The Great Arcanist Who Traveled Through the World of American Variety Shows.

Chapter 591: Managing Gaul
Aetius was very familiar with the strength of the Franks. Although he was not very clear about Richard's strength, he had people collect some information. He estimated that it would not exceed 10,000 people at most. What's more, he had also heard about what Richard did in the territory.

In his opinion, following Richard's method could indeed restore vitality, but the problem was that it would cost too much money. With so much money invested in the army, it was enough to defeat the Germans, so why spend it on the exiles?
In his view, the exiles were nothing more than a group of despicable thieves, robbers and deserters, who should be thrown into the mines and mined to death instead of being given land and food.

Seeing Richard wasting money like this, Aetius guessed that Richard only had 5,000 to 6,000 men at most to form a regular Roman legion, while the Franks could at least mobilize 20,000 troops.

Although the Frankish soldiers are not as good as the elite of the Empire, their strength is not weak either, otherwise the Empire would not have hired so many Franks, and Merovice was not a mediocre person either.

The military strength of the two sides was three or four times different, and Richard was on the offensive. How come the Franks were defeated and surrendered in less than a month? Merovice was also beheaded.

This greatly surprised Aetius, and at the same time, his evaluation of Richard increased significantly. Although Aetius thought Richard was good before, he only had some potential.

Now that Richard has proven himself time and time again, Aetius has begun to truly value him.

After receiving Richard's letter, Aetius was silent for a moment, and finally decided to agree to maintain peace with Richard. As long as Richard did not enter the Italian province, he could agree to Richard as the governor of the Gaul province.

In fact, he doesn't have many ways to restrict Richard now. With the support of His Majesty the Emperor, there will be no changes in Rome.

Moreover, there are many benefits to Richard's presence in Gaul. For example, with him around, the defense of the province of Gaul can be left to Richard, so the Roman Empire can save a considerable amount of military expenses and no longer need to send troops to garrison.

At the same time, the stability of the Gaul province also allowed trade to begin to recover, and Rome could also make money from trade here.

It was also good news for Aetius that he did not have to garrison his troops away but could stay in the Italian province.

He can devote more energy to dealing with the Emperor.

During this period, the old nobles and the emperor of the empire joined forces to cause him a lot of trouble, which took up a lot of his energy.

Visigothic Kingdom.

The Visigothic Kingdom had just stabilized after the change of throne, and Thorismund was not making any big moves now.

Thorismund was surprised that Richard defeated the Franks and occupied the Gaul province, but he was happy to accept it after being surprised.

After all, the relationship between Torsmond and the Franks is not very good, and the two sides have fought many battles before.

Now that the Franks have been dealt with by Richard, Thorismund is naturally very happy, and Richard's caravan can also trade with them more conveniently.

In the past, when the Franks were there, Richard's caravan would be charged a high tax when they went there to trade. Now that the Franks are gone, the prices of sugar, salt, fine pottery, fine wine, etc. will all drop.

This is good news for Torsmond.

Therefore, Thorismund restrained his men from conflicting with Richard's army.

Richard became the de facto governor of the province of Gaul, and things became very busy afterwards.

The first thing to deal with is the Franks. After all, not all of them have surrendered, and some still want to resist. Richard naturally strikes hard at these people, and directly sends his extraordinary knights to lead the team and join several hundred Franks' vassal troops.

After being trained, these Frankish vassal troops became very loyal and were very efficient in killing their own people.

Richard divided land among these Frankish vassal troops, allowing them to own their own land instead of being the cattle and horses of the tribal chiefs as before.

Just this one move was enough to make the Fran vassal soldiers so excited that they could swing their axes six times in one second.

As for the land, it was naturally obtained from the Frank nobles and tribal leaders. In this war, a large number of tribal leaders and nobles were killed, and Richard obtained a lot of wealth from them.

In the two cities of Paris and Orleans, almost half of the wealth accumulated by the Franks over a hundred years fell into his hands.

Richard had no intention of keeping these riches. Wealth is only wealth when it is spent. If it is piled up in the cellar, it would just be a pile of valuable waste.

This time, Richard wanted to completely break up the tribal life pattern of the Franks through war and force them into feudal society.

In addition to these gold and silver treasures, Richard also distributed the farmland outside Orleans and Paris. Part of this land was distributed to his soldiers, and the other part was distributed to the French civilians.

