Chapter Summaries

Baron Guesdon abandoned his opposition to tax reform after learning that more than forty officials who resisted it had been arrested for corruption. The Tax Farmers Guild’s leaders tried to rally more officials against reform, but returned bribes and widespread public support for reform left them convening an emergency council meeting.

• Baron Guesdon read that more than forty officials who opposed tax reform had been arrested and feared the Public Notary Investigation Bureau would expose his own corruption.
• Baron Guesdon discovered his remonstrance had been returned, burned it, and sent Versailles Palace a letter supporting the abolition of the Tax Farmer System.
• Fuld, Vankiewicz, and Harper learned of the arrests and decided to spend another two hundred thousand Francs bribing officials to oppose reform.
• Fuld and the other Tax Farmers Guild leaders learned that postal failures had returned or destroyed many remonstrances, leaving only about forty officials opposed to reform.
• Officials returned the Tax Farmers’ bribes and began publicly supporting reform, which newspapers described as widely backed across France.
• The Big Shots behind the Tax Farmers Guild convened a council meeting.

The Tax Farmers Guild tried to delay tax reform by offering better terms and dangling loans before the government, while Joseph recognized their strategy and kept Brienne negotiating. Joseph then visited the newly built School of Economics to inspect its training as preparations for reform continued.

• At Fuld's villa, Harper instructed the Guild magnates to conceal their ties to arrested officials and use negotiations and loan offers to delay tax reform until the government ran short of time.
• Brienne told Joseph that the Guild had offered higher tax-farming payments and that Charles and Baron Morell had proposed government loans at eighteen percent interest.
• Joseph urged Brienne to keep negotiating, then privately told Eman to prepare the carriage for a visit to the Paris Police Academy.
• Joseph arrived at the academy and went to the new School of Economics, where Clermont offered to assemble the students, but Joseph asked him not to interrupt classes.

Joseph visited the School of Economics, where hundreds of cadets trained to become tax collectors, then questioned the imprisoned Earl of Norfolk for information on corrupt officials. He left Norfolk facing exile unless he exposed accomplices, using the corruption case to advance civil service reforms.

• Clermont showed Joseph the School of Economics and explained that it had 620 cadets and 34 teachers.
• Joseph watched the cadets train and ate lunch with them, while Robespierre began questioning his belief that a king could not improve people's lives.
• Joseph visited the National First Prison and ordered the noble prisoners' cells stripped of all but a table and bed and converted into single rooms.
• The Earl of Norfolk begged Joseph for a pardon, but Joseph warned him he would likely be exiled to Tripoli.
• Joseph offered to plead for Norfolk if he revealed accomplices and other crimes, especially those involving higher-ranking officials.

Joseph used a corruption investigation to prepare a gradual civil service reform, planning to bring officials into a Royal Academy of Public Administration and eventually make its entrance exams a requirement for government jobs. He recruited Archbishop Beaumont and the church to build the academy, offering church members future government positions in return for their support.

• Joseph stored a list of more than thirty officials for later use and decided to use it to warn bureaucrats rather than purge them immediately.
• Joseph visited imprisoned officials and had them write denunciation materials, hoping to gather enough leverage to begin reforming the civil service.
• Joseph planned to establish a Royal Academy of Public Administration and gradually make its education and entrance exams essential for entering government service.
• Joseph asked Archbishop Beaumont to build an academy for fifteen hundred students within three months, with room for expansion.
• When Beaumont balked at advancing construction funds, Joseph proposed renovating the church's estate east of the Seine River.
• Joseph offered church members positions vacated by officials under investigation, seeking to secure the church's support for the reform.

Joseph arranged for the church to fill vacant government posts and cooperate with his administrative university. At Norfolk’s corruption trial, the accused officials began implicating one another, setting off public anger and a widening purge that left the Supreme Court president alarmed.

• Joseph promised the church at least ten vacant official posts and asked it to help establish university branches in Lyon and Bordeaux.
• Archbishop Beaumont agreed to supervise the university’s construction and promised the church would condemn corruption.
• At the Paris High Court, Earl of Norfolk offered to expose others in exchange for reduced punishment and began naming officials who had bribed him.
• Officials accused in several trials implicated more than a hundred high-ranking figures, while crowds marched toward Versailles Palace demanding justice.
• Dibore rushed to Joseph and reported that Norfolk had implicated dozens of people, but Joseph told him to return to court.

