Chapter Summaries

Joseph’s Royal Guard Legion captured Ogechina Village after the Horse Artillery and Davout’s troops attacked from opposite sides. With Karl II’s army still assembling and its cannons unaccounted for, Karl II handed battle command to Sir Dill.

• Joseph ordered an immediate attack on Ogechina Village while Berthier worried that the Horse Artillery might have failed to stop Hanoverian reinforcements.
• Matthew Dibble reported that Major Lacoste’s Horse Artillery and the Dragoons had routed the reinforcements before moving on Ogechina Village.
• Lacoste’s guns battered the village from the north as Davout led Royal Guard Legion soldiers through a gap on the south side.
• The Royal Guard Legion captured the village, and Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt was brought before Joseph, who set his ransom at 800,000 livres.
• Karl II learned that Ogechina Village had fallen while his army remained scattered and its cannons were missing, so he gave Sir Dill full command.

Joseph’s forces routed the Hanoverians but Joseph ordered them to leave a route toward Brussels open for political reasons. Meanwhile, Mason spotted a small Hanoverian detachment and chose to turn his attention toward it instead of attacking the retreating Dutch.

• The Royal Guard cavalry captured more than eight hundred Hanoverians, sixteen cannons, and a large supply train.
• After French infantry broke through the Hanoverian line, Joseph ordered Berthier to preserve a retreat route to Brussels and focus on destroying enemy cavalry.
• General Dill offered to surrender, but Joseph rejected the offer as a supposed trick, forcing Dill to flee toward Brussels.
• Joseph ordered his cavalry to rest and his infantry to pursue cautiously without entering Brussels.
• Mason prepared to attack Bronckhorst’s disordered Dutch troops, then learned that up to four hundred Hanoverians, including senior officers, were nearby and turned his attention north.

Joseph arranged for Karl II to be secretly freed after his capture, allowing Hanoverian and Southern Netherlands forces to rally around Brussels. As the French and their opponents settled into a standoff, Joseph worked to keep the Prussians in Liège and began appealing to the Holy Roman Emperor about the situation.

• Joseph learned that Mason had captured Karl II and ordered Kexer to arrange his secret release.
• Wallonian rebels staged Karl II’s rescue from the Mason Legion camp, and he returned to Brussels with Bronckhorst.
• Karl II rallied Hanoverian troops while Van der Noot and the parliamentarians pledged to recruit more Southern Netherlands soldiers.
• Hanoverian, Dutch, and Southern Netherlands forces built defenses south of Brussels and held off a French attack before the armies settled into a standoff.
• Joseph ordered Lieutenant Colonel Lefebvre to keep the Prussians in Liège without forcing a decisive battle, then wrote to French diplomats and resumed a letter to Joseph II.

Joseph sought Austrian reinforcements and authority to requisition supplies in the Southern Netherlands, while weighing Catherine II’s ambitions and a proposal for French investment in Russia. Brienne’s report then left Joseph facing France’s strained finances and an unresolved peasant land-redemption plan.

• Joseph wrote to Joseph II requesting at least 20,000 Austrian troops and permission for France to requisition supplies in the Southern Netherlands, then sent a verbal message to Leo in Luxembourg.
• Eman delivered letters from Archbishop Brienne and Queen Mary, whose letter relayed Catherine II’s proposal to divide European territories with France and expand Russian-French trade.
• Joseph told a messenger to warn Queen Mary not to agree to Russia’s proposal, then considered using Catherine’s ambitions to win benefits for France.
• Joseph proposed French investment in the Crimea area and asked the Tsar to assist France on matters involving North Africa.
• Joseph read Brienne’s report on rising military costs and the Cabinet’s latest land-redemption plan, which still left the core issue of peasant land unresolved.

Joseph revised France’s Land Redemption Policy to balance the interests of nobles, peasants, and capitalists. In London, Marquess Wellesley told Pitt the Younger that Mysore’s army had attacked Kannur, captured East India Company personnel, and seized ships.

• Joseph read Brienne’s proposal and judged its redemption fees too costly for ordinary peasants, while its treatment of nobles’ seized public lands risked unrest.
• Joseph revised the proposal by lowering redemption costs, proposing bank loans and minimum land guarantees, and varying prices according to cultivation and yield.
• Joseph sent his revised document back to Brienne for further ideas.
• Marquess Wellesley left Parliament and told Pitt the Younger that Mysore’s army had attacked Kannur, captured more than two hundred East India Company personnel, and taken several ships.
• Pitt the Younger blamed Britain’s intelligence system and asked what the people of India were trying to do.

