Chapter Summaries

Joseph planned to expand and reorganize France’s military schools to recruit and train a larger New Army, then turned to the diplomatic alliances needed for war. He expected Spain to support France because of his ties with Carlos IV and their secret treaty concerning Gibraltar and Portugal.

• Joseph judged that land reform, the Royal Guard Legion’s pay, and its reputation would make recruitment easy, and he planned to expand the Paris Police Academy.
• Joseph outlined splitting the academy into separate police, taxation, military, and technical schools, including new regional military schools in Lyon and Toulouse.
• Joseph sent his academy and army expansion plans to the General Staff Headquarters for discussion and refinement.
• Joseph considered the need to build a bloc of allies so France would not face the United Kingdom and its allies alone.
• Joseph identified Spain as France’s natural ally and expected Carlos IV to support France in a war because of their good relations and secret treaty.

Joseph assessed how France could secure its trade routes and manage its European diplomacy, deciding that steam-powered galleys might help the French Navy challenge England in the Mediterranean. He left plans for ship development and alliances under consideration, with Russia’s neutrality and changing relations with Austria central to his strategy.

• Joseph concluded that France needed Spain’s fleet to protect Mediterranean trade while it developed new naval technology.
• Joseph considered fitting Murdoch’s high-pressure steam engines to galleys and planned to send Murdoch and technicians to Brittany to begin shipboard development.
• Joseph aimed to deepen trade and economic ties with Russia so it would not join England’s camp, while considering tensions between Russia and Austria as leverage.
• Joseph judged that relations with Austria could worsen after Leopold II’s death and considered exploiting Austrian weakness in Italy if the countries became enemies.
• Joseph dismissed efforts to win over Prussia and the Netherlands, but considered a limited strike on Amsterdam if the Netherlands became troublesome.

Joseph considered France’s diplomatic and trade relations with the German states and the Ottoman Empire before attending the opening of the Great Scholars Palace, which launched his Talent Introduction Plan. He reviewed the winners of the first Supreme Louis Prize and explained why he had declined awards himself.

• Joseph decided that France should preserve the independence of the small German states and strengthen trade ties with the Ottoman Empire.
• Eman reminded Joseph of the Great Scholars Palace opening, and Joseph set out with Brienne, Bayei, and Jean-Baptiste Leroy.
• Leroy gave Joseph the committee’s final Supreme Louis Prize winners: Henry Cavendish, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, John Hunter, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
• Leroy said the committee had wanted to award Joseph the Chemistry and Biomedical Prizes, but Joseph explained that he had declined to protect the prize’s reputation for fairness.

Joseph oversaw the reorganization of the French Academy of Sciences and the opening of the Great Scholars Palace, both designed to attract and support scholars. After the ceremony, Mirabeau asked him to delay further construction and postpone dividends from the Industrial Development Fund.

• Director Leroy told Joseph that the Academy of Sciences’ new specialized departments were operating and that most national laboratories would be completed before August.
• Joseph’s reforms established specialized research departments and free national laboratories to improve scientific research and draw talent to France.
• Joseph arrived at the Great Scholars Palace, a residential community where recognized scholars could rent homes cheaply and eventually earn ownership.
• Mirabeau hosted a ceremony where Joseph addressed the crowd and the first group of scholars received their new homes.
• After the ceremony, Mirabeau asked Joseph to delay the Great Scholars Palace’s further construction and postpone Industrial Development Fund dividends.

Mirabeau urged Joseph to use the Development Fund and delay Great Scholars Palace construction to finance France’s booming factories. Joseph grew suspicious of surging foreign orders and halted the proposed investment pending an investigation, leaving Fouche tasked with quickly checking for manipulation.

• Mirabeau told Joseph that factory orders and demand for investment had surged, and proposed raising 10 million Francs by using the fund’s reserves and postponing palace construction.
• Joseph reviewed Mirabeau’s plan and noticed that orders from Germany and the Italian Region far outstripped the growth of their domestic sales.
• Joseph ordered the Development Fund not to inject capital and asked factories to slow production until he could investigate the unusual orders.
• Joseph summoned Fouche and instructed him to determine whether the transactions had been manipulated, while Fouche warned that a prolonged inquiry could harm factories.

Joseph assigned Calonne and Mesmer to investigate suspicious French orders in Austria, and Mesmer proposed posing as a wealthy buyer to expose the scheme. When Mesmer approached Baron Graz’s shell company with a huge purchase offer, Graz refused to sell.

