Chapter Summaries

The Cabinet vote allowed Archbishop Brienne two more months to pass the Tax Law after Count Nicoé failed to support his dismissal. Duke of Orléans rallied nobles and High Court judges against the bill, while Joseph confronted an abusive supervisor at the Paris Business Daily warehouse.

• Queen Mary held a Cabinet vote, and Brienne remained Minister of Finance for two more months after Nicoé did not raise his hand against him.
• Duke of Orléans angrily left Versailles, blaming Nicoé for betraying him and predicting Brienne's bill would fail.
• Duke of Orléans gathered nobles and High Court judges, who agreed to block the Tax Law and welcomed his offered entertainment.
• Joseph visited the Paris Business Daily warehouse, stopped a supervisor from striking a worker, and docked the supervisor three days' wages.

Joseph visited the Paris Business Daily’s Warehouse, improved its workers’ conditions, and advised Denico on making the pamphlet headlines more provocative. He then met Marat under the alias Mr. Xavier, hoping to enlist the influential journalist in his struggle against the High Court.

• Joseph ordered Denico to provide the workers with free lanolin and an extra week’s wages during the coldest month.
• Joseph learned that thirty thousand copies of each pamphlet had been printed and told Denico to sell them at cost.
• Joseph criticized the pamphlet articles and suggested sensational new headlines to attract readers.
• Denico introduced Joseph, posing as Mr. Xavier, to Marat, whose article about the Tax Law had appeared in the newspaper.
• Joseph praised Marat as a true Freedom Fighter, and Marat affirmed his commitment to justice and the rights of the French people.

Joseph persuaded Marat to join him in attacking the High Court, then ordered the Police Intelligence Division to investigate its judges and nobles allied with Brienne. The High Court’s leaders moved to suppress the critical newspaper articles, sending Publication Police to a newspaper office.

• Joseph convinced Marat that the High Court was corrupt and urged him to expose its crimes alongside him.
• Joseph ordered Fouche and the Police Intelligence Division to investigate the High Court’s Grand Justices, important officials, and nobles supporting Brienne’s dismissal.
• Joseph instructed Fouche to supply Marat with information about the High Court through informants.
• Grand Justice Vezinier berated the news-review official over articles criticizing the High Court and ordered Rene to find a pretext to shut down a newspaper office.
• More than thirty Publication Police arrived at a newspaper office carrying clubs and shields.

Marat and Desmoulins helped expose the High Court’s corruption through pamphlets and speeches, sparking mass protests in Paris. As the crowds grew, the head of a theater troupe decided to stage a free street performance based on the injustices.

• At Madame Valville’s salon, Marat denounced the High Court and urged Desmoulins to reveal what he knew about its judges.
• Desmoulins sent manuscripts describing real cases of judicial bribery to newspaper offices, and pamphleteers printed and circulated them across Paris.
• The stories provoked public fury, and citizens gathered outside the High Court while women supplied food and water and speakers read scripts written by Marat.
• After hearing a speech about Miss Anger, the head of the troupe that had performed "Refining the Firmament" decided to rehearse a play and stage it for free on the streets.

The Duke of Orléans summoned two writers to counter the cheap pamphlets attacking the High Court, while the court struggled to find police willing to disperse the protesters. Mirabeau traveled to an important meeting despite his misgivings about facing the Crown Prince and Brienne.

• Fouche scolded the Intelligence Team for failing to uncover information before the pamphlets exposed the High Court judges and gave them ten days to produce results.
• Vezinier and Viscount Dibore blamed the pamphlets for turning public opinion against the High Court, then left to seek help from the Royal Palace and Police Department.
• The Duke of Orléans asked two writers to create pamphlets more compelling than their rivals’ and resolved to compete despite the financial losses.
• Vezinier searched for police support but found key officials absent or unavailable, and spent three days failing to catch Police Commissioner Alden.
• Mirabeau traveled to a meeting at Mr. DuPont’s insistence, uneasy because he had recently joined a gathering denouncing Brienne and knew the Crown Prince supported him.

At a paper mill, Joseph tried to win Mirabeau over by arguing that Capitalist Aristocrats and Old Nobles were natural enemies, and that the royal family could protect industry by introducing modern laws. The chapter left Mirabeau intrigued as Joseph began explaining patent law.