Pitt the Younger learned that Lafayette’s reformed Mysore forces had captured Kannur and threatened North Kanara, so he sent Marquess Wellesley to Paris to address the danger. In Brussels, Karl II berated Hanoverian officers after they failed to take Luli Town from the French, whose army continued to hold the line south of the city.

• Marquess Wellesley told Pitt the Younger that Mysore had captured Kannur with a force trained and led by Lafayette, and that more than 10,000 Mysore troops had approached North Kanara.
• Wellesley warned Pitt that French people had helped Mysore with weapons and anti-British agitation, and Pitt decided Britain must support India and send an expeditionary force.
• Pitt sent Wellesley to Paris to prevent further British losses in India.
• In Brussels, Karl II angrily questioned Hanoverian officers after they failed to capture Luli Town despite outnumbering its French defenders nearly three to one.
• The Hanoverian officers recalled that the French had charged out and split their formation, while Joseph had ordered his troops not to annihilate them; the front south of Brussels remained in a month-long stalemate despite Hanoverian reinforcements.

Joseph strengthened France’s hold over Wallonia by expanding its military recruitment and building a local administrative and coal-mining network, while Karl II sought British reinforcements for the war. British Foreign Secretary Marquess Wellesley arrived in Amsterdam intending to find leverage in the Southern Netherlands and learned that Karl II had requested aid.

• Joseph maintained a rotating French force south of Brussels and recruited 5,000 locals into the Walloon Guard, while Karl II ordered another attack and wrote to King George III and Pitt the Younger asking Britain to send troops.
• Joseph reviewed Wallonia’s recruitment examination results and directed Chairman Foret to expand the number of supply-related positions from 103 to at least 300.
• Joseph asked Viscount Flotte to recommend candidates and cooperate with Foret on establishing the Wallonia Coal Industry United Company, which the French Reserve Bank would control.
• Marquess Wellesley traveled toward Brussels by way of Amsterdam to seek leverage for negotiations with France over India, then learned that Karl II had appealed to Britain for aid.

Marquess Wellesley told Karl II and the Southern Netherlands leaders that British reinforcements would be delayed, then proposed exploiting France’s unresolved land dispute to incite unrest. The chapter left the French nobles’ and peasants’ conflicting interests poised to become a revolutionary powder keg.

• Marquess Wellesley informed Karl II that Britain could not send troops to Brussels until the beginning of next year because the East India Company faced trouble in the Far East.
• Van der Noot and General Bronckhorst urged Britain to help defeat the French, while Wellesley questioned the Dutch army’s failure against fourteen thousand soldiers.
• Van der Noot revealed that the Southern Netherlands Revolutionary Party had more than forty people in France and could send two hundred revolutionaries to stir up support.
• Wellesley warned Van der Noot to address Louis XVI respectfully and asked how many revolutionaries could be mobilized within half a month.
• Wellesley argued that France’s failure to settle how peasants would purchase land gave revolutionaries an opportunity to exploit conflict between peasants and nobles.

Joseph left the stalled Brussels front after reinforcing it with the Moulins Legion and returned to Paris to discuss important matters with Queen Mary. He arrived at Versailles Palace and began speaking with his mother after she welcomed him.

• Marquess Wellesley planned to spread conflicting rumors about land reform in France and provoke the nobles and peasants into revolt with Van der Noot and the Liberals.
• Joseph welcomed Andre Davout and the Moulins Legion in Namur, assigning the troops three days of rest before they went to Luli Town.
• Andre told Joseph that the fighting around Liège remained stalled, with neither the Prussians nor the Austrians willing to launch further attacks.
• Joseph traveled by carriage and wooden railway to Paris, where he heard children playing a game about the Crown Prince battling the Prussians.
• Joseph went directly to Queen Mary’s chambers at Versailles Palace, where she welcomed him before he raised serious matters.

Joseph explained his diplomatic strategy to Queen Mary, who became proud of his abilities before pressing him to consider marriage. Their conversation ended with Queen Mary mistakenly deciding that Joseph favored a young Russian princess.

• Queen Mary questioned Joseph about France’s support for Russia’s occupation of Sweden, and he explained how the move could distract Russia from Poland.
• Joseph described his plans to ease pressure in North Africa by drawing British attention toward India and negotiating concessions from the British minister.
• Queen Mary told Joseph to consider choosing a fiancée, and he rejected the royal relatives she suggested because he wanted to marry someone unrelated to him by blood.
• Joseph insisted he wanted to marry a princess who was not a close relative, then left when Brienne arrived with a document for Queen Mary.
• Queen Mary guessed that Joseph liked a young Russian girl in Paris and believed she had finally understood his romantic preference.

