Black Iron’s Glory

Chapter 518 Appointment and Trusteeship

The demise of the Kingdom of Nasseri and the Principality of Kanas sparked a dramatic wave in the countries of the Farea continent, because the news meant that the Kingdom of Ovieras had dominated at least nominally the eastern part of the entire Farea continent and had become a veritable dominant power in the continent. National military experts and war historians, while studying the new types of weapons and military changes brought about by the two regiments of overseas autonomous territories, also called the war the Second Eastern War.

It is undeniable that the Kingdom of Ovieras can defeat from the brink of annihilation, unifying the entire eastern region because of the participation of two regiments from the Overseas Autonomous Territories. With the passage of time and the strenuous efforts of national agents, new rifles and new types of artillery, equipped with the Thunder Corps and the Rock Corps, have gained more attention.

The loss of damaged weapons on the battlefield during the war was inevitable, and the fragments and wreckage of many new rifles had been induced to fall under the control of agents sent by a number of countries at high prices. In fact, with the appearance of the new rifles, it is not difficult to deduce the mechanical construction of the entire rifle from the wreckage of these rifles.

Just like the Kingdom of Riznia in the southern part of the continent, it soon declared the development of a new type of rifle, a new type that pulls a bolt and reloads a bullet. It looks very similar to the Sonia 91, and is laughably referred to as a single-shot rifle...

The problem, however, is that, although the Kingdom of Riznia was the first country in the Farea continent to announce the development of a new type of rifle, it has not yet announced when it will replace the Royal Army with a new type of rifle. Obviously, like the rest of the countries studying new weapons, new rifles are easy to deal with, but bullet launchers are the biggest challenge.

Even if several rifle rounds produced by the Overseas Autonomous Territories fell into the hands of other countries, those countries would not be able to analyse the formulation of the launcher from the tiny dot of launcher at the bottom of the bullet. Instead of launching pills, it's not without them, just like the revolvers and revolver shotguns produced by the four military industries in the Kingdom of Orvillas, whose bullets are made of flare wafers at very high prices.

If the Kingdom were to equip two regiments of 120,000 horses with new rifles, and each of the Kingdom's soldiers was equipped with fifty rounds of crystal wafers for the firing of submarine fire rifles, the Kingdom could declare bankruptcy directly. A new type of rifle, not counting bullets, costs about five to seven times as much as a rope gun, which is a heavy financial burden for any country, and it would be less cheap and practical to have a new type of rifle without bullets alone.

Just like the old-fashioned aristocratic families in the kingdom of Orvillas, they have also concentrated their efforts on imitating a new type of rifle called the Texton 600, which is equally difficult to pour before the rifle bullets are fired. But they went another way, writing to the better spoken General Bolognick, hoping to buy the required rifle bullets from the Overseas Autonomous Territories. The first batch required 10 million rounds, demanding a reasonable price from the Overseas Autonomous Territories.

Following negotiations between General Bolognick and Claude, a Riasso bullet was opened at a high price. Ten million rounds of new rifle ammunition, 10 million riazos, equals one million silver tall, or 200,000 gold crowns. If it's a firewire gun, 10 million guns plus gunpowder will do it for about 20,000 silver tall. Now Claude, the price they quoted made it difficult for the old aristocratic family, but the Overseas Autonomous Territory refused to bargain with them...

In addition to this, the New Year's Eve Hall of the Kingdom of Orvillas, 6001 Holy Light, had a great deal of wind when it came to negotiating a replacement for Claude as the chief officer in charge of the Nasserley region. No royal minister was willing to go to the Nasri region to take up the position of competent official, and even forcibly appointed ministers and officials quickly sought an excuse to resign from their posts in the Nasri region.

Either on the grounds of old age, incapacity, or sudden illness or falling from horses and stairs injuries, they were unable to go to bed. So many newspapers have published gambling announcements. One is that the King's court can't match the number of chief executives who go to the Nasserley region. The second is that there are no other reasons and excuses for gambling that have not been used by the chosen officials. The whole King is excited to see the King's jokes...

