Chapter Summaries

Leono and his wife decided to appeal the taxes that had cost them their land and forced them into poverty, and Leono filed his account with the Tax Bureau. After a Tax Collector came to their home, Gordmide warned Joseph that the opposition planned to disrupt trade and provoke a strike at Marseille Port.

• Mrs. Leono urged Leono to appeal the old tax fine so their family might reclaim their land and return to village life, and Leono agreed after recalling the Crown Prince’s reforms.
• Leono waited in a long line at the Tax Bureau and told a clerk how Lord Boka’s early tax demand, fine, and usurious loan had led him to mortgage his land and livestock.
• The clerk recorded Leono’s account and gave him a notice promising that the Tax Bureau would investigate and contact him.
• Three days later, a Tax Collector arrived at Leono’s home with two assistants.
• Gordmide told Joseph that the opposition planned to halt merchant caravans, disrupt goods moving through Marseille Port, and pay port workers to strike; Joseph reacted angrily.

Joseph learned that the Tax Farmers Guild planned to disrupt trade to stop the Tax Bureau’s audit, and he gathered political and commercial allies to prepare for the threat. He proposed a French Trade Alliance to replace any abandoned caravan routes, but the group warned that its available caravans were far too few to scale up within half a month.

• Joseph warned Gordmide to refund improperly collected taxes and compensate those owed, then offered diplomatic posts to Gordmide’s associates.
• Joseph summoned Mirabeau, Bailly, Viscount Besançon, DuPont, and Volante to discuss the Tax Farmers Guild’s plan to obstruct the accounts audit.
• Mirabeau and Bailly proposed restrictions and caravan supervision, but Joseph argued that the guild could still disrupt commerce and said he wanted its actions to expose the need for tax reform.
• Bailly warned that the guild could influence at least one-third of the nation’s caravans, threatening factories, public finances, and employment.
• DuPont and the others said they could mobilize only a limited number of caravans, so Joseph proposed forming the French Trade Alliance around them and Gemini Trading Company.
• DuPont and Bailly objected that the alliance could not replace the missing caravans within half a month, and the available network amounted to only about one-tenth of the country’s caravans.

Joseph injected twenty million francs into the Trade Alliance and ordered officials to restore Marseille Port’s operations, while arranging to monitor the spending. A week later, Robespierre brought him reports detailing Tax Farmers’ abuses, and Joseph began confronting the scale of their crimes.

• Joseph offered twenty million francs to expand the Trade Alliance, and Mirabeau warned that the treasury could not bear the cost.
• Joseph ordered Bayei to build the alliance, directed officials to join their caravans, and planned to borrow the funds from Royal Insurance Company before recouping them from the Tax Farmers.
• Joseph sent Viscount Besançon and Volante to Marseille to maintain port operations, raise workers’ wages if needed, and ensure that 1.5 million francs were available.
• Joseph instructed Marat to watch over the allocated funds as his officials left to carry out their assignments.
• A week later, Robespierre presented Joseph with reports of Tax Farmers’ abuses, including Boka’s seizure of land after collecting taxes early during a cold spring.

Joseph learned from Robespierre how Tax Farmers had exploited and abused ordinary people, and ordered an armed crackdown. The chapter ended as Tax Farmer Boka faced tax officers and police outside his villa.

• Robespierre described how Lecornu had forced the people of Stian Town to pay exorbitant transportation fees, leaving many families destitute.
• Joseph heard more examples of Tax Farmers cheating, impoverishing, and abusing the people, then told Robespierre he had been right before.
• Joseph ordered Robespierre to arrest, sentence, and execute guilty Tax Farmers, using the Tax Bureau’s guns and police support if needed.
• At his villa near Reims, Boka dismissed his son Obin’s concerns about the crackdown and insisted their connections to Viscount Borolei would protect them.
• Boka went outside to greet seven armed tax officers and two police inspectors who had arrived at his villa.

Tax officials across France arrested nearly a thousand Tax Farmers and their accomplices, meeting armed resistance with force. Joseph approved Robespierre’s arrest list and ordered trials to begin under normal judicial procedures.