After his triumph in the war, Joseph received enthusiastic praise from the nobles and used the following day to begin developing bulletproof inserts at the Royal Armory. He tested several material combinations and found that Lavoisier’s casein glue held the plates firmly together.

• At the ball, nobles celebrated Joseph’s victories, and a poet recited a poem praising him.
• The next morning, Joseph went to the Royal Armory to develop bulletproof inserts before the United Kingdom’s Minister of Foreign Affairs arrived.
• Martinier showed Joseph iron and porcelain plates, silk, and casein glue recommended by Lavoisier.
• Joseph directed craftsmen to assemble more than forty test samples using different materials, thicknesses, and amounts of adhesive.
• After the heated-dried glue had set, Joseph tried to pull a sample apart and found the plates firmly bonded.

Joseph and Louis XVI tested and refined Joseph’s Bulletproof Insert at the Ordnance Factory. They settled on three versions for limited mass production, while shortages of adhesive prevented Joseph from equipping the entire Royal Guard Legion.

• Joseph showed Louis XVI that the Bulletproof Insert could stop gunfire, then explained how its iron, ceramic, and silk layers worked.
• Louis XVI tested an insert himself, and he and Joseph continued firing at closer distances until the bullet finally pierced one at twenty-eight paces.
• Joseph and Louis XVI tested different materials and configurations over several days before selecting three designs for production.
• Joseph ordered Martinier to produce six thousand standard inserts, two thousand Heavy-Duty inserts, and five hundred premium inserts.
• Joseph limited the order because Casein Glue was expensive and scarce, and he resolved to expand Gas Streetlights to help develop the organic Chemical industry.

Joseph sought Lavoisier’s help to mass-produce Casein Glue for Bulletproof Inserts, but their discussion revealed a much larger opportunity: using the adhesive to make cheap Synthetic Board furniture. The chapter ended with Lavoisier estimating that even producing fifty thousand kilograms of glue per month would require one million Livre.

• Joseph left the Ordnance Factory and went with Lavoisier to the Tuileries Palace after crowds disrupted their meeting at the Royal Gunpowder Bureau.
• Lavoisier warned Joseph that demand for Casein Glue might be too small to support large-scale production and explained how carpenters used it.
• Joseph realized Casein Glue could bind wood chips and sawdust into Synthetic Board, potentially creating a cheap, durable furniture industry from timber waste.
• Joseph asked Lavoisier whether he could produce five hundred thousand kilograms of glue per month if Joseph found buyers.
• Lavoisier said that scale was impossible in the short term and that producing fifty thousand kilograms monthly would require an investment of one million Livre.

Joseph explored cheaper ways to produce Soda after learning that scaling up Casein Glue required a huge investment in Soda production. He realized the era could not support Hou's Process because ammonia was too expensive, then recalled a method that recycled ammonia and carbon dioxide and asked Lavoisier to help design its mass-production process.

• Lavoisier warned Joseph that producing fifty thousand kilograms of Casein Glue each month would require enormous investment in Soda and Water Glass workshops.
• Joseph learned that Doctor Leblanc's Soda process relied on costly Reflectory Furnaces and offered a method based on salt, ammonia, and carbon dioxide.
• Lavoisier explained that ammonia came from expensive Sal Ammoniac, making Joseph's proposed method impractical at scale.
• Joseph recalled that the Solvay Process recycled ammonia and carbon dioxide, avoiding the need to consume large amounts of ammonia.
• Joseph asked Lavoisier to help design a mass-production process for his ammonia-recycling method, and Lavoisier marveled at his ideas.

Joseph recruited Lavoisier to develop the Royal Soda Process and take charge of a Coal Tar laboratory, while Mirabeau reported on plans for Paris’s gas streetlights. The chapter left Lavoisier eager to investigate new chemicals as Joseph prioritized bringing Soda Ash production into operation.

• Lavoisier said Joseph’s ammonia-based method could greatly reduce Soda Ash costs and hurried to verify it in his laboratory.
• At Tuileries Palace, Mirabeau met Joseph to report on industrial development, and Joseph asked Lavoisier to join their discussion.
• Joseph learned that the Gas Streetlight project lacked chemists familiar with benzene and explained that Coal Tar distillation could reveal benzene and other compounds.
• Lavoisier eagerly volunteered to lead the Coal Tar experiments and offered his wife and students to help design Soda Ash production.
• Joseph assigned Lavoisier to take over the Coal Tar laboratory, with funds available through Earl Mirabeau, while keeping Soda Ash production as the immediate priority.

