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

Chapter 645 The Balance of the Empire

After a while of galloping, Richard showed his prowess. Aleiya, who had provoked his temper, was no match for him at all, even with the help of several others. In the end, Aleiya, the instigator, was grabbed by Richard, stood up and kicked, and was severely punished.

The strong wind met the sudden rain, and the rain smashed the banana leaves. Richard washed away his fatigue and returned to the palace refreshed. The empire was unified, but many things had not been dealt with.

Richard's previous iron-fisted suppression made the surrounding ethnic groups tremble with fear. On Richard's road to unifying the empire, more than ten countries of varying sizes were destroyed, and various races suffered heavy casualties.

The worst hit among them were the Vandals, a nomadic people who occupied North Africa and plundered the Italian provinces. They were basically wiped out by Richard.

The Visigoths and Ostrogoths were completely separated. In addition, due to years of war, some were killed by the Huns, and some were killed by Richard. A large number of young and middle-aged people were killed or injured. At least half of the adult men of the Goths died in the past few years. Basically, they would eventually be integrated into the empire.

The next were the Germanic barbarians. They suffered heavy casualties during several raids southwards. Later, they were plundered by Richard during his Northern Expedition. They dared not go south again in the short term.

In addition to these, Richard also recruited a large number of Huns in the Balkan Peninsula. When he recovered the provinces of Upper and Lower Pannonia, the Hun tribes here surrendered one after another.

The reason these Hun tribes surrendered was, on the one hand, because Richard's army was powerful, and on the other hand, because the civil strife in the Hun Empire had caused heavy casualties and they did not want to get involved. Another reason was Drenos and the druids he led.

These druids came here to preach during the last great plague and successfully stopped the spread of the plague, which made many Huns choose to believe in druids.

So when Richard's army arrived, these Hun tribes surrendered one after another.

Richard selected 5,000 soldiers skilled in horseback archery from the Hun tribe, including many Hun archers. After this cavalry unit was equipped with imperial equipment, its strength increased greatly.

These cavalrymen were extremely useful against the marauding Germans.

Through the rapid response system of beacon towers and large cavalry groups, the road for the Germanic barbarians to move south was basically blocked. The archery of these Hun cavalry was very effective against the Germanic barbarians.

At that time, the Hun cavalry beat the Germans and forced them to flee in panic.

Without the harassment from the Germanic barbarians in the north, the security pressure on the empire was much less. After regaining the Danube and Rhine defense lines, the defense pressure on the empire was much less, and the financial pressure would also be much less.

However, the Danube and Rhine defense lines are far inferior to the ancient Yangtze River in the East, and it is almost impossible to completely guard against them.

Richard planned to lead the Hun army north every few years to plunder the Germanic tribes, leaving them no time to grow and develop.

As for occupying Germany and the North, Richard thought about it and threw the idea out. Germany is a poor and tyrannical place.

It is not difficult to take it down, but the difficulty is that there is no benefit here at all, and the cost of stationing troops here is also high, which is completely not worth the cost.

Richard thought about it, and finally decided to implement a tributary rule on the northern Germanic tribes and implement the market system, which is to trade with some tribes willing to obey orders, and then rely on commodities to control these tribes.

After completing the unification of the empire, Richard began to thoroughly reform the political system of Rome, and the original aristocratic Senate system was completely abolished.

The Senate system seems good, and the empire's decisions need to be discussed and unified by the Senate before they can be implemented, but this is not the case at all when it comes to implementation.

The Senate is full of aristocratic rentiers. There may be one or two talented people among them, but after a few generations, they will completely transform into a group of insects. In the end, this group of insects will only lie on the empire to suck blood and only see their own interests.

What's the point of having a group of insects like this?
This time, Richard completely abolished the Senate system and chose a monarchical centralized system. At the same time, when the monarch was centralized, he also came up with a cabinet and group of prime ministers system.

The cabinet consists of seven people, one is the prime minister, two are deputy prime ministers, and the remaining four are assistant prime ministers. The prime minister has more power, but he cannot overpower the other six.

After the internal minister discusses the matters, he needs to report to Richard and only formally implement them after Richard agrees.

At the same time, Richard directly abolished the rule that "non-nobles cannot participate in politics". It stipulates that as long as you are a citizen of the empire, you have the right to participate in national politics and serve as an official, but you need to pass an assessment to serve as an official.

This move immediately caused an uproar in the empire, as many nobles and honorary nobles had long regarded officials as their right.

