74 – Great Leap (7)

The politics of a village chief ruling a village, the politics of a bailiff ruling over 1,000 to 2,000 people, the politics of a knight with a large territory, and the politics of a baron who has built his own power all have completely different ideal directions.

The village headman is called ‘the best’ just by taking the initiative and setting an example, feeling like a big brother hanging out with them.

Bayleaf is required to act like an authoritative teacher who mediates disputes between villages.

When the village chiefs fight over small interests, they have to reconcile by sometimes arguing and sometimes scolding each other.

At the same time, he has to think about whether to properly discipline and reform those who violate minor rules, or send them to his superior, a knight with a large territory, to receive appropriate punishment.

In addition, ‘motivation’ must be encouraged in order to carry out the instructions of a knight with a large estate like the headmaster to the ‘serfs’ who are students.

The criterion for their competency is ‘the ability to reconcile quarreling people and isolate troublemakers’.

In the case of knights with large estates, it is their role to govern the bailiffs that represent the interests of the people in the area where hundreds or thousands of people live.

Sometimes you have to make the people of the territory follow your heart by giving more grace than you thought, and there are times when you have to set the law by killing your subordinates without mercy.

As administrators, their role is to ‘judge the idiots who steal other people’s money and not touch the kids who make money’.

Their role is to be a fair and fair ‘judge and administrator concurrently with lawyers and prosecutors’.

Barons play the role of knights on a scale that is 5 to 10 times larger, but as politicians, they have the duty to present the most important ‘direction for the citizens’.

When you become a baron, you have to think about where and how to defend your knights, how to gather soldiers, and how to make the countless nobles and citizens of our land live a more prosperous life.

Not only that, but when the territory is in crisis, sometimes you have to take full responsibility and go to war to protect the territory.

In addition, they have the duty to seize the final personnel rights of all officials above the village chief and arrange them according to their status, title, ability, and age.

These people are required to play a role as a ‘mayor’ with strong autonomy in our country.

Finally, the count plays the role of the baron, but is given two roles that are dramatically different from them.

One is the ‘ability to tolerate doubt’, which allows you to entrust full power over a part of your territory to a competent subordinate.

Even the baron can hold all the most important personnel, military, and financial powers of all territories under the premise that he is very competent.

Because if I work a little more, I can take over all the really important budget and personnel rights.

However, it is impossible for me alone to handle a huge territory of 2 million people and 200 km in width and 190 km in height.

Even if he tried to do that, he would go down in history as an idiot who was buried in papers like King Felipe II and couldn’t properly deal with the papers that claimed a rebellion had taken place.

Even then, the nobleman must have missed the time to deal with the rebellion because he was carrying out the budget for a monastery in a rural village with about 1,000 people.

Overall, as a king, he is a very good person, but he missed the time of suppressing the rebellion because of a trivial paperwork…

Therefore, in order not to fail as an ideal monarch, or rather as a ruler, you need the ability to endure doubts even if you do not trust your subordinates.

If you can’t hold back doubts and work a lot, you’ll be like King Felipe II, and if you can’t hold back doubts and entrust work, you’ll be like your ancestors during the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592.

There is a story that Admiral Yi Sun-sin took off his armor and committed suicide because of King Seonjo.

Second, as a completely independent country, the ability to fight diplomatic battles.

In terms of our country, a nobleman who is only a provincial governor may think that it is a diplomatic battle that will freeze to death.

In a similar context, when the war was intense, there were many cases where Franchi’s ‘captives’ also fought as the Elaine Imperial Army the day after surrender.

So, a nobleman of count or higher must have the ability to judge and take a diplomatically independent stance.

And today, I called my father into the office to lay the foundation for my first performance as a count.

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Just like that, around the time I finished filling out the ‘order from sergeant -＞ second lieutenant and promotion to captain’ or higher, my father burst through the door and asked.

“So, how did the negotiations with Her Highness go?”

Normally, during ‘public time’, he knocks on the door and asks for permission to come in, but since it was a matter of Yeongji’s life and death, he doesn’t pay attention to such trivial things.

Seeing my father like that, I smiled brightly and said,

“It’s a success. Of all the territories, including Nantes, Hellsmann, and Creutel, we were able to form an equal alliance without giving up a single piece of land.”

Hearing that, my father smiled broadly and shook my hand, forgetting his chest, and said,

“Ciel, is that true? How was he able to form an alliance like that without giving away even a piece of land to His Highness?

As my father said, in normal cases, even if the justification on our side is clear, if the master’s territory is usurped, the territory will be offered and approved in exchange for acquiescence.

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Just as Japan arbitrarily distributed various benefits to powers such as the United States, Britain, and Russia when it invaded Korea while slowly eating away at it.

And the duke also requested the barony of Crescent for the second time in that context.

So I made a face full of bravado and replied.

“My family doesn’t have a lot of money, right? So I used that gold coin to persuade the Count of Calais in France, the Count of Romellia in Elaine, and the Marquis of Amiens and declare that we will open a siege. Then they kindly backed down.”

“You’re my son, but you’re really a guy who just jumped out of the boat. How dare you threaten the Duke in reverse.”

“Well, well, I’ll give you the daughter of the duke, so we made a marriage alliance, and I told you to visit me every year and talk about Elaine’s future.”

After hearing that, my father replied with a puzzled expression, just like when I first heard about this contract from the duke.

“Only nominally, it is the best treatment to marry a princess to a poor count, but if you look behind the scenes, isn’t it a story that they will gradually turn our family into their vassals using that as an excuse? Such a proposal to us, who have risen to the level of arguing for supremacy…”

“Aren’t you crossing the line?”

