west, and Joseph promoted François Lefebvre to Major.
• Joseph honored the fallen Royal Guard Legion soldiers, whose army and the Police Academy Students had suffered eighty-nine dead and seventy seriously wounded.
• Andre arrived late and explained that dysentery had reduced the Moulins Legion to fewer than 2,600 men after its wine supplies ran out.
• Perna explained that she had required the Royal Guard Legion to drink heated water, helping prevent a similar dysentery outbreak.
• Joseph asked Perna to establish a Battlefield Hospital and create the profession of nurses.

Joseph introduced Perna to battlefield sanitation and nursing, and she began putting his instructions into practice. The Royal Guard Legion then drew the Algiers Guard Corps into battle, where French troops broke the Algerian defenses and Andre ordered his line forward.

• Joseph explained to Perna how bacteria caused wound infections and prescribed boiling medical supplies, washing hands, and disinfecting wounds with strong alcohol.
• Joseph asked Perna to establish a Battlefield Hospital, train nurses, and write a sanitation manual; she immediately boiled bandages and stretcher sheets and used the strongest alcohol she could find.
• After scouts reported that the Algiers Guard Corps was nearby, Lefebvre proposed threatening Annaba to draw the enemy away, and the French commanders adopted the plan.
• When Kehler learned the French were marching north, he turned his army toward Annaba and attacked the Moulins Legion after encountering its rearguard.
• The Royal Guard Legion struck the Algerians from the flank and rear, routed Kehler's forces, and drove an Algerian officer to flee; Andre then ordered his troops to advance.

After the French Army defeated the Algiers invasion, Tunis’s leaders and crowds pushed to join France, and Haji agreed to petition the French king to make Tunis a province. In France, Joseph rewarded soldiers for the victory while continuing his search for Napoleon.

• The French Army ambushed and forced the Algiers Guard Corps to surrender, and Joseph arranged for prisoners to be displayed in Tunisian cities.
• Joseph awarded medals and promotions to soldiers who had distinguished themselves at Annaba, while the troops celebrated their honors.
• Hilada presented Haji with a petition calling for Tunis to join France, and Haji agreed to ask the French king to accept Tunis as a province.
• Tunisian officials held a trial for the Algiers prisoners and sentenced the invaders to hanging amid cheers from the crowd.
• Joanne learned that Tunis would petition to join France and began arranging a welcome for Joseph’s return.
• Joseph continued trying to locate Napoleon, while the Marquis of Saint-Viran regretted missing the chance to earn credit for the victory.

Joseph returned to Versailles after securing Tunis for France, where the royal family celebrated the annexation and honored the North African campaign. As royal prestige rose, military aristocrats plotted to curb the Crown Prince’s influence, while news of Tunis’s break from the Ottoman Empire deepened Ottoman despair amid its war with Russia.

• Joseph arrived at Versailles to cheers, and Hilada presented Louis XVI with Haji Bey’s petition for Tunis to join France.
• Louis XVI accepted Tunis’s loyalty, and Queen Mary presided over the formal incorporation of the territory as Bizerte, Susa, Kairouan, and Sfax Provinces.
• Queen Mary honored Joseph and the North African campaign’s participants, while Joseph prompted her to promote Berthier to Brigadier General.
• At the Tunisian-themed celebration ball, General Astu and other military aristocrats plotted to place Berthier’s troops under a senior commander and restore Major General Villars’s influence over the Moulins Legion.
• In Kostantiniyye, news that Tunis had left the Ottoman Empire compounded public despair over the Empire’s worsening war against Russia.

After France secured Tunis, European rulers assessed the shifting balance of power while the Ottoman Empire prepared for war against Russia. The chapter ended with Catherine II sending Alexei to Paris with Sasha, as Ottoman morale weakened and England considered how to counter France.

• Hamid I learned that Russia and Austria were reinforcing their forces and ordered the Ottoman army to prepare for a campaign while seeking to keep its strength focused on Russia.
• The Duke of Leeds urged Pitt the Younger to undermine France by exploiting tensions among Prussia, Austria, and Russia, but Pitt refused to accept his resignation over the loss of Tunis.
• Joseph II praised Marie Antoinette's successful seizure of Tunis, and Kaunitz advised Austria to focus on Prussia rather than Italy.
• Catherine II discussed the Gemini Trading Company's prospects with Alexei and asked him to travel to Paris with Sasha.
• Potemkin captured Ochakov, while the Ottoman Empire's resolve to fight Russia weakened after losing Tunis.

