Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 415 Tripoli Situation
For a monarch, assassination is not a low-probability event. For a political animal, eliminating competitors on a physical level is much easier than engaging in a series of games.

Even Henry VII, the Holy Roman Emperor, faced crossbow fire when he held a banquet in the Lateran Palace in Rome.

It's nothing surprising that Gillis suffered several assassination attempts.

Of course, the truly remarkable thing is that Gillis has managed to escape danger every time.

In this process, Garys's uniqueness was revealed.

It can be said that every failed assassination attempt was putting a new crown on Garys, making everyone "understand" the truth that Garys was unwilling to show.

Faced with the existence of a "living god", even interrogation seems much simpler.

There are two main lines of investigation.

One was the previous explosion. Considering that it was Gerard's workshop, after a little interrogation, Gerard honestly confessed everything he knew. Gerard then followed the clues and determined who set up the trap for him. Following this line all the way up, he came to Tripoli.

On the other hand, the origins of the weapons used by the assassin were traced.

Although the numbers on these weapons were deliberately smoothed out, it is not difficult to determine from the craftsmanship that they are the standard weapons of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

These are light copper cannons that are only issued to active-duty troops, and muskets that have not yet been issued on a large scale.

Currently, Garys has an army of about 30,000 people under his command, and the situations of each of these troops are quite complicated.

Not only does it have a standing army, but there are also local militias and various armies that are semi-allies and semi-vassal.

It is not difficult to determine the source of weapons among so many troops. The trouble lies in how Garys is going to deal with everyone on this line.

Types of armies, apart from arms or services, can be divided into two categories according to the source of their service, one is conscription and the other is volunteering.

In Machiavelli's The Prince, if we look at it roughly, it can be divided into the citizen militia in the hands of the monarch, or any army other than the monarch.

Machiavelli so highly praised the conscripted citizen militia that he went to great lengths to disparage other armies in The Prince.

But in terms of results, Machiavelli's citizen militia was massacred in the Italian War.

Garys analyzed the current situation and, considering that the war was in full swing, he was ultimately in trouble.

【Then he would have to spend all the revenue of that country in defending it, and so much would have been wasted. As a result, the gain would have turned into a loss.】

Because of the rebellion of a group of people, many people with past history can be said to be destabilizing factors.

After thinking about it, Gailis found that he only had two choices. One was to appease them, give them gold, grant them privileges, and even generously forgive everyone except the main culprit.

Or they can be completely eliminated, just as Machiavelli said, to exterminate the bloodlines of those nobles, to kill all those people, and to ensure that not even any stakeholders with hatred are left alive.

Although Gillis is not a Machiavellian, he has to admit that sometimes what Machiavelli himself said is very pertinent.

A thief can only steal for a thousand days, but you can never be on guard against thieves for a thousand days. Garys will encounter so many problems when he stays in the Levant and the Holy Land.

When Gairis goes to Egypt, Rome, and Constantinople later, won't these people cause a big fuss?
If he wanted to ensure that the situation in Jerusalem would remain under control after he left the Holy Land.

Then it would be necessary to plan a purge of the original nobles, eliminate those unstable factors, and replace them with people that Gailis trusted.

Before, Gairis still had doubts about carrying out the purge. There were some objective problems that restricted Gairis from taking drastic measures.

Therefore, Gelis only allowed Reims in the Antioch region to purge the nobles in the Antioch region.

As a result, Antioch was not stable for quite some time and was often harassed by various residual forces. Its own governing capacity was not enough to cover the entire Antioch, resulting in slow development.

Of course, with the training of talents in place, Antioch's subsequent development has made rapid progress.

After all, unlike China of the same period, the literacy rate in the Mediterranean region may not be very low, but when it comes to the reserve of the ruling class, it is a rather painful thing. After all, the knowledge of statecraft is almost completely monopolized by the nobles and clergy.

Perhaps there are indeed talented people among the civilians, but Gailis is unable to screen or train them in a short period of time.

At that time, although Isabella became the King of Jerusalem and unified the Crusader States, the identities of the couple should be more accurately described as the King of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Count of Tripoli and Conqueror of Antioch.

In other words, although the Crusader States were unified in name, in reality they only had a common monarch and were still three independent countries.

The different local customs and ruling methods of these three countries also make it impossible for them to unify their policies in the short term.

This was the situation at the time, and it was because of this that a large number of old aristocratic groups in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Tripoli were absorbed into the new kingdom.

Otherwise, it would be difficult to rule the Levant region.

Especially the Tripoli area.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem owes its vast territory to Saladin. It was because of Saladin's conquest that the aristocratic lords were separated from their territories. As a landless aristocratic group, Gairis has always been good at handling them.

Even the island of Cyprus was hit hard by the arson committed by the Cypriot tyrant Isaac, which allowed the Cyprus Church and the Cyprus Liberation Front to come to power.

Not to mention Antioch and Antioch. As the conquered party, their local nobles had no say at all.

But in the Tripoli region, since Count Raymond of Tripoli had directly transferred power in his will before his death, Gairis had to pay attention to the interests of the Tripoli princes.

This is the evil consequence of inheriting the old order. The representatives of the old order cannot veto the old order itself because their authority comes from the old order.

Even though Gairis had made changes to Tripoli, a top-down change could easily lead to a large number of remnants and incomplete reforms.

There are four universities in Jerusalem, three in the kingdom itself, one in Antioch, and none in Tripoli in between. This actually means a lot.