• Fouche persuaded Joseph to have Calonne and Mesmer assist the Intelligence Bureau’s investigation.
• Joseph approved their involvement, and Fouche went to First Prison to bring Mesmer out.
• In Austria, Calonne found no apparent irregularities in the companies, orders, or payments, while Mesmer proposed testing the companies by posing as a buyer.
• Three days later, Mesmer, disguised as Viscount Plummer, offered to buy all of Baron Graz’s French goods, but Graz refused because the deal risked exposing his operation.

Calonne and Mesmer uncovered signs in Vienna that French-goods orders were suspicious and linked to Klester, while Joseph learned that French factories kept fulfilling risky foreign orders despite his efforts to slow production. The chapter left Joseph and Mirabeau facing the likelihood that the buyers would not pay and that factory owners would ignore warnings.

• Mesmer posed as Viscount Plummer in Vienna and used his social connections to investigate merchants ordering French goods.
• Calonne found that major recent orders came from people connected to Klester, and Captain Descharet prepared to report the suspicious trade to the Crown Prince.
• Joseph learned that most French factories had completed about a quarter of their foreign orders, while some had reached a third, despite his request to slow production.
• Fouche delivered the Vienna intelligence report to Joseph, which indicated that the buyers would probably not pay the remaining balances.
• Mirabeau warned Joseph that factory owners would likely refuse to halt production even if they saw the report.

Joseph devised a way to make the people behind fraudulent foreign orders cancel them without halting legitimate factory production, and sent Fouche to investigate Klester and carry out a plan in Austria. In Vienna, Baron Graz learned that a French steel company had completed his order early and faced a large payment he could not make.

• Joseph realized that forcibly stopping suspicious orders would also harm legitimate French factories, so he decided to exploit the final-payment terms to pressure fraudulent buyers into canceling.
• Joseph instructed Mirabeau to identify foreign orders exceeding 50,000 Francs and enlist factory owners in a plan, saying that a few cooperating factories would convince the rest.
• Joseph told Fouche to arrange a scheme in Austria involving Mesmer and cooperating factory owners, and ordered him to investigate Klester.
• More than ten days later in Vienna, Baron Graz learned that Grigault Brothers Steel Company had completed Manharts Trading Company's order worth 720,000 Florins ahead of schedule.
• Graz panicked because he could not afford the required payment, but he feared fleeing would expose the fake orders and anger Klester.

Joseph arranged for French factories to claim seven large orders were complete, forcing the Austrian and Italian buyers to face payment deadlines. Mesmer and other agents bought several shipments at steep discounts, while Klester told the Duke of Leeds that settling these seven orders could still leave France with huge losses.

• Joseph used the Industrial Development Fund to gather existing French goods and pass them off as completed orders.
• Mesmer, disguised as Viscount Plummer, persuaded Graz to sell the iron goods for seventy percent of their order price, with Graz covering the rest.
• Calonne's assistant approached Borassnia in disguise, while one of his men agreed to buy Lenner's wine at seventy-five percent of its price.
• Klester told the Duke of Leeds that the other French orders would not be completed until late September and that resolving payment for the seven shipments could preserve the scheme.

Klester persuaded the Duke of Leeds to provide more money for the fraudulent French Goods orders, but the supposed buyers vanished and Klester was killed while fleeing Vienna. In France, factories learned that the Crown Prince had helped expose the scam and that Versailles would compensate them with money taken from the Duke of Leeds.

• Klester convinced the Duke of Leeds to provide 180,000 Pounds to cover discounted French Goods orders, and distributed the funds as payments to the French Company.
• Graz discovered that Viscount Plummer had disappeared and was reported dead, while Holmeslar Investment Company declared bankruptcy and its directors fled.
• After the other supposed buyers vanished, Klester realized he had been conned; Graz fled first, and Klester fled Vienna with his family before men in black killed them.
• French factory owners discussed their losses and learned that the Crown Prince had restricted production and arranged shipments that helped expose the fraud.
• A Lyon Textile Industry Guild official announced that Versailles would compensate affected factories with 12% of their order amounts, using the 4.5 million Francs taken from the Duke of Leeds.

Flimlin claimed compensation for Grande Manufacturing Company and learned that payments required wage protections and compliance with the new labor decree. Joseph praised Calonne for his achievements in Vienna, leaving the chapter with France rewarding businesses that had followed the Industrial Development Fund’s advice.