Joseph recounted his North African campaign to the royal family, while Queen Mary admired his courage and accomplishments. The next morning, he reviewed reports showing severe famine across Europe and a worsening grain shortage in France, then read Talleyrand’s report on France’s protest to Britain.

• Joseph told Louis XVI, Queen Mary, Clementine, and Charles how he had gained local support in Tunis and defeated the Algerian army near Annaba.
• The family praised Joseph’s campaign, and Charles protected the talking parrot from Mr. Mustache while he and Clementine squabbled over it.
• Joseph returned to his office and reviewed reports showing that France’s harvest had fallen by 27 percent and grain reserves might last only until March.
• Joseph read reports of famine and riots across Europe and concluded that other countries’ food shortages could lead to war.
• Joseph opened Talleyrand’s report on France’s formal protest against Britain for allegedly inciting the Tunisian Guard Corps to attack French people.

Joseph investigated the rushed executions of the Maletdu Brothers and uncovered a cover-up involving Count Monod, his son Anthony, and the High Court. After ordering Judge Croix detained and arranging for the case to be exposed, Joseph left the story poised for a major political scandal.

• Soleil asked Joseph to save the Maletdu Brothers, who had been sentenced to execution for setting fires at Viscount Amboise’s villa while rescuing Celine.
• Joseph questioned Dibore and Judge Croix at the High Court, learned that Croix had accepted 30,000 livres from Count Monod, and ordered Croix taken into custody.
• Joseph sent Fouche to investigate Monod and learned that Celine and her family had been murdered after leaving Paris, while Monod had helped conceal the case and rush the brothers’ execution.
• Joseph ordered Monod’s family watched and decided to expose the case through Danton or the Royal Supreme Court rather than act against Monod immediately.
• The next day, newspapers across Paris reported that Anthony was suspected of involvement in the arson case and had been summoned, causing the city to erupt in alarm.

The Duke of Orléans used the arson case involving Anthony to isolate Mono and persuade him to join a plot against the royal family. Mono agreed to help seize the royal family's Scepter in exchange for saving his son and becoming Chief Minister in a new government.

• The Police Department and newspapers received evidence that Anthony had ordered the arson and that Mono had arranged to blame the Maletdu Brothers.
• After the Queen, the Crown Prince, and the Chief Minister refused to receive him, Mono met the Duke of Orléans, who offered to save Anthony in exchange for one million Livre and support for his plot.
• The Duke of Orléans proposed making France chaotic by destroying strategic Grain Reserves and exploiting discontent among officers and nobles.
• Mono pointed to mill owners losing their Mill Tax and nobles hurt by the Tunis immigration policy as potential allies against the royal family.
• Mono pledged loyalty to the Duke of Orléans and asked for the Chief Minister position in the new Cabinet, which the Duke promised him.

The Duke of Orléans rallied nobles hurt by royal reforms to pressure the royal family, while Queen Mary ordered punishment for the corrupt Marquis of Saint-Viran. The nobles and Saint-Viran prepared to resist as grain transfers to Montpellier continued.

• The Duke of Orléans wrote secret letters to Galon Ginard de Le Verber and Parmontier, then compiled a list of nobles harmed by the Mill Owner's Rights Act and falling land prices.
• At a dog racing track, the Duke of Orléans united Assembly of Notables members against the royal family and urged them to return to their estates while other forces helped apply pressure.
• Queen Mary received Galon Ginard de Le Verber's accusations against the Marquis of Saint-Viran and ordered him to reduce his legion, return embezzled funds, and forfeit half a year's annuity.
• The Marquis of Saint-Viran learned that food shortages were appearing in Montpellier and that his nephew's legion was ready to fight, then vowed revenge on Queen Mary.
• Grain Reserves across southern France sent large shipments toward Montpellier, while Grenoble prepared to receive replacement grain from Nice.

The Duke of Orléans warned France’s military leaders that the Royal Family’s growing army and promotion system threatened their power, then urged coordinated unrest as famine approached. Meanwhile, Soleil and the Brotherhood tried to break the Maletdu Brothers out of the Bastille to gain their trust, but guards ambushed them and Fouche arrested them.

• The Duke of Orléans told the officers that the Royal Family controlled more than thirteen thousand soldiers and could soon gain a powerful army.
• The Duke of Orléans explained that the Royal Family promoted commoners by merit, angering the officers, and called for regions to stir up trouble as famine loomed.
• Soleil and the Brotherhood disguised themselves as prison-breakers and infiltrated the Bastille to reach the Maletdu Brothers.
• Thunderstone began smashing the brothers’ cell lock, but guards emerged from an ambush and Soleil’s group fought them.
• Fouche interrogated Soleil, learned that the brothers’ boss might be a duke, and ordered the group locked up.