Joseph ordered Mirabeau and Lavoisier to build factories for chemicals, glue, beverages, and mass-produced furniture, and planned to expand Paris Angel into baking-soda cosmetics. Meanwhile, Saint-Just stirred farmers near Reims into preparing a violent protest against land redemption fees and taxes, then set out to recruit more supporters.

• Joseph instructed Mirabeau and Lavoisier to establish soda ash and casein glue plants, five beverage factories, and furniture factories in Paris and Brittany.
• Joseph explained that standardized production would make furniture cheap to mass-produce and said he intended to sell it across Europe, the Far East, and the Americas.
• Joseph arranged to meet Brent and planned for Paris Angel to sell baking-soda products that reduced body odor and bad breath.
• Saint-Just told farmers near Reims that the government would charge them decades of land redemption fees, Annual Tribute, and Tithe, and urged them to resist.
• Saint-Just announced that farmers from dozens of parishes would gather at Reims City Hall in five days, then agreed to recruit supporters in Zesfield Village.

Saint-Just prepared a French uprising with support from Yeskute and the Southern Netherlands, while unrest over the land redemption plan spread across France. At Versailles, nobles called for armed resistance, and Joseph was summoned to an emergency Cabinet Meeting.

• Yeskute gave Saint-Just details of the committee's weapons shipments, and they discussed plans for an uprising in France.
• At Zesfield Village, Saint-Just questioned Yeskute about intelligence on the land redemption plan, and Yeskute concealed that its harsh terms had been fabricated.
• Nobles at Versailles discussed the farmers' unrest and learned that the government planned to reduce the redemption period to five years.
• A young noble urged other nobles to defend the City Halls of Lille and Reims with their swords.
• Fouche apologized to Joseph for mishandling the unrest, and a Court Official summoned Joseph to an emergency Cabinet Meeting.

Joseph learned that Southern Netherlanders were funding and arming Liberal agitators behind peasant protests in northwestern France, and he ordered Fouche to gather evidence while keeping the suspects under surveillance. At the Cabinet Meeting, Joseph identified the land-redemption rumors driving the protests and called for demonstrators to return home, leaving the government to address their demand for a redemption plan.

• Joseph heard Fouche report that the Tennis Club and Southern Netherlanders were behind the agitation, with foreign money and Flintlock Guns supporting riots in Lille and Reims.
• Joseph told Fouche not to arrest the suspects yet, but to watch them closely and document how Southern Netherlanders moved funds and supplies into France.
• Joseph arrived at the Cabinet Meeting and had Fouche present the Intelligence Bureau's findings to the ministers.
• Joseph said the urgent task was to get protesting peasants out of the cities and back to their homes.
• Archbishop Brienne explained that rumors about peasants having to pay thirty years of land income and principal rent taxes to redeem their land were driving the unrest.

Joseph took charge of drafting a land redemption plan and used extreme proposals to manipulate expectations on both sides. In Reims, Saint-Just led an angry crowd toward City Hall, where they were confronted by armed noble youths.

• Joseph promised Queen Mary a land redemption plan within ten days and was assigned responsibility for drafting it.
• Joseph told Venio to spread word that the government would demand fifty years of rents and taxes in a lump-sum redemption, then instructed Talleyrand to circulate a false rumor that the plan would require only two years and no rents or taxes.
• Joseph explained that the opposing rumors were meant to lower expectations before the government offered a compromise, and said the Southern Netherlands people would be brought into the crisis.
• In Reims, Saint-Just rallied peasants against the fifty-year policy and led more than a thousand people toward City Hall, demanding the Estates-General and a constitution.
• Saint-Just’s crowd encountered more than two hundred armed noble youths near City Hall, and he urged the peasants not to fear them.

Police arrested more than two hundred nobles after they fired on farmers in Reims, acting on orders tied to Joseph’s plan to use the unrest against them. In Zesfield Village, Mounted Police confronted Saint-Just with a letter allegedly proving that the Southern Netherlands Parliament had funded his effort to incite farmers.

• Nobles fired first at the farmers, and both sides exchanged shots until more than four hundred Police officers arrived.
• Intelligence Bureau agents directed the Police toward the nobles, and the Public Security Inspector ordered the arrest of everyone who had taken part in the clash.
• Joseph had told Fouche and the Police Department to watch the nobles and arrest as many as possible when evidence appeared.
• Saint-Just urged farmers in Zesfield Village to unite and prepare for another attempt to seize City Hall.
• Priest Joly and Mounted Police arrived, and their leader showed the farmers a letter said to bear Saint-Just’s signature and describe a Southern Netherlands plan to fund and arm a French uprising.