In this case, if Gellis still wanted the royal government to rule Tripoli stably, he could no longer rely on the original Tripoli nobles and would have to carry out another bloody reform. Although Machiavelli was born in the 15th century, he always insisted that the monarch should maintain a good relationship with his people.

Machiavelli admired the power of the people so much that he believed he would rather infringe on the interests of the bigwigs in order to gain the support of the people.

In his view, the needs of the people are simple and plain, while the greed of the bigwigs is endless. The people only seek not to be oppressed and seek a fair and just society; while the bigwigs often try to infringe on the interests of others through various improper means.

It seems that in his eyes, making society just and taking as little wealth from the people as possible is enough for a monarch to maintain long-term stability.

Judging from the results, Machiavelli was not actually wrong. At most, his perspective on things was still too limited by the times.

Naturally, Gellis laughed off such a view. The state is the product of irreconcilable class contradictions, the law is the embodiment of the will of the ruling class, and the monarch is the spokesperson of the ruling class... Many choices are not easy to make.

But one good thing is that although Gelis is a monarch, the ruling class he represents is not the nobles of Tripoli.

Relying on the troops from other regions and his own prestige, and with evidence proving that the nobles of Tripoli organized the assassination.

Gailis could easily eliminate the original nobles. Even the Senate of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, those nobles who had originally followed Iraklius, would stand on Gailis' side unconditionally.

When the news of Gairis' assassination reached Jerusalem, and witnesses proved the source of the weapons, which were from Tripoli.

The native nobles of Jerusalem cut off the nobles of Tripoli at the speed of light.

Many people didn't understand what was happening.

Wang Guoguang quickly passed the Civil Service Law and the Regulations on the Parallelization of Positions and Ranks.

In the past ten years, Tripoli's situation is actually somewhat similar to that of Japan after the shogunate movement.

In 1871, Japan began to abolish feudal domains and establish prefectures, which was the culmination of the Meiji Restoration movement that began in 1868 (the beginning of the Meiji era).

Under this reform, all daimyo were required to return power to the emperor.

First, in the Boshin War of 1868, the army loyal to the Tokugawa shogunate was defeated, and the government confiscated all the land that was originally directly governed by the shogunate, as well as the land of the daimyo who were still loyal to the Tokugawa shogunate.

These lands comprised about a quarter of Japan's land area and were reorganized into prefectures, with officials directly appointed by the central government.

The daimyo of other regions, realizing that the situation was hopeless, basically returned their territories.

In return for transferring hereditary power to the central government, the daimyo were reappointed as non-hereditary officials in their former domains and were allowed to retain 10% of tax revenue.

Later, even though the daimyo lost their hereditary power, they still retained a certain degree of military and financial independence and continued to accept the loyalty of their former subjects.

When the abolition of feudal domains and establishment of prefectures officially began in 1871, the Japanese government completed the reorganization by promising generous salaries to former daimyo, absorbing the debts of the various domains, and exchanging the old currency for the new national currency at face value.

Later, due to the lack of sufficient central finances, this redemption was converted into bonds with an annual interest rate of 5%. It was not until thirty years later that the full repayment was completed.

After completing the unification of the Crusader States, Gellis referred to this history when treating the nobles in the Tripoli region.

Rather than directly confiscating the lands of the Tripolitan princes, Gelis appointed them as sheriffs or town governors of the counties of Tripoli, allowing them to withhold part of the taxes.

Later, Gairis tried to promote a redemption policy to completely separate the lands from the Tripoli nobles.

However, the more complete civil service system was rejected by the House of Lords as a whole at the level of the King's Landing Parliament, and even the House of Commons did not agree with it very much.

Due to the lack of sufficient suitable personnel, the project has never been completed.

Until now...

The Civil Service Law and the Provisions on the Parallelization of Positions and Ranks divide the positions and ranks of the civil service system and set up corresponding salary allowances and their grades.

Among them, if we understand it in this era, the position is the official position, which means the duties that a civil servant or official needs to be responsible for. It can often be arranged and set according to local conditions and the specific circumstances of each place or unit.

The rank, on the other hand, affects the level of remuneration for civil servants or officials, and does not represent leadership responsibilities. Unlike positions, the rank sequence, name, and number are uniformly regulated, and each region or department cannot set them up on its own according to its own characteristics.

To put it roughly, the reason for setting up job grades is to improve the treatment and honor of civil servants by promoting their job grades without expanding the scope of their power and responsibilities.

There are naturally many purposes for making this division, and one of the principles is that higher-level positions cannot be regarded as a reward. The purpose of giving civil servants higher positions should be to allow them to shine in more suitable positions.

Through a more systematic and formalized civil service system, it also means that Gairis will be able to free up more manpower to replace the local nobles who currently rule Tripoli.

……

In today's Tripoli, which families still have great authority?
Privan was undoubtedly a representative of them. As a wealthy Italian businessman, he used his wealth and gold equal to the weight of his wife to marry an heiress and obtain territory. Later, he and Gairis completed the pacification of Tripoli.

After this incident, in the eyes of many people, Privan has become the vice king of Tripoli and the noblest aristocrat here.

But in fact, the person who was truly supported by the nobles of Tripoli was someone else.

That is the Saint-Omer family.

The three brothers of St. Omer, Hugh, William, and Ralph.

They were descendants of Walter de Saint-Omer and Esquiva de Brais.

Simply put, they are the descendants of the Count of Tripoli's wife and her ex-husband.

It seems that they have no right to claim the territory of Tripoli, but many things are not so.

(End of this chapter)