When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 594 Constitutional Convention (Part )
The sound of rain hitting the windows became more and more urgent, clearly blowing away the brief warmth in the venue and replacing it with a depressing silence.

Horn frowned and turned his head to look at Meliati, while Meliati shook her head at him solemnly.

In the silence, a legion commander from the left seat was the first to speak up and shouted: "Is it that our sabers are not sharp enough, or that our holy guns are not accurate enough?"

Before the legion commander finished speaking, Armand apologized to Ruphiel beside him and stood up: "I think Mr. Herman doesn't mean an open confrontation, but an undercurrent of some rats, right?"

Herman smiled, but his voice was low and cold: "Everyone should understand that those of us sitting here today may not have the same interests, but we definitely have the same enemies.

But the local knights and nobles are not sure. Under the pressure of the army, they may obey, but they cannot be on the same page with us. "

Standing up slowly, Herman smiled apologetically at Meliati and said, "Your Highness, I could have been smart before, but everything we have now was paid for with the blood of our close friends and relatives. I must ask for clarification."

"Of course you can ask." Without waiting for Meliati to answer, Horn took two steps forward and stood in front of him. "If I were you, I would do the same."

Herman's sharp eyes stared at Horn's calm face: "You let the knights and stewards serve as centurions, but they are not on the same page with us, especially since they have long held the right to speak for the people.

For example, if you ask them to pay 20 pounds and keep 15 pounds, they will agree on the surface and then pay 20 pounds.

Then he turned around and asked the believers in the Hundred Household District for 30 gold pounds without telling you, and put the blame on you. What should we do then?"

Now even the representatives of the left seat fell into deep thought. Even if they wanted to suppress the protesters, they couldn't kill them indiscriminately.

Suppose these knights chose to surrender, and then disobeyed, pretended to obey but secretly disobeyed, or corrupted the lower-level monks, just as they once corrupted the church.

Then haven't the original good policies been transferred to the farmers?

"Aren't Articles 1 and 4 of the Charter prepared for this?" Horn spread his hands and asked, "The first thing we do to transform the place is to reform the perpetual leasehold!"

"Oh shit."

"So they were waiting for us here."

There was an immediate murmur of sudden enlightenment from the audience.

The implementation of perpetual leasehold rights not only represents the strengthening of farmers’ economic power, but also represents the weakening of personal dependence.

The lord cannot arbitrarily deprive his subjects of their farmland and identity, nor can he arbitrarily judge or deprive them of their lives and property.

Apart from violence and ruling inertia, the subjects are economically decoupled from their lords to a certain extent. In this case, the subjects can take on some of the responsibilities of supervising the knights.

The knights only have violence but cannot unite, so their efficiency is very low.

Compared with Horn and Meliati's concentrated and efficient extraordinary violence system, they can only bow their heads.

Although he was dissatisfied with the extraordinary hegemony in this world, when the extraordinary hegemony was in his own hands, Horn felt that it was really cool.

After mastering absolute violence, only a small group of people are needed to suppress a large group of people, ensuring that although there may be minor disturbances during the reform process, it is unlikely that major disturbances will break out.

"But who will lead them? Even if we assign one person to every hundred households, the entire Thousand River Valley will need nearly 9000 monks. Do you think the monks you have and the reliable monks in the Blago Monastery can total 2000?"

This time it wasn’t even Herman who was asking the question, but a representative from the center bench.

"It's very simple. Three steps." Horn held up three fingers. "Train a group of our own, reform a group of church members, and introduce a group of outsiders."

"Aren't we against the Thousand Valley Church? Now we want to take over the church?" As soon as Horn said this, someone among the representatives on the left seat could not help but stand up and ask.

"We are against the church, not the priests." Horn turned around and said loudly to the representatives in front of him, "Not all priests are bad people. If you think about it carefully, the priests at the bottom are also opponents of the church.

In fact, I know a good old priest who is a good and brave man, though he can be a bit cowardly at times."

In the church system, grassroots priests are also part of the oppression of the church, including the low-level monks in the monasteries.

Secular identity still works in the church. Since Pope John, who has ever seen a pope who was truly of commoner origin?
Horn had seen many skinny, bruised and battered low-level priests, who, apart from being able to read and write, were little more than slaves of high-ranking priests.

There are a large number of such low-level monks in Chikali today, and Horn thinks their methods of opposing the church are too radical.

And from a practical point of view, it is impossible to completely abandon the church system.

Even in the current Langsander County, at least 20% of former priests and monks are still involved in the administrative work of the priestly order. The entire Thousand River Valley has 26000 priests to maintain grassroots governance, which Horn believes is seriously overstaffed, but even if it is to be reduced, at least 40% to 50% should be retained.