• Mirabeau met Joseph at a paper mill, where Joseph said he had come to be his friend rather than on Archbishop Brienne’s behalf.
• Joseph argued that Mirabeau’s allies, the Old Nobles, were his enemies because their interests in land and labor conflicted with those of Capitalist Aristocrats.
• Joseph warned that overthrowing the royal family would lead to a deadly struggle between the new and old nobles.
• Joseph claimed the royal family could remove obstacles to capitalist development and began outlining a Company Law.
• Joseph introduced Patent Law by describing how others could copy a person’s invention or popular design.

Joseph tried to win Mirabeau and the Capitalist Aristocrats over to the Tax Law by arguing that it mainly burdened the Old Nobles and offering a renegotiated Eden Treaty. He then demonstrated his timber-based papermaking process, leaving Mirabeau astonished by the possibility of producing paper from wood.

• Joseph explained to Mirabeau that the Land Tax would affect the Old Nobles far more than the Capitalist Aristocrats, and that the low Stamp Duty mainly formalized contracts.
• Joseph promised to renegotiate the Eden Treaty, raising French tariffs on British industrial goods to 25% while lowering United Kingdom tariffs on alcohol below 10%.
• Mirabeau said he would discuss the offer with Viscount Diko, Viscount Pellier, and other Capitalist Aristocrats.
• Joseph showed Mirabeau timber being boiled into pulp and instructed workers to filter and bleach it.
• Workers spread the pulp across screens, and Mirabeau stared at the thin film of material, realizing the method might produce paper from timber.

Joseph demonstrated wood-based papermaking to Mirabeau and offered him and his political allies a chance to invest in paper mills, linking the venture to support for the Tax Law. Meanwhile, public anger at corrupt officials grew as a play mocked them, while Weijinie rejected Brienne’s revised Tax Law at the High Court.

• Joseph showed Mirabeau a rough sheet of wood paper and explained that the new method could sharply reduce paper costs.
• Joseph offered Mirabeau and his allies a share in a paper-making venture, with the papermaking technology as his contribution, and Mirabeau agreed to arrange a meeting about investment and the Tax Law.
• Mirabeau returned the next day with three nobles to visit Joseph’s workshop, and Archbishop Brienne arrived soon afterward.
• A crowd cheered a play across from the Paris High Court that portrayed a corrupt Ottoman judge dying after eating poisoned cake, then denounced the judges inside the court.
• Weijinie dismissed Brienne’s revised Tax Law and declared that it could not be registered.

Dibore tried to secure a vote to register the Tax Law, but Vezinier used his authority to stop it despite several judges’ support. After Alexis alerted the Duke of Orléans to the division in the High Court, Joseph learned the bill had been blocked and considered how to overcome the delay.

• Dibore urged the councillor-judges to vote on the Tax Law, and three judges initially supported registering it.
• Vezinier threatened Judges Aulard and Vadier with the displeasure of powerful nobles, then adjourned the meeting before the bill could pass.
• The Duke of Orléans criticized Laclos’s and Brisot’s pamphlet contributions and summoned the Assembly of Notables after Alexis reported the vote at the High Court.
• Joseph read an unsigned letter explaining that Vezinier had used his position to block the Tax Law and worried that he could not wait two years for the next presidential election.

Joseph went to the Police Intelligence Division to find leverage against High Court president Weijinie before the Tax Law deadline. Fouche showed him extensive intelligence about Weijinie’s corruption, but admitted that there was no solid evidence to prove the accusations.

• Joseph decided to seek Fouche’s help, then traveled to Paris for his tactical command class and visited the Police Intelligence Division.
• Fouche presented Joseph with files detailing Weijinie’s background, connections, household, and history of taking bribes and making unjust rulings.
• Fouche explained that much of the information came from scattered records, Marat, intercepted letters, and maids he had cultivated.
• Joseph asked whether the letters could serve as evidence, and Fouche said that anything usable to accuse Weijinie had likely already been destroyed.
• Joseph asked if Weijinie could be arrested immediately, but Fouche could not provide solid evidence to support the accusation.

Joseph devised a scheme to use Vareilles and Viscount Monterey to bait Weijinie into producing evidence of his crimes. A Police Intelligence Division agent posing as Monterey’s cousin gained the couple’s trust and headed to the Paris High Court to begin the plan.