No one is an idiot, and if there is no executive in a county in the mainland of the kingdom, then everyone who breaks their heads in order to seize the position. If you can go to the Nasri region to serve as a local administrative officer, then you are excused. Because the position is unpleasant, and probably even fatal, the position of local administrator is simply sitting on a powder drum that's already lit with fire rope and doesn't know when it's going to explode.

Anyone with a clear mind knows that this time of employment in the Nasseri region is risking their lives. First, the Kingdom of Nasserli has existed for centuries as a deadly enemy of the Kingdom of Ovilas, with five wars between the two sides and deep blood feuds. The attitude of civil hostility and hatred towards the kingdom of Ovilas in the Nasserli region will not end with the demise of the kingdom of Nasserli, but will most likely increase in intensity.

Secondly, civilian administrative officers, not military posts, were appointed without the protection of the guards. Knowing that the Nasserli region has just begun, those parts of the kingdom that are not in the mainland of the county are too peaceful to take up their duties with their families. As a local administrator, even if you hire an escort to take office at your own expense, you will soon be the target of assassinations and murders before you are exposed to the people of Nasserli, who are hiding hostility...

And thirdly, and most importantly, a thousand miles as an official is only for money. The problem is that going to the Nasri region at this time, instead of being wealthy, is life threatening, so that no one is willing to take up their duties understandably. Although both kingdoms are in the eastern region, national circumstances are different. The Kingdom of Ovieras is an enlightened parliamentary system, abolishing territorial nobility, forming a House of Lords and a National Assembly, abbreviated as the Upper House of Lords, and popularizing civic education in the Kingdom itself.

The policy of the Kingdom of Ovillas to form a House of Lords, supervise the House of Lords and mediate with the King in the centre, basically ensures the stability of the Kingdom's political situation. Because the kingdom's military power is nominally in the hands of the king, the military and political separation, and the administrative affairs of the kingdom are handled by the Prime Minister of the Cabinet. The political landscape, for which the Prime Minister is accountable to and subject to the supervision of the House of Lords, has a very clear contribution to the economic development of the entire kingdom in peacetime. Except, of course, for strange kings like Sterling XI.

The kingdom of Nasserli, on the other hand, is completely different. It is still an ancient feudal lordship, or it can be said that the kingdom of Nasserli is an allied nation of feudal lords large and small. The big and small lords hold together to warm up together. The great lords negotiate to solve any major national problems. The Nasserli royal family is just one of the most powerful territorial nobles. The kingdoms of Nasserley and Hicks, Kanas and several other extinct principalities are the same, so they will form an anti-Olympic alliance, hostile to and against the kingdom of Ovilas.

The entire kingdom of Nasserli, apart from the territories under the direct authority of the Nasserli royal family, is a serfdom practised by the inhabitants of other aristocratic territories. Apart from the free people, most of the inhabitants and civilians are actually very poor and destitute. To say the least, their lives and deaths are in the hands of their lords. Even what they grow this year and what they do to fill their bellies is up to the lords, and it is not their turn to make their own decisions.

The Legion of Thunder could be said to have almost swept the entire kingdom of Nasri, targeting the nobles of those territories, as well as the local officials they appointed and the private arming of the nobles of those territories. That's why so much money and gold and silver equipment was scratched. In the Battle of Polyviria, these scratched gold and silver equipment were stored everywhere in the western district of Wangcheng, and the Allied army officers and soldiers who lured them into the city messed up for the sake of wealth, and the people of Uhe were easily annihilated.