Joseph managed the corruption hearings and pressured implicated officials to suspend themselves while promising a fair investigation. Marat and Desmoulins disagreed over whether France should support the Crown Prince, leaving a crack between the Jacobin leaders.

• Joseph reminded Dibore to sentence Earl of Norfolk and the other officials with discretion, and Dibore left without connecting Joseph to the accusations.
• At the High Court, judges recorded the officials’ accusations and adjourned the hearing again.
• Marat praised Joseph’s anti-corruption efforts, but argued that France still needed a constitution and popular government.
• Desmoulins defended Joseph’s rule, and Marat noticed that Desmoulins’s stutter had improved; their disagreement left a crack between them.
• Joseph told the officials accused by Norfolk that citizens were demanding their execution, then promised a fair investigation and urged them to suspend themselves from office.

Joseph used the Paris Police review ceremony to display royal power while directing implicated officials toward the new Royal Academy of Public Administration, where they believed study and donations would help them escape the corruption case. The academy’s enrollment and funding surged as Joseph traveled to Reims to stage another review.

• Joseph told implicated officials to study at the new Royal Academy of Public Administration while the investigation continued, and nearly a hundred soon applied for admission.
• Queen Mary attended the first Paris Police review ceremony at the Champs-Élysées, where Joseph presided over demonstrations by police phalanxes and cannons.
• Viscount Besançon said the accusations by Norfolk, Gaston, and their associates were largely slander intended to reduce their sentences, while the accused officials would remain under investigation.
• Officials flocked to enroll at the Administrative Management University, whose student body topped a thousand and whose donations exceeded 1.1 million Francs.
• Joseph rode toward Reims to hold another police review before continuing to Lyon, Bordeaux, and other cities.

Joseph returned to Paris after a police parade in Bordeaux, oversaw the opening of the Academy of Public Administration, and began using it to reshape government staffing. The Cabinet approved requiring specialists in fields such as roads and water conservancy to study and pass assessments before taking office.

• During the Reims police parade, Baron Alex and Viscount Durand reported Baron Chevalier for repeating claims that the Intelligence Bureau had coerced officials in the embezzlement case.
• Baron Alex urged Chevalier to register at the Academy of Public Administration, fearing further investigations into local officials.
• After returning to Paris, Joseph spoke at the academy's opening ceremony, where more than six hundred students began classes and over a thousand officials awaited admission.
• Joseph noticed high rents near the academy and ordered Eman to buy vacant land nearby for a residential development.
• At a Cabinet meeting, Brienne presented Joseph's proposal that officials in specialized posts study at the academy and pass professional assessments before holding their positions, and the ministers agreed.

Queen Mary approved Joseph’s proposals to introduce professional examinations for some government posts and create an Auxiliary Administrative Agency to keep administration running when officials were removed. After the Cabinet Meeting, she asked Brienne whether Joseph could manage state affairs without her, and Brienne reassured her that her presence was essential.

• Queen Mary, prompted by Joseph, approved a decree requiring examinations for officials in posts with specialized requirements.
• Joseph proposed an Auxiliary Administrative Agency whose officials would take over when departments were disrupted, and Mirabeau supported the plan.
• Queen Mary signed the administrative adjustment after the ministers raised no further objections.
• Queen Mary asked Brienne whether Joseph could lead the ministers without her, and Brienne declared that her presence was essential to France.

Mary Queen agreed to let Joseph preside over the next Cabinet Meeting, while Joseph used the Corpus Christi mass to address a leak by Viscount Charles Bernie and outline the next stages of his administrative reforms. Archbishop Beaumont ended the chapter by condemning greedy officials in his sermon.

• Mary Queen decided that Joseph would preside over the next Cabinet Meeting, with her guidance.
• At Notre-Dame de Paris, Fouche told Joseph that Viscount Charles Bernie had leaked the Crown Prince's demand for officials to denounce corruption, and that Bernie and six others had confessed.
• Joseph ordered a renewed investigation into the corrupt officials and changed Bernie's exile to New Zealand, along with that of the prison guard who had helped him.
• Joseph rejected Fouche's suggestion to arrest everyone who spread the rumor and said he planned to admit commoners to Administrative Management University, reduce the office tax, raise officials' salaries, and cut office sales.
• Archbishop Beaumont switched to French and preached against officials' greed as clergy distributed communion.

Joseph saw the church unveil a Wealth Protection Voucher while considering its wealth and political power. In Corsica, councilmen uncovered evidence that Oscar Pauli had diverted restoration funds to buy American property and suspected he had made a deal with France.