• Joseph realized he could manufacture an opportunity for Weijinie to create evidence and ordered handwriting experts to imitate Weijinie’s and Vareilles’s writing.
• Joseph sent Fouche’s agents to Caen to investigate Vareilles and arrange the scheme.
• Several days later, agent Lange posed as Viscount Monterey’s cousin and offered to help him influence the judge handling Lunache’s case.
• Lange questioned the Monterey couple about the case, then traveled to the Paris High Court.

Lange and the Police Intelligence Division deceived Judge Weijinie into believing that Viscount Vareilles supported a bribe to help Lunache, while they gathered evidence of the judge’s corruption. Weijinie accepted the money and agreed to help, but Lunache’s case returned to court before his final sentence was revealed.

• Lange delivered Vareilles's letter asking Weijinie to reduce Lunache's punishment, and Weijinie demanded forty thousand livres to help him escape conviction.
• Bruno traveled to Caen and visited a staged Vareilles residence, where he received a reply confirming the supposed arrangement.
• Monterey's family raised over thirty thousand livres, and Lange supplied the remaining six thousand five hundred.
• Lange arranged for a doctor to declare a key witness mentally unwell, while Weijinie accepted the payment and burned the correspondence.
• Weijinie told Lange he would help Victor, then wrote Vareilles a lengthy account of his efforts and the money he had received.
• Lunache's case returned to court five days later, and Weijinie warned that the witnesses would be difficult to handle.

Danton exposed Judge Weijinie's letters proving he had accepted bribes to free Lunache, prompting a public outcry and a Royal Plenipotentiary Court trial. The letters found in Weijinie's home confirmed his corruption, and he lay badly injured as the case was heard.

• Weijinie declared Lunache not guilty, but Danton interrupted the verdict and produced letters implicating the judge in bribery.
• Danton read the letters aloud, escaped the courtroom, and rallied the crowd outside the High Court to demand a public trial.
• Brienne promised that the Royal Plenipotentiary Court would hear Weijinie's case publicly, and Weijinie later tried to flee in disguise.
• Marat led a crowd that dragged Weijinie from his carriage and beat him before the police intervened.
• The Royal Plenipotentiary Court examined the letters Danton provided and found matching correspondence in Weijinie's home, confirming that he had taken bribes to free Lunache.

After Weijinie was convicted, public pressure and Queen Mary’s edict gave the Plenipotentiary Court authority over his case. The Tax Law passed, and Joseph urged the court to retry Weijinie’s past cases harshly; its first retrial began the next day.

• Vadier finalized Weijinie’s conviction as crowds demanded judicial authority for the Plenipotentiary Court.
• Dibore, Vadier, and two other judges approved the Tax Law, while Luau abstained.
• Queen Mary signed an edict granting the Plenipotentiary Court authority over Weijinie’s cases and told Brienne to disperse the protesters.
• Joseph urged three Plenipotentiary Court judges to punish Weijinie severely and quickly overturn his past rulings.
• The public trial resumed the next day, and the Plenipotentiary Court overturned a case from three years earlier within half an hour.

The Royal Plenipotentiary Court retried Weijinie's cases and sentenced him to decapitation, while newspapers and public protests turned against the High Court. Joseph and Brienne secured Queen Mary’s signature on a bill subordinating the High Court to a renamed Royal Supreme Court, and the chapter ended as the High Court’s councilors confronted the bill.

• The Royal Plenipotentiary Court retried eleven cases involving Weijinie and sentenced him to decapitation.
• Marat, Denico, and other writers spread articles attacking the High Court as Paris debated its conduct.
• Joseph and Brienne presented Queen Mary with a bill giving the Royal Plenipotentiary Court authority to supervise the High Court and removing the High Court’s control over news censorship.
• Queen Mary signed the bill and sent it to Louis XVI for his signature and seal.
• Five key councilors at the Paris High Court gathered to consider the bill threatening the court’s authority.

The judges approved a bill placing the High Court under the Royal Supreme Court, while Parisians celebrated the King’s intervention. With the High Court no longer obstructing him, Joseph focused on France’s looming famine and debt crisis and planned to take control of industrial policy.