Duke of Orléans’s agents provoked starving people in Nice and Montpellier into looting after France’s grain reserves were emptied, while Soleil uncovered evidence that Orléans had taken every document from his offices. Joseph connected the food transfers to Orléans’s conspiracy and ordered an investigation, but Mono had already disappeared.

• Duke of Orléans’s spy Three Moles paid Scarface and the Howell gang to incite unrest in Nice, where starving citizens emptied the Grain Reserve and looted food across the city.
• Duke of Orléans’s agents stirred up similar riots in Montpellier as grain shortages spread through central and southern France.
• Soleil infiltrated the Royal Palace and Duke of Orléans’s study, found their documents and archives missing, and told Joseph that she suspected the duke was behind the plot involving the Maletdu Brothers and Mono.
• Joseph questioned Fouche about Mono’s grain transfers and ordered him to find the transfer orders and investigate others who had traveled south.
• Joseph discovered Mono’s chaotic transfer orders and learned that Mono had vanished, leading him to realize that Orléans’s scheme threatened all of France.

Joseph recognized that the riots stemmed from grain shortages and devised a plan to use church reserves while taking control of the crisis. With the Queen and King’s approval, he gained authority to act, removed Vergennes from the Cabinet, and offered Talleyrand the vacant foreign-affairs post.

• Brienne reported widespread food riots and presented the Duke of Mouchy’s demands, which sought to restore noble and military power.
• Joseph calculated the forces he could mobilize, then realized that distributing the Catholic Church’s hoarded grain could stabilize the provinces without relying solely on troops.
• Joseph asked the Queen and Louis XVI for full authority to handle the riots, and Brienne, Mirabeau, Baron de Breteuil, and others supported him.
• After receiving authority to issue royal edicts, Joseph dismissed Vergennes, ordered measures to suppress the riots, and ended the Cabinet meeting.
• Joseph offered Talleyrand the vacant position of Minister of Foreign Affairs and asked him for help with a favor.

Joseph used the bishops’ secret gathering and their hidden stores of Grain to secure food donations for the riot-stricken provinces, offering the church a chance to resume selling Indulgences in a new commercial form. The archbishops agreed to count the Grain as investment in a company with Joseph, leaving disaster relief and their proposed venture set to proceed.

• Talleyrand gave Joseph the names and meeting details of clerics who gathered in Montmartre, and Joseph went there instead of attending the Police Academy meeting.
• At the White Maple Forest estate, the clerics noticed identical cufflinks on their male servants and realized someone knew about their private gathering, prompting them to leave.
• Eman brought Archbishop Beaumont and other clerics to meet Joseph, who confronted them about the riots and demanded access to the church’s hoarded Grain.
• Joseph offered to let the church resume selling Indulgences if it donated enough Grain to feed the riot-stricken provinces for a month, then proposed selling cheap blessing vouchers through a joint company.
• Beaumont agreed that the church would count its Grain contribution as an investment in the proposed company.

Joseph prepared the church, intelligence service, and army for a response to the grain crisis and southern riots, while his new Military Affairs Department publicly honored soldiers’ families. He ended by ordering southern officers to Versailles and telling Brienne that the church would handle the riots.

• Joseph persuaded Beaumont and other archbishops to trade church grain for shares, promising them a future chance at the papal throne in Avignon.
• Joseph promised Fouche that the Police Intelligence Division could become a National Intelligence Department if it completed its mission, then arranged troop mobilization, new weapons, and a Military Affairs Department staffed from Les Invalides.
• The Military Affairs Department publicly honored Corporal Adrien’s family with a banner, medal certificate, and two hundred livres, prompting public admiration and a surge of interest in military service.
• Newspapers publicized the Royal Guard Legion’s Tunis veterans, and their families urged them to earn more medals.
• Joseph ordered Brienne to summon all mid- and high-ranking officers from the southern provinces to Versailles within a week on pain of being declared rebels, and said the church would resolve the riots.

Joseph ordered military officers to report to Versailles instead of declaring them rebels, disrupting Duke of Orléans’s plan to use the food riots to mobilize troops against the Royal Family. As the conspirators hesitated, church food distribution in Montpellier eased the hunger and drained support from the rioters.

