Yet they don’t support the strong, but instead they chose the most vulnerable candidate, from their point of view. This situation seemingly has to be advantageous to the Church. Assuming I was to accept their support, the already complicated situation in this country with two Kings would then become even more chaotic. The direct consequence of a three-sided war would be a sharp drop in population, a rapid loss of wealth and since the war would spread over the whole country its unifying it would only be delayed even more.
What advantage is there to the Church in this? Needless to say they won’t get more believers, I’m afraid that even the churches built in all the cities will all be torn down until nothing is left.
“It seems you don’t understand the nobles’ way of thinking, they are always twisting and turning,” Nightingale sighed.
“Well,” Roland replied laughingly, “I don’t belong to them.”
“…” Nightingale narrowed her eyes, staring at the Prince for a long time, “Strange, why wasn’t this a lie?”
*
Three days later, Roland had finally cleared out the castle and the stronghold’s library and was now sailing back on Little Town while very satisfied.
Along the Shishui River, near Border Town, the river scene has changed its appearance during the last few days. In the areas near Border Town which had been burned open by Anna there were now many people who were very busy – seeing their dresses, they should be the first serfs who had been transported to Border Town. And in the area near the Impassable Mountain Range, there were erected a number of simple wooden sheds. Within the sheds Roland could also faintly see some activity, he thought it should be the serf’s family.
These people were tied to the land for generations, their children would also be born as serfs, because of this they couldn’t see any hope, ending in living a life filled with numbness. Their motivation to work the land came not from their hearts, instead, it came from the slaver’s whips. The resulting low productivity was simply a great waste of human resources.
There was no doubt that slavery was the enemy of industrial production and was a system which had to be abolished. But Roland did not intend to let them all turn into free hands, but he want to provide them a road out, so that they could see the hope of promotion to becoming free people – even if such a kind master was to give his slaves the possibility to get rid of their slave status was to be a precedent, this kind of compromise on handling serfs wouldn’t arouse much attention even if the news was to circulate. At most, the other nobles would think that he was just a kind person, nothing more.
He only had to wait until the time was ripe in the future, then he would fully abolish slavery, by that time the resistance he would face would be much less.
The area near the pier was crowded with sailboats, making it clear that the small pier was unable to handle all these ships. Fortunately, Little Town was more of a light-craft, so it didn’t need a dock to land. It seems that I also have to put the task of developing the pier on the schedule, Roland thought.
When he was finally back at the castle, he couldn’t allow himself any time to rest, instead, he immediately went to his office to call Barov, letting him report about Border Town’s actual situation and its materials.
The assistant minister has already been prepared for a long time now, so he only had to take out a roll of parchment out of his pocket and spread it out on the large wooden table.
“Your Royal Highness, the amount of materials you sent back to Border Town really scared me,” that said, the upturned corner of his mouth still gave away his mood, “twelve of my apprentices needed a whole night to count all the coins, which were more than fourteen thousand gold royals. This is equivalent to the annual income of an ordinary cities!”
To accumulate all these gold royals the Duke probably needed more than 20 years, Roland thought, most probably it’s comes from the plunder and exploitation of the people in the Western territory. I have to turn them into food, steel, and machinery as soon as possible. “Those jewels, how much worth are the jewelry and handicrafts?”
“I haven’t had the time to convert them yet, by conservative estimates they are also worth around 10,000 gold royals, if they were auctioned in King’s City, their price would be even greater. But for now, they are only stored in the basement of your castle,” Barrow paused, “However, this means that the original storage room isn’t big enough for all the food, so I suggest that you will increase the castle’s area, building further storage warehouses to store other supplies. ”