“Still, didn’t he say he would give the daughter of the duke? It turned out well because he refused… let’s just think of it as being too much of a request. Anyway, even though we rejected the princess, the duke personally proposed an ‘alliance’. It’s like I’ve declared to Europe that I’m strong.”

According to what my father said, we appealed as powerful nobles who were offered an alliance even though we rejected the marriage alliance of the ‘duke’.

No matter what the intention was, even at the point of receiving the offer, there was enough profit.

So I replied with a smile.

“It’s really my father. I can’t believe you’re thinking this far.”

“No, if it were me, I wouldn’t have been able to form an alliance with the duke in this situation like you, Ciel, without giving away a piece of the field. By the way, what are you going to do with the non-gong peddler?”

Hearing that, I handed out to my father a scroll with a summary of his work.

After a while, my father received it, read it, and said with a serious expression.

“It makes sense to give Frost the Baroniality of Hiber and 10 surrounding villages, and the Barondom of Circleland to Balt.

“Yes, Father.”

“The Baron, the owner and lord of the Baron, only has 6 vacant in Nantes, why is that?”

“I will revive the baronetcy established by His Majesty the former Emperor Elaine, and appoint and manage the rule of the barony to a competent inspectorate in Creutel or Nantes. In addition, to use it as a direct jurisdiction, they will be given ‘tax as profit’ We intend to give ‘generous salaries’ instead of ‘right to take’, and to forbid the hereditary succession of titles, meaning that their descendants will be able to have ‘semi-baronets’ but will not be able to rule on our behalf as ‘semi-barons’. “

This will cause title inflation, but one of my ultimate goals is to keep the title but block hereditary power.

And, considering the overall social picture of this era, even if the father was a genius and did well as a baron, wouldn’t it be a great improvement just to ban the baron if the son is an idiot?

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Just looking at high school Korean history right now, comparing Goryeo and Joseon, one of the great points of Joseon is the abolition of hereditary succession of aristocratic status through ‘Eumseo’ as proof.

At that, the father thought for a while and then spoke.

“Even at the time the quasi-baronet was enacted, it was stipulated that only ‘hereditary succession’ was allowed under the subject of the title, but not hereditary succession of positions such as ‘general’ and ‘mayor’ that the person was in charge of, so it was not possible to convince them somehow. That’s right. But they are nobles anyway, and they have the right to pass on the price of their devotion to their descendants. How could that not be?”

“In that case, I will pay the same amount of pension as the salary of the baronet only to the eldest son of the person who retired after serving as a ‘quasi-baronet’ for more than 10 years, or who died without any problems while performing his duties as a baronet.”

“Anyway, titles are only inherited by the eldest son, and since it’s a temporary title slightly higher than ‘knight’, that’s enough. Okay, so where will you stay? The place you’re staying will soon be the capital.”

When I heard that, I smiled and declared to my father.

“According to the agreement with His Highness the Duke, I will go to Blueport immediately after finishing the minimum order and rule the Barony of Creutel. My father must go to the Countess of Helsman, and Nantes will place Frost at the top of the barons and become an assistant to Balt. We intend to fill in the lack of administrative personnel by selecting ‘commoner graduates from the administrative academy’.”

“Will there be many people who come to such an unstable county from the Administrative Academy? If I graduate there, I’d rather get a job as an executive at the Medici or Cosimo Merchant…”

“In our estate, there are Ensign Mark and Second Lieutenant Short, who are treated as semi-nobles from serfdom.

Hearing that, the father nodded.

“Furthermore, I acknowledged the ability of Chris Belladora, a woman, as a quasi-nobleman to gather commoners like this. With her abilities, I am sure that she would be able to go beyond a semi-noble and rise to the level of a knight. The guy who saw that with his own eyes. There is no way they will refuse to take the steps to ‘nobility’.”

That’s why I’m suspicious, and there’s also a place where I keep a woman next to me who can “crack my position a little bit” if I hold her.

Why, when I see a guy who is worse than me doing well at the company right now, I think, ‘I’m doing that, too?’ Don’t you challenge while thinking of it?

Even more so, if you see a ‘woman’ who cannot become a bureaucrat in this era being recognized only for her ability, those proud administrators from the academy will come running, saying, ‘If I come here, I can do that too’.

Isn’t this situation called ‘prejudice’?

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Just like the anecdote of the Ming Dynasty in China, who appointed a seemingly incompetent Kwak Oui as prime minister and obtained a general and a prime minister worthy of assisting the true king.

Hearing that, my father smiled and said:

“The girl named Chris is married, no, these days, Ciel said you were wearing it, and now she overcomes all restrictions as a woman and may become your concubine by the time she gets a knighthood. I have only one wife, but my son. My father was disappointed.”

“This is nonsense, Father.”

To be honest, what a cruel thing I did to Chris…

The first person to kill a person was beheaded using a ‘blunt axe’ that even the executioners were reluctant to do, and to the extent that he threw it among the men and protected it so that he would not die.

And in the middle of it, I said, ‘I believe in your ability, so don’t mind the fact that you’re a woman and endure it as evil’…

I can’t imagine that girl wanting to be my concubine.

“And why are you going to Blueport? Although the town is a strategic point for trade, it’s not a town like Nantes, Creutel, and Helsman, where I, the ‘Viscount’, can go and rule or develop.”

To that, I replied with a smile.

“I will develop my county of Creutel like this. Nantes, the capital of abundance and technology, Croytel, the city where trade begins, Helsman, a prosperous fortress in the south, and… with ‘Blueport, the loser of northern trade’.”

Then, I entrusted my father with all the documents to be handed over and the documents with the powers that could be exercised, and headed to Blueport with Ella, Chris, and Frost’s battalion.

In order to make the county of Nantes one year from now into a superpower capable of maintaining a standing army of more than 100,000 if it goes wrong.