• Inspector Pierre Gaspar Shawn Met arrested Boka after Boka tried to invoke his patrons and bribe the inspector.
• Boka’s armed Tax Collectors attacked Shawn Met’s team, and the tax officials shot several men before arresting Boka and his steward.
• Tax officials arrested Lecornu in Stian Town, while officials in Lyon fought Aubon’s men and captured or killed the rioters.
• Over three days, Tax Bureaus across France arrested nearly a thousand Tax Farmers and their accomplices as citizens continued lining up to report abuses.
• Joseph signed Robespierre’s list and ordered the Tax Farmers’ trials to begin, allowing attackers of tax officials to be tried together.

Judge Fusne swiftly sentenced tax farmer Boka to death after a royal representative urged local courts to speed up Tax Farmer cases, while appeals courts upheld the verdicts in a growing wave of prosecutions. As Tax Farmer magnates considered fleeing or negotiating with the royal family, the French Trade Alliance expanded its commercial operations in Champagne.

• Judge Fusne convicted Boka of illegal taxation, murder, fraud, and forgery, then sentenced him to decapitation after a High Court representative directed him to expedite the case.
• Corantin's appeals for Boka were rejected, and the execution was scheduled for ten days later; Corantin learned that hundreds of other Tax Farmers and their underlings had also received death sentences.
• Fuld, Harper, Borolei, Morell, and other Tax Farmer magnates blamed the royal family for the crackdown, discussed negotiating, and considered escaping to the United Kingdom.
• Gerard Bona persuaded the owner of Marie Manor to sign a contract with the French Trade Alliance, offering favorable prices and property insurance for large purchases.

Bona used the French Trade Alliance’s ample funds and insurance agreement to buy Champagne’s surplus wine and other goods for export. François Revnet realized that suspending his caravan’s trade had let Picard-Brown overtake him, but he hesitated to resume business because of its major shareholder, Viscount Ford.

• Marie agreed to sell Bona 121 barrels of wine for 310 francs each after Bona promised insurance against damaged goods and accepted a 20,000-franc down payment.
• Bona explained that the French Trade Alliance’s master agreement with the Royal Insurance Company gave its caravans generous coverage, while an insurance officer guarded against fraud.
• A week later, Bona led more than a dozen Picard-Brown carriages toward Strasbourg to sell Champagne’s goods in the German Territories.
• François Revnet learned that Picard-Brown had joined the French Trade Alliance and received enough investment to buy up much of Champagne’s backlogged goods.
• Revnet blamed Viscount Ford for paying him to suspend trade, then fell silent when his son asked whether he should resume business.

Revnet accepted that his caravan could not keep suspending trade and prepared to approach the Trade Alliance. In Marseille, Besançon and Volante’s plan defeated a port strike, and police arrested Tax Farmers’ men.

• Caberry resigned from Revnet’s caravan after accepting the Trade Alliance’s offer, and Revnet decided to seek contact with the alliance and prepare a new caravan if Ford refused to cooperate.
• Hogot ordered Fickman and the other dockworkers to stay away from the wharf, but a disguised police officer confronted him and his colleagues arrested him.
• The disguised officer urged the workers to return to work and spread news of higher wages and incoming Italian laborers, prompting dockworkers across Marseille to rush to the wharf.
• Besançon and Volante’s plan drew workers back to the port and helped police identify and arrest more than thirty strike instigators, ending the disruption Ford’s group had planned.

Joseph questioned Pellier about the attacks on the Tax Bureau and learned that Borolei had organized them, then oversaw the capture of Borolei and prepared to watch the execution of Tax Farmers’ associates. As nobles were set to die alongside commoners, Minister of Justice Breteuil warned Joseph that the combined executions could provoke noble protests.

• Joseph questioned Pellier in prison, and Pellier identified Jacques Albert de Borolei as the mastermind behind attacks on the Tax Bureau and offered information about his accomplices in exchange for immunity.
• Joseph refused to promise Pellier more than that he would not lose his life.
• One week later, Intelligence Bureau agents intercepted Borolei as he tried to flee to the United Kingdom, and Borolei found his supposedly escaped subordinates in the interrogation room.
• Joseph listened to the crowd gathering for the executions of Tax Farmers’ associates and had Eman close the palace window.
• Breteuil warned Joseph that executing more than ten nobles alongside common criminals would insult their status and risk provoking noble protests.

Joseph arranged a public execution that treated noble and common prisoners alike, aiming to weaken the divide between social classes. At Louvre Square, the execution began before a huge crowd, and a farmer accused the first Tax Collector of ruining his family.