The well-informed ministers of the royal court naturally knew that the kingdom of Nasserli, which had been exterminated by the Legion of Thunder, had made a fortune and was said to have received 20 to 30 million gold kroner. But their eyes are useless, and these trophies are what the Thunder Regiment and the Rock Regiment deserve. The seizure of the treasury of the Kingdom of Nasseri, such as the Crown Prince, has the right to inquire and to ask two regiments of the Overseas Autonomous Territories to dedicate part of the seizure to the Crown Prince. However, the property seized from the territory's aristocratic private armies and private territories, that is, officers and soldiers belonging to both regiments, did not need to be donated to the King's Court.

The war has been going on for years, not to mention the fact that the treasury of the Kingdom of Ovilas is starving to death, even the rich kingdom of Nasserli is about to run out of mountains. This can be seen in the nearly two million gold and silver reserves seized by their treasury. For the Kingdom of Auvellas, the greatest benefit of the demise of the Kingdom of Nasseri was the forgiveness of that enormous debt of eight million gold kroner. Although Frederie I decided to rely on the debt war between the two countries when it broke out, it was not always as comfortable to chop the debtor to death. Well, the kingdom of Nasserli is gone, and so is the debt.

Now that the nobles of those territories of the kingdom of Nasserli have been cleansed by the Legion of Thunder, the biggest fat sheep have been slaughtered, the rest are the bitter serfs and civilians, and there is no oil in their bones, maybe they will have to pay their own pockets to feed them. So get out of the way of going to the Nasserly region and risking your life without a chance to get rich. Officials in the Kingdom of Auvellas are realistic, and they are starting to boycott the need to go to the Nasserly region...

Generally, the best way to exterminate a country's newly occupied territory is to introduce a system of military control, remove the insurgents and rebels from the newly occupied territory in a period of three to five years, wait for the people of the newly occupied territory to calm down and become accustomed to the domination of the conquerors, and then gradually begin a policy of homeland in the newly occupied territory, assimilating the hearts and minds of the people of the newly occupied territory and slowly transforming it into a county of the same place as the homeland of the Kingdom.

But for the present kingdom of Ovieras, it is very difficult to enforce military control. The first was the lack of money, and the deployment of troops in the newly occupied territories was costly in order to suppress the place. The Kingdom of Ovilas would not have been able to sustain itself had it not relied on overseas self-government to provide substantial material and military support to the Royal Court.

Just as now the King relies on the Legion of Thunder and the Rock Legion to destroy the kingdoms of Nasseri and Kanas, he is powerless. So like the former Duchy of Eskirin, the Duchy of Rimodra and the Duchy of Siddins, three areas long recovered by the Legion of Thunder, the reason Wang Ting is too late to send troops to take over is because he has no money. As for the dispatch of officials, it is also inexplicable that these areas are the rebellion of the former kingdom, the territory of the power of the Grand Prince Hansburg, it is really dangerous to go to the local administration officials...

Second, the kingdom now has three legions, the Guardian Corps, the Red Dragon Corps and the Lion Vulture Corps. Although they all belong to the old-fashioned aristocratic family forces, they are also divided into three factions, which are different from each other for the Royal Army Ministry. The Guardian Corps is his own son, and the Red Dragon Corps and the Lizard Corps are disobedient rebels and bastards who need repression and lessons.

While the attitude of the old aristocratic family towards the outside world is consistent, there are also great contradictions within. On the side of the Guardian Regiment, who thinks he is a successful and arrogant leader of Frederick I, he did not see those two regiments in his eyes. The Red Dragon Legion and the Lizard Legion tend to stand on their own because of their invisibility, so that the orders issued by the Royal Ministry of the Army are ignored by both regiments. Want to instruct us, that's easy, to refill the military and armaments...

The rebuilding of the new regiment had no money, and the Guardian regiment could not be dispatched. As for the Red Dragon and the Lizard regiment, those were the two lords, and the lack of money prevented them from being called. In addition, it is not reassuring to let them implement the military administration, fearing that after a long period of time their military administration in the Nasserli region will become a real tiger, which will become their territory, and will not listen to them later, like warlords, and will be peeled in the future.