• Flimlin arrived at Lyon City Hall and waited three hours to apply for compensation based on Grande Manufacturing Company’s orders.
• A finance official told Flimlin that compensation had to fund workers’ wages and that his factory had to obey the France Labor Protection and Safety Decree.
• Flimlin completed the compensation procedures, then heard that Edgar Destin’s company would receive compensation exceeding its losses.
• Factory owners learned that the Industrial Development Fund would increase investment in businesses that had reduced production and seek tax cuts for them.
• Joseph praised Calonne for his outstanding achievements in Vienna.

Joseph reinstated Calonne and assigned him and Mesmer a mission to retaliate against Britain for the order scam. The chapter ends with Lord Grenville criticizing Duke of Leeds over the failed operation in Austria.

• Joseph offered Calonne the post of Special Advisor to the Minister of Trade and arranged for twenty years to be deducted from Mesmer's sentence.
• Fouche reported that Klester had been murdered and that evidence pointed to Duke of Leeds and the British Parliament directing the order scam.
• Joseph ordered Calonne and Mesmer to expand Lightning Company's activities in London and approved Mesmer's suggestions for the operation.
• Joseph promised to seek a pardon for Mesmer if the mission succeeded.
• In Austria, Lord Grenville met Duke of Leeds and blamed Harper's failed scheme for costing them 500,000 pounds sterling.

Lord Grenville reassured the Duke of Leeds about Britain’s failed economic sabotage of France and laid out plans to weaken French industry through Russian trade, American diplomacy, and unrest in Saint-Domingue. He sent the Duke to Philadelphia to negotiate with the United States and undermine France’s colonial interests.

• Grenville told the Duke of Leeds that the campaign against French industry had raised the cost of French goods and had worsened France’s relations with Austria and Italy.
• Grenville explained that Russia had agreed to expand raw-material exports to England and authorize British coal and iron mining in southern Donbas.
• Grenville asked the Duke of Leeds to travel to Philadelphia and win the United States away from France by offering to stop supporting Indian Tribes.
• Grenville urged the Duke of Leeds to encourage abolitionists and the people of the Second Tier in Saint-Domingue with weapons and funding to provoke an uprising against French rule.

Duke of Leeds and Lord Grenville discussed funding and plans to stir conflict in Saint-Domingue, then turned to efforts to push Kaunitz from Vienna’s political center. In Paris, August encouraged the rejected scholar Franz Achard, whose work on sugar beets caught Joseph’s attention and led him to recognize Achard’s potential.

• Lord Grenville told Duke of Leeds that Parliament had approved 200,000 Pound Sterling for Saint-Domingue and introduced him to Vincent Auge as a potential ally.
• Duke of Leeds suggested having Vincent Auge assassinated and blaming the French, and Grenville praised the plan.
• Duke of Leeds told Lord Grenville that Baron Walter’s faction was working to secure a Prussian-Austrian ceasefire but faced opposition from Kaunitz and the Pro-France Faction.
• August celebrated the Supreme Louis Prize while Franz Achard said the Talent Committee had rejected him and he planned to return to Bavaria.
• Joseph saw Franz Achard’s sugar beet research listed among unsuccessful applications and recognized his importance to the sugar industry.

Joseph argued that Sugar Beet sugar could protect France from an English blockade and undermine England’s dominance of the sugar trade. After summoning Franz Achard, he learned the crop contained just over eight percent sugar and asked him to develop a twelve-percent variety.

• Mathurin Jacques Brisson and Guillaume Bosquillon judged Sugar Beet sugar too costly and harmful to French sugar plantations.
• Joseph countered that a war with England could cut off Caribbean sugar shipments and leave France dependent on expensive imports.
• Joseph ordered Leroy to bring Franz Achard from the Old Eden Hotel and sent his carriage with him.
• Achard told Joseph that he had improved his teacher Dr. Marggraf’s sugar-extraction process and cultivated Sugar Beet with more than eight percent sugar content.
• Joseph asked how long it would take to breed a twelve-percent variety, and Achard vowed to achieve it within twenty years.

Joseph taught Achard and other biologists the basics of heredity and dominant and recessive genes, giving Achard a way to speed up sugar beet breeding. A week later, Achard received a D-rank talent invitation, but Bachi warned him to change hotels after Marian's brother left an invitation concerning her engagement.