• Dibore, Judge Count Vadier, Gret, and Viscount Aulard reluctantly voted to register the bill overseeing the High Court.
• The Assembly of Notables passed the bill, including a clause removing the High Court’s authority over news censorship agencies.
• Parisians praised the King and the Plenipotentiary Court, and newspapers began publishing favorable accounts of the royal family.
• Joseph considered the coming famine, France’s limited funds and grain supply, and the debt crisis, concluding that industrial growth was essential.
• Joseph decided to negotiate with Mono to take over industrial policy and approached him at a ball in Versailles Palace.

Joseph persuaded Mono to surrender the Ministry of Interior’s industrial jurisdiction in exchange for managing new patent and publication institutions, while Archbishop Brienne used a scandal in the judiciary to push for Sumiyar’s dismissal. The chapter ended with Louis XVI reading praise for his Royal Supreme Court law and taking pride in its success.

• Joseph met Mono at a dance and offered him control of a News and Publication Bureau and Patent Bureau if he gave up jurisdiction over industry.
• Joseph proposed a printing workshop using cheaper picture-printing technology, with Mono receiving most of the profits for seven years.
• At the Cabinet Meeting, Count Monod called for Count Sumiyar’s dismissal over the High Court bribery scandal.
• Duke of Orléans defended Sumiyar, but Queen Mary supported Brienne’s dismissal proposal as Brienne pressed for further judicial investigation.
• Louis XVI read a newspaper praising his Royal Supreme Court law and congratulated himself on handling state affairs well.

The Crown Prince’s proposals reshaped the Cabinet meeting as Queen Mary approved a new justice minister and a bureau to control news publications. Joseph then won support to reopen trade negotiations with England, though the chapter ended as Brienne began introducing patent and company laws.

• Sumiyar left the Conference Hall in humiliation, and Queen Mary asked Brienne to recommend a successor as Minister of Justice.
• Brienne recommended Baron de Breteuil, and Queen Mary agreed to meet with him later.
• Brienne proposed a News and Publication Bureau led by Count Monod, and Queen Mary signed the measure.
• Joseph persuaded Queen Mary and the ministers to resume trade negotiations with England, despite the Duke of Orléans’s doubts.
• Brienne presented negotiation goals involving lower English tariffs on French alcohol, reduced French industrial tariffs, a joint fleet against smuggling, and English wool sales to Le Havre.
• Brienne began presenting the Crown Prince’s proposals for Patent Law and Company Law.

Joseph took charge of the new Industrial Planning Bureau and weighed how to raise enough money to buy grain before the coming famine. Meanwhile, a thief stole documents from Duke of Orléans's archives and escaped into Joseph’s carriage, where Joseph held him at swordpoint.

• Brienne proposed an Industrial Planning Bureau, and Joseph volunteered to manage it.
• Joseph established the bureau in a house in Paris and calculated that France needed at least sixty million Livres to buy enough grain for 1788.
• Duke of Orléans learned that the British Parliament had agreed in principle to lower tariffs on French alcohol imports and reacted with disbelief.
• A thief escaped the Royal Palace with documents stolen from Duke of Orléans's archives while guards pursued him through Paris.
• The thief leapt into Joseph's carriage and attacked, but Joseph pressed a short sword to his throat.

Joseph rescued the wounded thief Anna Soleil from the Royal Palace guards and learned she had stolen debt documents to protect the Lenoir family. Before disappearing, Soleil revealed that Philip was working with the British Ambassador and that French banks were investing heavily in British industry; Joseph then arrived at the Industrial Planning Bureau to review France’s industrial situation.

• Joseph discovered that the masked thief was Anna Soleil, who had stolen promissory notes and contracts connected to Philip’s debts with Mr. Lenoir and his partners.
• Joseph promised to consider letting Soleil go if she gave her real name, and Eman identified her as Viscount Frez’s younger sister.
• Eman convinced the Royal Palace guards to let Joseph’s carriage pass without searching it.
• Soleil told Joseph that Philip had discussed British involvement in his negotiations and plans to sideline Archbishop Brienne, and that French banks had finalized fifteen million livres of investments in Britain while seeking to invest another ten million in automatic looms.
• Soleil returned her rapier, thanked Joseph, and vanished into the night, while Joseph resolved that the financial world needed a thorough cleanup.
• Joseph arrived at the Industrial Planning Bureau and found the documents he had requested on France’s industrial situation waiting on his desk.