After all, one of the conditions that Richard gave them when they gave up their land was the right to participate in politics. Now Richard has directly announced that everyone has the right to participate in politics. Their so-called privileges now seem like a complete joke.

Many nobles felt that they were fooled by Richard.

"Damn it, he fooled us!"

"It's our right! He opened it up to everyone! This is unacceptable!"

"Yes, it's unacceptable! We object!"

After hearing the news, a large number of nobles' first reaction was to oppose it. It can be said that as soon as this decree came out, the public was outraged.

In addition, some people had suffered losses due to Richard's orders before, but they could only agree to Richard's orders at that time. Now that they saw such a good opportunity, they immediately started to stir up trouble, hoping to incite more nobles to oppose Richard.

But these people don't know at all that Richard is not afraid of these people making trouble. After having absolute military advantage, it would be fine if these people just cooperated honestly. But if they dared to make trouble, Richard would naturally let them taste the iron fist of imperialism.

Although many nobles were dissatisfied, Richard explained to them that everyone who wanted to participate in politics needed to be assessed and needed to study at the Roman Academy, and that the nobles had the opportunity to study directly at the Roman Academy.

Some nobles accepted this statement. After all, there was nothing they could do even if they didn't accept it. But some nobles were still dissatisfied.

Soon these nobles secretly connected with each other and tried to plot a riot, but their plan was completely seen through by Richard.

Not only that, several nobles even came to inform Richard on purpose.

All the actions of these nobles were closely monitored by Richard.

So the riot was naturally quelled directly, and Cruz led his men to kill many people and blood flowed like a river. This cleanup had nothing to do with civilians, it was equivalent to cutting off some rotten flesh from the empire.

At the same time, Richard also seized a large amount of gold, silver and other valuables from these people. These nobles had accumulated wealth for hundreds of years. Even if Richard confiscated their land, they still had a lot of wealth in their hands.

Now the wealth belongs directly to him.

After the unification of the empire, the empire's wars began to decrease, and military expenditures also fell. So in the year of the unification of the empire, Richard announced that agricultural taxes in the empire would be exempted for one year, although commercial taxes still had to be paid.

Richard exempted agricultural taxes in order to make life better for the lower-class people in the empire, not to make the merchants rich.

The lives of the lower classes in this era were already difficult, and with the wars in recent years, it was good enough for them to survive. Richard would naturally keep these people in mind.

After he suppressed the noble rebellion with an iron fist, the empire began to get back on track.

At the same time, on the other hand, the strength of monotheism has greatly declined due to the comprehensive rise of Richard. After these years of development, only in the secular world, monotheism and polytheism are evenly matched.

Richard did not force the believers to convert, so there are still many monotheistic believers in the empire.

After a series of failures, the power of monotheism has been declining. Now there are only two options for monotheism.

One option is that monotheism agrees to coexist with polytheism and implement religious reforms, and the other option is to fight to the death with Richard.

After continuous wars, Richard's strength was so strong that it was no longer something that the monotheistic religion could solve, unless they were willing to pay a heavy price and force the arrival of the mythological era.

However, once they did this, even if the Monotheism won, all of their saints and even believers would lose most of their strength, and none of their saints’ holy objects would survive, and they had no guarantee of victory.

So after weighing the pros and cons, the monotheists finally decided to accept religious reform and agreed to live in peace with the polytheists.

But whether it was Richard or the polytheists or the monotheists, they all knew that the current reconciliation was only temporary.

Once Richard dies and his descendants no longer have such high prestige, the two sides are likely to go to war again.

However, the Monotheistic Church was about to decide to forbear, and Richard did not press too hard, after all, the Polytheistic Church had just begun to recover, and its overall strength was not as good as that of the Monotheistic Church.

At least give polytheism some time to develop, and then deal with monotheism.

In the Pantheon, Richard canonized the high priest of polytheism and then announced the restoration of the Olympic Games.

"In the name of the Emperor Augustus!"

"Restore the Olympic Games! The Games will still be held every four years!"

"The Olympic flame will rise from Athens and spread throughout the empire!"

Hearing Richard's words, the polytheistic priests cheered, but in contrast, the monotheistic bishops and priests next to them had gloomy expressions.

But no one spoke out against it. If they spoke out against it at this time, not only would it not be passed, but they would also be suppressed by the emperor.

After completing the canonization of polytheism, Richard did not stop, but went to the Vatican to enthrone a new Pope.

(End of this chapter)