Because, firstly, there is no manpower to fill the gap, and secondly, complete replacement may lead to instability at the grassroots level, giving those knights who pretend to convert an opportunity to cause trouble.

Taking this opportunity, Horn simply laid out his next transformation plan:
"First, we will select 400 reliable monks, 100 accountants and auditors, and 20 Cheka commissioners from the monasteries of Langsand County and Blago.

They will form the Order of Efficiency Exorcists and the Order of Agriculture Exorcists, and go to the local area together with more than 4 Salvation Army soldiers from four legions.

After arriving at the place, the church system must be completely disbanded first, all priests must be laid off, and all affairs will be temporarily taken over by the Agricultural Exorcist Order.

During this period, they were to compile statistics on all tax books and church property in the area.

After obtaining the tax summary, he began to sincerely persuade local knights and public farmers to sign a "perpetual lease contract" with the help of the Salvation Army and the county governor's army.

At the same time, the Efficient Exorcist Order will gather all priests and monks according to the division of the villages for examination and review.

Those who pass the examinations will remain in office and participate in the Holy Word study class for two to three weeks of intensive training.

Those who failed the exam were sent to the Blagoveshchensk Monastery to retake the exam, and those who failed the review were sent to the Lubyanka Monastery to retake the exam.

Now that we have the manpower, tax books, and church property, we can carry out the reform of centenary districts.

The 100-household districts were determined based on the tax rolls and population, and then their names, ages, and household registrations were registered, and a collective oath was taken to join the Holy Monarchy of the Thousand River Valley.

Then, a priestly order was established, with one itinerant friar and two or three ordained friars for every ten centuries."

The reason why so many people were able to be mobilized to do this is, firstly, thanks to the talent pool left by Juanno, and secondly, it is the result of Horn’s hard work for so long.

At first, Horn sent all the monks and priests of the monastery to the Abbey of the Holy Hoe and forced them to work with the laborers for the same salary.

After more than a year of development and training, Horn has at least 200-300 available devout monks, excluding those currently being used by the Holy See government, and at least 200 more are being trained.

It was obvious that the representatives of the monastic groups sitting in the left, center and right seats all breathed a sigh of relief at the same time.

Some monks even had a glimmer of expectation in their eyes. The outrageous thing was that even within the monastic system, it was not uncommon for large monasteries to bully small monasteries.

Moreover, this obviously lifted the restrictions on some monks' participation in politics and would cause an uproar in the Imperial Church.

At this time, Herman had returned to his seat and sat down, but he did not close his eyes to rest like before. Instead, he squinted his eyes and spoke again:
"I have seen too many good laws changed when they were passed down. The traditions of the church and the knights have been around for thousands of years, and the peasants have long adapted to them.

Can you really guarantee that between you and the knights, the peasants will choose to stand on your side instead of standing on the side of the knights according to tradition?"

After pondering for a while, Horn spoke slowly, his voice steady and low: "The human heart is the most unpredictable. Even if I promise not to do so, you cannot believe me. In the short term, we cannot stop the knights from pretending to obey and the peasants from being ignorant and short-sighted.

But the reality is that we have to take the risk, fight, supervise, fight with wisdom and courage, and even pay the price of blood. "

Horn raised a finger high, and his voice became increasingly passionate in the quiet meeting room:
"Do you think the war in Qianhe Valley is over? No, it has just begun! And the bloodshed may not be less than before.

It is impossible for us to be perfect in everything, and it is impossible to get everything without paying anything.

I also want to wipe out all the nobles in Qianhe Valley. I also want all of Qianhe Valley to convert to the Holy Way Sect. I also want all of Qianhe Valley to integrate politics and religion.

But that would mean a terrible civil war, which would mean being taken advantage of by the Kingdom of Leia. If we don't want to be a flash in the pan, we have to endure temporary unwillingness and compromise.

If you ask me now, if we endure the unwillingness and compromise, can we defeat the Kingdom of Leia in the future?
I still can't guarantee it, but I still want to fight for it, even if I know it may be meaningless, shouldn't I fight for it? "

Herman stared at Horn blankly, with an ambiguous light in his eyes.

"Juanno knew he was going to be burned, did he run away? He didn't, he chose to stay!

Our reforms to local areas may not be successful, so should we not reform them? No, we still have to reform them, even if it costs a heavy price! "

Following Meliati's movements, Horn slammed his fist heavily on the table, making a crisp sound. His face was a little distorted, but he still endured the pain and shouted in a high voice:
"The church can burn Juanno to death, but it cannot burn the truth to death. The knight can resist the truth, but he cannot resist the future!"

(End of this chapter)