Wanting advice and help, unwilling to seek that of the reliable Ministers--and there were some honest and patriotic--the Duke asked Joseph Suess to assist him, and Suess was only too delighted to show him a way out of his difficulties. The redress of grievances was thrust aside, abuses were left uncorrected, and the Duke's attention was turned towards two main objects--the establishment of a standing army, and the upsetting of the old constitution. Würtemberg was then a state whose limits were not very extensive, nor did they lie within a ring fence. The imperial cities of Reutlingen, Ulm, Heilsbronn, Weil, and Gmünd were free. It might not be convenient for the Emperor to pay with hard cash for the troops the Duke had promised to furnish, but he might allow of the incorporation of these independent and wealthy cities in the duchy. Moreover, it was a feature of the times for the princes to seek to conquer fresh districts and incorporate them. France had recently snatched away Mompelgard from Würtemberg, and Charles Alexander recovered it. The duchy had suffered so severely from having been overrun by French troops that the Estates acquiesced, though reluctantly, in the Duke's proposal that a standing army should be maintained. Having obtained this concession, Suess instructed him how to make it a means of acquiring money, by calling men to arms who would be thankful to purchase their discharge. The army soon numbered 18,000 soldiers. His general-in-chief was Remchingen, a man who had served with him in the Imperial army and was devoted to his interests. The Duke placed his army under officers who were none of them Würtembergers. At the head of an army officered by his own creatures, the Duke hoped to carry his next purpose--the abrogation of the capitulation, and the conversion of the State from a constitutional to a despotic monarchy. Suess now became the Duke's most confidential adviser, and, guided by him, Charles Alexander got rid of all his Ministers and courtiers who would not become the assistants in this policy, and filled their places with creatures of his own, chief of whom was a fellow named Hallwachs. In order to paralyse the Assembly the Duke did not summon it to meet, and managed to pack the committee with men in his interest; for, curiously enough, the committee was not elected by the delegates, but itself elected into the vacancies created in it. By means of the committee the Duke imposed on the country in 1736 a double tax, and the grant of a thirtieth of all the fruits; and this was to last "as long as the necessities of the case required it."