So Frederie I and the Marquis Blancat, Prime Minister of the King, were also very difficult, not knowing what to do. The conditions of military control were inadequate, and the dispatch of local administrators was boycotted, arguing that sending them to serve there would be a death sentence. There was no choice but to send a message to General Bolognick and Claude, meaning that all the newly occupied territories would be temporarily guarded by two regiments from the Overseas Autonomous Territories, awaiting the King's subsequent arrangements.

Claude was ridiculous when he received this hawk message from Wang Ting. I didn't think a kingdom in the parish would cheat to such a point, which is also possible. It is a good thing that the Rock Legion and Thunder Legion left the mainland of the kingdom, avoiding the whirlpool of power there in Wangdu, and also the power of annihilation, so you don't have to worry about your status. What the two regiments in the Overseas Autonomous Territories are now going to do is to govern without doing anything, and let it go.

In fact, the Nasserli area, formerly under the Royal Nasserli administration, handled some better, 30% of the tax revenues, and the rest was handled by the local elders themselves, enough for the inhabitants of those towns and villages to rejoice. Because the Nasserly royal tax rate was half, and there was one month of hard labour every year. The abolition of hard labour and a 20 per cent reduction in tax revenues are indeed benevolent for people who are honest about their families.

In the remaining aristocratic territories of the Connasserie region, this is not a good idea. Civilians and colonists there are serf-like, and without their lords they cannot even feed themselves. Because they have no means of production, no land, no seeds, they belong to the very poor. Together with the Second Eastern Regional War, many of the young and powerful in the territories were forcibly recruited into the battlefield, and the remaining women and children were simply unable to feed themselves and their families.

Without their lords, their lives could not be guaranteed. So don't look at King Ting and Frederick I entrusting the entire Nasserley region to General Bolognick and Claude, actually placing a heavy burden on them. The best way to deal with it was to divide those Territories between means of production and seeds of food, so that all could feed themselves.

Claude, however, did not do so because he did not have the authority to distribute those lands, which would otherwise belong to the nobility of the Territory, to those colonists and civilians. Without the Lord, these lands belong to the Sterling royal family, and Claude could not have done so without the permission of Frederie I. So Claude had to send troops, and every noble territory had randomly found an original local official to assign responsibility for arranging production and taxation in the territory.

Prime Minister Blancat sent another private letter to General Bolognick, which revealed rewards for both General Bolognick and Claude. Both General Claude and General Bolognick will be promoted to the rank of Kingdom Marshal, while Claude will be named the Heritage Duke of the Kingdom, and General Bolognick will be named the Heritage Count of the Kingdom. As for General Beechlin and General Albert, the same rank was promoted to the first rank and awarded to the Heritage Baron of the Kingdom.

Unlike the unexpected General Bolognick, Claude had no excitement at all, which was unexpected. Now that His Majesty has no money in his pocket, he can only use these dishonest honors to hold his own. Just as he promised the Thunder Regiment and the Rock Regiment that officers and soldiers would receive rich rewards, because of the lack of money in the treasury, these rewards were temporarily placed in the Royal Army Department before being released when military spending became wealthy.

Like he didn't say, just like Claude was given the hereditary duke of the kingdom. So what? There's nothing more than a name, a hereditary title that future generations can inherit. Claude also received a generous pension from the royal family when he was alive, and when he was gone, his descendants would have to pay the royal family a royal debt each year if they wanted to inherit the title. Otherwise, the title will be demoted, from the Duke to the Marquis, to the Count, and so on. Of course, this commitment is not much...

It's actually like a business done by the royal family and its noblemen. You stand up for great merit, and the royal family gives you the title, and gives you a generous pension. But in order to preserve this title, your descendants will have to pay the royal family a royal royal debt every year, which is the same as a royal loan, except that your descendants are repaying the loan. If this hereditary title would have survived III, your royal pension would have been taken back with interest from your offspring...