• Brienne warned Joseph that charging the officers with Rebellion could alienate neutral nobles, so Joseph ordered the officers to report to Versailles and sent them personal letters.
• Joseph briefed Mirabeau, Bayei, and other Capitalist Aristocrats on his prepared document, then traveled to the Paris Legion’s garrison.
• Duke of Orléans told Marquis of Saint-Viran that he planned to use the riots to gather eighty thousand troops around Paris and force the Royal Family to concede power.
• A royal official delivered an order for officers of Major rank and above to report to Versailles, leaving Duke of Orléans and Marquis of Saint-Viran uncertain and unwilling to openly rebel.
• Duke of Orléans sent letters urging senior military figures to wait for the Royal Family to compromise.
• Starving residents in Montpellier heard that the Church was distributing food, received bread from the clerics, and praised the King, Queen, and Crown Prince, while the rioters failed to attract followers.

Prosper’s Police Intelligence Division tracked and arrested the organizers behind the southern French riots, while Marshal François decided to travel to Paris and declare his loyalty to the King. On January 24, 1789, Joseph continued marching south with the Royal Guard Legion as the army’s pace slowed beyond the wooden railway.

• Prosper followed the Corpse Gang, learned where its contact was staying, and led Police Intelligence Division and Secret Police officers to arrest two suspected riot organizers and seize money and riot plans.
• Prosper took control of the gang’s riot operation under the Night Fire Gang’s name and recruited the Corpse Gang members to help with a larger plan.
• Church clerics distributed grain across the southern provinces, easing the food shortage, while the Police Intelligence Division arrested many of the people organizing the riots.
• Marshal François discussed the southern unrest and the royal order recalling officers with his son, Charles Louis Victor, then decided they would go to Paris and inform Versailles Palace.
• Joseph rode with the Royal Guard Legion through Forez Province as the march slowed after the troops passed the completed section of wooden railway, while Andre struggled to keep the Moulins Legion in formation.

Joseph marched with the Royal Guard Legion while maneuvering to secure support from military nobles and prepare for a decisive move against the military conspiracy. Elsewhere, General Sill’s Paris Legion suppressed rioters, and Second Lieutenant Bonaparte led fifty men toward a much larger crowd near Valence.

• Joseph helped soldiers free a cannon from an ice pit, then Perna’s nursing company distributed boiled water to the marching troops.
• Eman read Archbishop Brienne’s letter reporting that Duke of Broglie had declared loyalty to the King and General Rossignol was heading to Paris.
• Joseph told Brienne to keep Broglie’s defection quiet and authorized him to offer Broglie the post of Minister of War.
• Berthier told Joseph the army was ninety-six kilometers from Montpellier and would meet the Montcalm Legion in three days.
• General Sill’s Paris Legion dispersed rioters in Moncontour, arrested 122 people, and prepared to march toward Ingrandes.
• Near Valence, Second Lieutenant Bonaparte urged his fifty soldiers to attack several hundred rioters and strode toward them with his sword drawn.

Second Lieutenant Bonaparte drove off a much larger mob with a bluff and a bayonet charge, while Joseph’s allies prepared reforms and Paris shaped the public story of the southern unrest. The chapter ended with Joseph promising a swift restoration of order near Montpellier as an armed group approached Earl of Serulier’s manor.

• Second Lieutenant Bonaparte used a false report of reinforcements to frighten rioters, then led his artillerymen in a bayonet charge that scattered them.
• Paris newspapers, with reports controlled by the News and Publication Bureau, portrayed the southern provinces as still engulfed in riots and praised the Crown Prince’s coming campaign.
• At Lady Able’s villa, Mirabeau presented Joseph’s proposed measures to abolish noble privileges and serfdom and reform land yields, winning support from the salon’s attendees.
• On January 27 in Montpellier, Joseph assured reporters and nobles that the Royal Guard Legion would quickly restore order in the southern provinces.
• A group of three or four hundred armed men quietly advanced toward Earl of Serulier’s manor.

Blanche led disguised agents in a staged riot against the Montcalm Legion at the Earl of Serulier's manor, but Marquis of Saint-Viran sent a much larger force than expected. The fleeing agents reached the woods, where concealed gunfire erupted against the pursuing soldiers.

• Blanche and the middle-aged agent led more than three hundred disguised agents toward the manor, where they hurled stones and then fired hidden guns at the guards.
• Marquis of Saint-Viran heard that the manor was under attack and ordered Major Bruen to disperse the rioters, then sent two regiments after they set the flax fields on fire.
• Blanche spotted the advancing force of more than three thousand soldiers and ordered his men to flee toward the woods and abandon their guns.
• Montcalm Legion cavalry caught and killed several fleeing agents before Blanche and the survivors reached the woods.
• Major Bruen sent three infantry companies into the woods, where concealed gunfire suddenly erupted.