• Joseph rejected Baron de Breteuil’s proposal to secretly execute the noble prisoners and said they would receive the same treatment as commoners.
• Joseph told Breteuil that the Tax Farmers on the recently approved list, including Borolei and Antonel, would also be executed.
• Joseph arrived at Louvre Square, where more than thirteen thousand people had gathered to watch the executions and cheer him.
• Joseph addressed the crowd and ordered the execution to begin after Dibore, the President of the High Court, led the ceremony.
• A farmer publicly accused Adrien Bernie of extorting a fifty-livre fine and causing his sister’s death in childbirth.

Joseph’s public executions of tax farmers united commoners and nobles in support of purging the Tax Farmers Guild. Two days later, he discovered documents showing that the scholar Lavoisier had profited illegally from his tobacco-tax contract.

• A farmer denounced Bernie for extorting him after his sister’s death, and Bernie was executed before the furious crowd.
• A noblewoman described how a tax collector’s schemes ruined her family, helping turn the nobles against the condemned tax farmers.
• Victims took turns recounting the tax farmers’ crimes as nineteen prisoners were executed, strengthening public support for Joseph’s purge.
• Joseph reviewed the Tax Bureau’s records and found evidence that Lavoisier had diluted tobacco to earn roughly eighty to a hundred thousand livres a year in illegal profits.

Joseph arranged for Lavoisier to avoid prison so he could continue overseeing important industrial projects, then referred Guillotin’s flawed execution device to Louis XVI. The King designed an improved angled-blade Guillotine and praised Joseph’s reforms before drawing him to the workshop to discuss increasing a rifled gun’s rate of fire.

• Joseph read Lavoisier’s verdict and considered seeking exceptional bail or a royal pardon so Lavoisier could continue his work.
• Breteuil introduced Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, whose model Guillotine failed to cut through a cucumber.
• Joseph sent Guillotin to Louis XVI, who sketched an angled-blade design and granted 50,000 Francs to build prototypes.
• Breteuil proposed testing the improved Guillotines at Louvre Square, and Louis XVI praised Joseph for reforming taxation and prosecuting Tax Farmers.
• Louis XVI took Joseph to his workshop and asked how to double the rate of fire of his rifled gun prototype.

Joseph showed Louis XVI how a rifled gun with an iron spike in its powder chamber could fire simple cylindrical sub-caliber bullets more quickly. The two developed the August 1790 Rifled Gun, which Joseph believed would transform Jäger warfare across Europe.

• Louis XVI gave Joseph the rifled gun he had spent nearly a year making and asked how it increased the rate of fire.
• Joseph asked Mr. Aymeric to make a lead cylinder and explained that rifled guns were slow to load because bullets had to be forced into the grooves.
• Joseph demonstrated that a sub-caliber bullet could be struck against an iron spike in the powder chamber, expanding its base so it would engage the rifling when fired.
• Louis XVI understood how the spike would expand the cylindrical bullet's tail and make it spin.
• Joseph named their invention the August 1790 Rifled Gun and explained why he chose it over the more complex Minié Ball.

Joseph tested the August 1790 rifled gun and planned to develop breech-loaders with Louis XVI. After arranging production and discussing the new design late into the night, he returned to find Camellia wearing a maid uniform inspired by his earlier suggestion.

• Joseph explained how the Thouvenin Rifle could support French production before the development of breech-loading guns.
• Louis XVI tested the August 1790 and hit targets at one hundred and one hundred and forty paces.
• Joseph proposed creating a new breech-loading gun, and Louis XVI eagerly agreed to develop it with him.
• Joseph arranged production plans for the August 1790 and sketched breech-loader concepts with his father until late at night.
• Camellia greeted Joseph in a maid uniform she had commissioned based on his earlier suggestion, and he praised how it looked.

Camellia began a carefully prepared massage for Joseph, hoping to win his favor, while Soleil entered his palace at night to secretly leave him 5,000 francs. Joseph suddenly screamed as Soleil slipped inside.

• Camellia arranged a massage for Joseph after Doctor Perna left Versailles Palace and offered to ease his fatigue.
• Joseph accepted Camellia's offer and lay on the massage table as the maids prepared a warm, softly lit room.
• Soleil carried 5,000 francs to Joseph's bedroom to repay him for a loss she believed she had caused.
• Kexer spotted Soleil entering the palace and quietly watched, unsure whether to intervene.
• Soleil climbed through Joseph's window, and Joseph suddenly opened his eyes and screamed.