• Joseph rejected Achard's estimate of twenty years and promised him three years to develop a new sugar beet variety.
• Joseph explained heredity and dominant and recessive traits to Achard, Brisson, and Bosque, who began applying the ideas to breeding.
• Achard realized how the theory could help him breed sugar beets with twelve-percent sugar content within three years.
• A week later, Dean Leroy told Achard that the Talent Committee had invited him at D-rank.
• Bachi told Achard to change hotels because Marian's elder brother had left an invitation about her engagement the following week.

After Marian chose Bourget over him, Achard buried his heartbreak in work and attended Viscount Diko’s ball, where he won the attention of Diko and his daughter Ariel. Weeks later, Marian learned that Achard was engaged to Ariel and saw the luxurious life she had turned down.

• Achard found Marian’s letter saying she had chosen Bourget, then moved his belongings to the French Academy of Sciences and worked through the night.
• Bachi persuaded Achard to attend Viscount Diko’s ball, where Achard learned he had been rated a D-rank talent and rode in a Gem Type 2 carriage.
• Viscount Diko spent the ball speaking with Achard, hoping to secure a connection to the inventor of sugar beet sugar-making technology.
• Diko introduced Achard to his daughter Ariel, who saw him off warmly when the ball ended.
• Marian and Bourget learned that Ariel was engaged to Franz Achard, and Schumann feared the groom was the same Achard Marian had rejected.
• Marian visited Achard’s luxurious Great Scholars Palace villa and regretted her brother’s role in her lost opportunity.

Marian Schumann fled after meeting Achard’s fiancée, Ariel, while France promoted Achard’s agricultural research and Sugar Beet cultivation. In Vienna, Talleyrand demanded compensation from Austria for a massive order scam, and Leopold II offered limited tariff concessions in exchange for important intelligence.

• Marian Schumann went to Achard’s villa hoping to rekindle their relationship, but fled after Ariel introduced herself as Achard’s fiancée.
• Achard received fifty mu of experimental fields and 120,000 Francs in research funding to develop agricultural breeding and Sugar Beet cultivation.
• Venio began promoting Sugar Beet in northern France, while Joseph and Queen Mary’s palace cooking competition helped spark public demand for it.
• Talleyrand demanded that Austria compensate French factories for 32.7 million Francs in losses caused by the Vienna Chamber of Commerce’s order scam.
• Leopold II offered tariff reductions in Southern Netherlands and Tuscany and promised Talleyrand important intelligence, while Talleyrand demanded that both regions accept Francs for trade.

Talleyrand secured French trade concessions from Austria and learned that Dutch banker Henry Harper had been blamed for the order scam. At the Cabinet Meeting, Kaunitz won authority to launch a new offensive in Silesia, but Austria's nobles blocked his proposed war tax even as troops gathered for the campaign.

• Talleyrand negotiated Franc settlement rights and tariff reductions in the Southern Netherlands and Tuscany, while Leopold II revealed that Henry Harper was behind the order scam.
• At the Cabinet Meeting, Kaunitz resisted calls for a ceasefire and promised to resign if his Silesian campaign failed.
• Leopold II authorized Kaunitz to plan a new offensive and choose front-line officers, after which newspapers and nobles celebrated him as the “Nemesis of Prussia.”
• Kaunitz ordered troops and supplies mobilized, and Marshal Lacy resumed bombardment of Prussian positions near Breslau.
• The Hungarian Noble Parliament rejected Kaunitz’s Special War Tax, while the Bohemian Parliament delayed collection until the middle of the next year.
• Hungarian, Bohemian, and Slavic troops joined Marshal Lacy’s forces, bringing his command in Silesia to 160,000 within a month.

Kaunitz faced a growing political and financial crisis as Austrian factions undermined his war preparations. Meanwhile, Joseph organized French surplus-goods sales abroad and decided to stimulate demand by targeting weddings.

• Hungarian nobles, bribed Bohemian nobles, Slavic groups, and Ludovica’s representative Baron Walter helped strengthen the armistice faction against Kaunitz.
• Kaunitz found that Austria lacked most of the funds and supplies needed for war and might be unable to pay its troops within three months.
• Joseph ordered the French Trade Alliance to sell surplus goods in the Southern Netherlands, Tuscany, and the German States while limiting purchase-price cuts.
• The Blue Sky Caravan trained its salesmen in energetic sales pitches to clear the stockpiled goods quickly.
• Bayei warned Joseph that foreign customers had limited purchasing power, so a second large shipment would be difficult to sell that year.
• Joseph decided to create demand for French goods by targeting people preparing to marry.