• Fouche told Joseph that Archbishop Beaumont possessed assets worth three or four million Francs, and Joseph resolved to cooperate with the church for now before eventually reforming it.
• Beaumont presented the church's Wealth Protection Voucher, which promised buyers protection from greedy people.
• Bartorio presented evidence from Charleston that Mrs. Pauli's supposed American inheritance did not exist and that she had recently bought a villa and a Cotton plantation worth a hundred thousand US Dollars.
• The Corsican councilmen connected the property purchases to the twenty-five thousand Pound Sterling that had supposedly burned and concluded that Pauli had taken the restoration funds.
• The intelligence official revealed that England might stop protecting Pauli, and Girolamo and the official suspected Pauli had prepared to leave England and made a deal with the French.

Girolamo and the Corsican Restoration Organization councilors framed Oscar Paoli as a traitor after staging a failed uprising in Cargèse, then moved to expel him. Chamos arrived in Ajaccio and pledged another 20,000 Pound Sterling to support the restoration forces in the next elections.

• Girolamo persuaded Bartorio to tell Paoli that the uprising had been moved up by three days, while the councilors stayed behind to prevent the news from spreading.
• Several hundred red-armbanded people marched on Cargèse City Hall, where soldiers arrested their leaders and discovered the crowd carried wage-demand signs rather than weapons.
• Bartorio blamed Paoli for leaking the supposed change of date, and the councilors agreed to contact other members and expel him.
• Bartorio introduced Chamos to the councilors, and Chamos pledged 20,000 Pound Sterling to support their campaign in the next Corsican councilor elections.

Chamos used Joseph’s funding to turn senior members of the Corsican Restoration Organization against Paoli, while Paoli learned that the organization had nearly voted to expel him. The chapter ended with Paoli furious and facing the loss of his leadership.

• Chamos offered the organization’s senior members subsidies on the condition that they sever ties with Paoli, and Girolamo and the others accepted.
• Joseph’s strategy was to split the Restoration Organization from within rather than suppress Corsica with troops.
• Paoli returned to his London villa and reunited with his nephew, Cesari-Colonna Paoli.
• Cesari told Paoli that Bartorio, Cesare, and others had accused him of embezzlement and betrayal, presenting evidence about his properties and the leaked riot plans.
• Cesari reported that thirty-one members had voted to oppose Paoli, leaving his expulsion only two votes short of the required threshold.

Cesari agreed to Paoli’s plan to burn Nonza Village and blame the French, while Joseph learned that the Corsican Restoration Organization had fractured and planned to exploit the divisions through Parliament. The chapter ended with Joseph directing Fouche to help form a rival organization and unite Corsican pro-government forces.

• Cesari warned Paoli that the next vote could cost him leadership of the Restoration Organization, and Paoli proposed burning Nonza Village and framing the French.
• Cesari objected that many Corsicans would die, but Paoli insisted that sacrifices were necessary, and Cesari agreed to carry out the order.
• Paoli brooded over the organization’s opposition, then left to meet Isabella at the club.
• Fouche told Joseph that the Restoration Organization had split into Anti-Paoli, pro-Paoli, and moderate camps, with some members withdrawing.
• Joseph instructed Fouche to encourage the Anti-Paoli faction to form a new organization and dilute its support for independence.
• Joseph said he would direct Earl Buttafuoco to unite Corsican pro-government factions and win more seats in Parliament.

Joseph directed Fouche to work with Corsican factions and infiltrate the Corsican National Guard, then inspected Paris’s gas distillation plant as it officially began production. The plant had greatly expanded its output, and the visit ended with Camellia leaving the factory because of the heat and the workers’ bare chests.

• Joseph told Fouche to have Buttafuoco cooperate with the Liberals and the Anti-Paoli faction in Corsica, promising him the governorship if they won two-thirds of parliament.
• Joseph ordered Fouche to use Mr. Chamos’s influence to investigate the Corsican National Guard and place their own people inside it.
• Joseph traveled to the gas distillation plant with Fouche, asked about Tunis and Tripoli along the way, and then inspected the facility’s official start of production.
• Delas told Joseph that the plant could process sixteen tons of coal a day and supply more than five thousand gas lamps, while further expansion was planned for Paris and Lyon.
• Joseph sent Camellia outside the hot factory after she became embarrassed by the bare-chested workers, and Perna glanced after her with a victorious air.