Joseph dealt with a chaotic misunderstanding after Soleil mistook Camellia’s massage for an assassination attempt, then arranged to invest Soleil’s returned money in the King’s Fund. Two days later, Perna heard rumors that she was the Crown Prince’s chief mistress and began to imagine a future at his side.

• Camellia’s painful massage made Joseph cry out, and Soleil rushed in and kicked her away, believing she was attacking the Crown Prince.
• Kexer mistook the hooded Soleil for an assassin and disarmed her before Joseph and the others realized what had happened.
• Soleil apologized and offered Joseph five thousand francs, but he returned the money and proposed investing it in the King’s Fund under her name.
• Madame Lavoisier asked Perna to seek Joseph’s help for Antoine, who had been sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
• Madame Lavoisier told Perna rumors that Soleil and Camellia had fought over Joseph, prompting Perna to wonder whether she could become his mistress.

Joseph discovered that France lacked enough rifling technicians and that the existing apprenticeship system trained them too slowly. He decided to establish vocational schools to train skilled workers and began assembling officials to plan them.

• Perna left Marianne’s home flustered after Marianne teased her about being the Crown Prince’s lover and urged her to change out of her men’s clothes.
• At the Royal Armory, Gaman told Joseph that only two technicians there knew rifling and that training apprentices took years.
• Joseph learned that technicians spent little time teaching because their own work paid their wages, and he concluded that France needed professional vocational instructors.
• Joseph summoned Earl Mirabeau, Mr. Jean Sonnet, Archbishop Beaumont, Mr. Denico, Gaman, and manager Martinier to plan vocational schools.
• Joseph and Louis XVI discussed mass production of the August 1790 Rifled Gun until dusk, then returned to Versailles Palace.

At Versailles, Joseph dealt with gossip about Soleil and arranged to pardon Lavoisier after Perna asked him. Perna mistook his quick agreement for proof that she held a special place in his heart.

• Louis XVI asked Joseph whether two young ladies had fought at his residence, and Joseph failed to correct his father's assumptions about the gossip.
• Soleil learned that Camellia's damaged dress had cost 2,300 Francs and set out to earn money to cover the compensation.
• Queen Mary reassured eight-year-old Alexandra that Joseph would not be easily swayed by other young ladies.
• Perna delivered Joseph a ruby-studded sword fitting from Madame Lavoisier and asked him to spare Baron Lavoisier from prison.
• Joseph agreed to request Lavoisier's pardon from Louis XVI, and Perna concluded that Joseph had favored him because of his feelings for her.

Paul Leono’s family recovered their home, land, and horse after the Crown Prince’s actions against the Tax Farmers, and the villagers prepared to honor him at Mass. At a celebration in the western suburbs of Paris, some guests objected to nobles being executed alongside commoners.

• Paul Leono recalled how the Crown Prince had Boka executed and how the court returned his family’s land and house, along with thirty-five francs in compensation.
• Leono borrowed money for his wife’s operation, and the family celebrated their return to farming with their first beef stew in five years.
• Father Carlo returned Sophie to the Leono family and invited them to a parish Mass for the Crown Prince; Leono offered five francs to the Mass.
• The Viannal family held a ball to celebrate recovering their property, and guests toasted the Crown Prince as the Child of Divine Grace.
• Several guests criticized the Crown Prince for having nobles executed alongside commoners.

Joseph discovered that the purge of the Tax Farmers had brought France 67 million Francs, but much of their wealth remained hidden and the government still faced a funding shortfall. When Brienne revealed that the Tax Farmers Guild offered a large payment in exchange for pardons, Joseph weighed punishing them against recovering their hidden fortunes for France.

• Nobles argued over the executions at Louvre Square, and one man claimed the Guillotine preserved noble dignity by reserving ceremonial executions for those who could afford them.
• The nobles began paying 500 to 800 Francs for elaborate execution services, making them a major source of court income.
• Joseph learned that confiscations had raised 67 million Francs but left the government more than 30 million Francs short, as Tax Farmers had hidden much of their wealth.
• Brienne told Joseph that Fuld and the Tax Farmers Guild had offered him 1 million Francs and presented Joseph with a gift worth nearly 3 million Francs.
• Joseph considered whether to accept the magnates' payment and recover their wealth instead of having them executed and losing their hidden fortunes.