And Richard registered all the land and population. Although the Romans were very advanced in civilization compared to Europe.

But in Richard's opinion, it was still very rough. For example, the Romans hardly cared about taxation and population registration, including land tax, head tax, trade tax and other taxes.

Land tax was almost abolished here. Due to the constant wars and the Franks who originally lived here, the empire only collected a rough amount of land tax. The Franks just paid some money to the empire every year, which was similar to the tax farming system. This system was also implemented because the Roman Empire's control over this area declined and it could no longer collect taxes as before.

When Richard implemented the household registration system, he encountered a difficulty at the beginning, that is, the literacy rate was too low. In Aleiya's words, the nobles in Gaul who could write their names completely and correctly were considered qualified.

Even those local people with outstanding knowledge were not as good as an ordinary scholar in Rome.

The problem Richard faced was that he did not have that many literate people.

However, Richard had anticipated this. If they didn't know much, they could learn slowly. If they couldn't learn, it would be easy. They would be thrown into a prisoner camp for a few days and they would understand the importance of knowledge.

In addition to these people, there are also many priestesses brought by Aleyya. These priestesses are basically well-educated and can be said to be the backbone of Richard's territory.

Many management issues must rely on these people.

It can be said that Richard's territory is excessively rich in martial virtues, but its civil governance is only slightly better than that of the barbarians.

There is nothing that can be done about it, because this place is almost a cultural desert. In the whole of Europe, the two places with the most scholars are Rome and Athens.

Forget Rome now. It is not easy to attract people from the center of the empire. But he will soon encounter an opportunity. At most next year, he will be able to attract many scholars from Rome.

Another target is Athens.

Athens can be said to be the stronghold of polytheism. Even though Rome had closed the Pantheon and supported monotheism, there were still many Greeks who secretly believed in polytheism.

Especially the goddess Athena.

Because of the restrictions of monotheism, the Greeks still could not believe in their gods. Richard planned to let Alia go to Athens to recruit some polytheistic scholars there.

Although there were too few people who could read, Richard still decided to implement the household registration system. It would be slow at best, but the household registration and land must be sorted out.

These people and lands are the basis for Richard's future tax revenue.

Richard distributed the land around Orleans and Paris, and at the same time began to issue formal orders to pardon the exiles. As long as the exiles could go to the local administrative courts to be registered as citizens, they could obtain civilian status and a piece of land.

Of course, the land is basically uncultivated wasteland, which needs to be reclaimed by yourself. At the same time, the newly reclaimed land will be tax-free for three years. But then it will resume normal taxation.

At the same time, Richard announced the abolition of all the arrears of taxes in the entire province of Gaul. Of course, this was only the taxes on civilians, and the taxes on nobles and merchants still needed to be paid.

"Sir, these overdue taxes amount to millions of dinars, and you just abolished them?" said Vares next to him.

This former chancellor of the Roman Empire is now Richard's treasurer and affairs officer, assisting Richard in managing the entire Gaul.

"What if it's not exempted?" Richard looked at him and said.

"This is several million dinars, enough for us to recruit a few more Roman legions," said Vares.

"Haha, this money is only theoretical. The problem is that you can't collect it at all!" Richard shook his head and said, "Those civilians don't have the money to pay taxes. Even if you kill them, they can't pay. So it's better to just exempt them directly."

"Without the pressure of these unpaid taxes, the civilians in Gaul can go about their business with ease. It only takes one or two years of stability for these people to pay taxes normally."

"This way, the entire Gaul province will return to normal!"

Richard had looked at the previous taxation in Gaul. The taxation in the empire was actually not high, but the taxes collected by officials in various places were higher than one another.

For those civilians, it means sustainable exhaustion of resources.

After hearing what Richard said, Vares was slightly stunned, and then he immediately reacted. The overdue taxes in various parts of the Gaul province were basically impossible to collect. Now it was very appropriate to use the method of exempting these taxes to appease the people and gather the people.

So under Richard's order, local administrative offices announced the abolition of all previous arrears of taxes and reduced taxes for one year to appease ordinary people.

At the same time, local administrative offices began to recruit exiles and absolve these people of their crimes.

If he wants to stabilize Gaul, he must appease these exiles. Only in this way can he stop them from becoming bandits. Otherwise, the bandits in various places cannot be completely eliminated unless he can kill all the poor people.

(End of this chapter)