Joseph inspected the Coal Gas Distillery and learned how Murdoch and Lavoisier’s expertise made its complicated production process work. After seeing workers labor in smoke and coal dust, he ordered masks and regular health examinations, leaving Delas to organize the protections at Joseph’s expense.

• Murdoch explained to Joseph the complex steps for distilling coal, purifying coal gas, and collecting ammonia.
• Joseph realized the distillery’s success depended on skilled experts and resolved to advance his Talent Introduction Plan.
• Joseph discovered that workers used scraps of cloth to cover their faces and ordered custom-made masks for everyone in the distillery.
• Delas warned that masks would cost two francs each, but Joseph agreed to pay for them through the company accounts.
• Joseph ordered physical examinations for workers every six months, promised to cover the costs, and barred dismissals merely because of health problems.

Joseph decided to pursue a French labor-protection law and discussed the broader use of medical masks and gas lighting. The chapter ended with Joseph recognizing that Britain’s heavy investment in gas streetlights reflected its strong industrial instincts.

• Joseph resolved to draft a Labor Protection Act with Mirabeau, Breteuil, and others and seek its review at the next Cabinet Meeting.
• Joseph explained to Perna that masks could protect doctors from infection and told Delas to ensure workers’ masks were washed regularly and assigned individually.
• Perna asked to distribute masks to the Battlefield Hospital and promote them to doctors, and Joseph proposed building a factory to meet demand.
• Joseph discussed building Coal Gas Distilleries in Nancy and Tunis and defended investing in gas lighting as a way to attract people and support future growth.
• DuPont told Roland that Britain had approved three hundred thousand Pound Sterling for London’s gas lamps, and Joseph recognized Britain’s industrial foresight.

Joseph planned to use an English company to win London’s gas streetlight contract before England could copy France’s technology. In India, Wellesley’s advance on Seringapatam stalled in the rainy season, leaving his army short of supplies and vulnerable to disease and Mysore attacks.

• Joseph learned England planned to invest heavily in gas streetlights and worried that its spies and scientists would soon replicate France’s technology.
• Joseph asked DuPont to establish or acquire an English company, bid for London’s gas lighting project, and use 600,000 francs to influence officials and Parliament; he also offered DuPont 100,000 francs.
• Joseph summoned Director Fouche to discuss the London business plan with DuPont.
• Wellesley learned that muddy roads would delay his heavy cannons by another month, slowing his siege of Seringapatam.
• Wellesley worried that Cornwallis’s supplies and his army’s morale would not last through the rainy season, while Mysore’s stores remained abundant.

Cornwallis told Wellesley that the army’s supplies would last only until October and that the East India Company would send no more funding, leaving the English forces to prepare for a final battle. As the English and their allies encircled Seringapatam, Tipu Sultan struck their artillery in a surprise attack and withdrew after destroying several guns.

• Cornwallis informed Wellesley that Savanur’s food would sustain the army until October, but the East India Company had ended further funding and the expedition had to return home by year’s end.
• Tipu Sultan confirmed the English artillery’s position and rallied 1,700 Guard Corps soldiers to defend Seringapatam.
• Wellesley and Cornwallis’s forces advanced with Maratha and other Indian Princely State troops, surrounding Seringapatam and bombarding Mysore’s defenses.
• Tipu Sultan led a surprise attack on the English artillery, scattering its infantry cover and disabling six 12-pound Cannons along with other guns.
• Nawaz led 50,000 Mysore troops in a defensive battle against the English at the front while Tipu Sultan ordered his raiders to retreat as evening approached.

Tipu Sultan’s defenses and the rainy season wore down the English Army, forcing Cornwallis and the sick Wellesley to pursue peace while holding on to limited territorial gains. In London, Styler of the Lightning Coal Company courted Mayor Mordaunt with bribes and promises to secure the gas streetlight project.

• Tipu Sultan returned to Seringapatam after destroying most of the English Army’s heavy artillery and continued to repel assaults with ample supplies.
• As September approached, malaria, dysentery, other deadly diseases, and dwindling gunpowder crippled the English Army and weakened its offensive.
• Wellesley and Cornwallis decided to send Sirley to negotiate, seeking to retain Vijayanagara, Kanada, and the area north of Chitradurga.
• Styler told Mayor Mordaunt that the Lightning Coal Company had political support and promised to provide Coffey’s technical assessment.
• Styler offered Mordaunt a negotiable 8,000 Pound Sterling bribe, while the company relied on a stolen pipeline plan and Coffey’s 2,500 Pound Sterling payoff to win London’s gas streetlight project.