I, the prince in distress, send money

Chapter 292 Some trivial matters
Spring has arrived, and all things are full of life. The assassination attempts against Chris have finally subsided. Chris also plans to make an inspection of King's Plains to check on how his farmers are doing.

There are many reasons why the assassinations stopped, but there are two main reasons.

The first is the financier who hired the assassins, who are the members of the ever-growing list of traitors. They are about to be wiped out by the Inquisitor and his player minions who have been ruthlessly hacking down the street.

The efficiency and ruthlessness that players displayed in their killing spree, towards Chris and the Bagnians, truly terrified many.

When it comes to matters of life and death, no one is a fool... If there were, they would have been eliminated by "nature" long ago.

The second reason is that as Chris implemented his policies within Bagnia, his rule over the country became increasingly stable.

Chris plans to focus this year's policy priorities on agriculture.

The world is vast, but having enough to eat is humanity's greatest need, especially this year in Bagnia, the country's main grain-producing region... With the King's Plains expected to experience a significant reduction in production, food self-sufficiency has become a major problem.

However, every gain has its loss. The situation on King's Plain was so bad that the large landowners also lost confidence in the land's yield.

Chris seized the opportunity to buy up land at market price.

Someone wisely sold the extra land to Chris, even though the price was a bit higher. Chris didn't mind, since he had already bought minting machines and opened several mints, making it cheaper to produce silver dollars than before.

If the circumstances weren't unfavorable, Chris would have wanted to get paper money. That's the ultimate weapon for collecting seigniorage; once the printing press is turned on, you can have as much money as you want.

Even so, after taking control of the entire Bagnia, Chris is no longer short of silver. After all, this country is a mountainous country, and even if its mineral resources are scarce and there are no large mines, there are still many small copper and silver mines.

It just so happens that the guys who previously owned these mines were all traitors and mobs. Chris didn't need to find a reason; he just went to their door with a butcher's knife and wiped them all out.

As a result, Chris acquired these mines at almost zero cost.

When Chris contracted out these mines to players, he obtained enough cheap raw materials to print in Bagnian currency, making Chris very rich now... If it weren't for his online shopping platform and almost unlimited supply of goods, being rich wouldn't actually be a good thing.

If you have money but can't buy things, it will inevitably lead to currency devaluation.

Chris didn't need to consider this issue; he naturally went on a shopping spree.

However, while some landowners in King's Plain gave Chris face, others did not. Many large landowners were either too attached to the land or had no other means of making a living besides renting out their land.

In short, this group of people clung tightly to the hardened, barren farmland that occupied one-third of the King's Plain, refusing to let go.

They stubbornly believed that as long as they weathered this difficult period, the land would eventually regain its former value, because the Church of the Earth Mother and the Church of the Goddess of Agriculture were already studying the problem of restoring soil fertility and compaction under Prince Chris's orders.

If we just wait a little longer, there will definitely be a solution.

Chris just sneered at this.

At other times, Chris wouldn't mind taking it slow and gradually tormenting these idiots who dared to go against him, but he didn't have that time.

Damn it, spring planting is about to begin, and Chris is eager to distribute the land to those landless farmers. He has no interest in wasting time with these stupid landlords.

So, after a moment's thought, Chris unleashed his three-pronged attack.

One key move: land expropriation.

Chris decided to expropriate the land from these large landowners who were unwilling to sell. He issued an "Emergency Land Expropriation Order" on the grounds of national food security, allowing the government to expropriate hardened and barren land with reasonable compensation.

“These lands are no longer suitable for effective cultivation, and continuing to hold them will only waste resources.”

Chris wrote in the edict.

"The government will improve these lands, increase their productivity, and ensure the country's food security."

This tactic is called forceful seizure... You either sell it to me, or I forcibly seize it without spending any money. If you dare to resist, I'll release the players.

The second measure: providing resettlement and compensation.

After the forced expropriation, in order to appease these large landowners, Chris would offer less-than-ideal resettlement and compensation packages, providing them with city properties and shops at discounted prices to help them transition into city residents or businessmen.

Baghnia happens to have no shortage of goods, only a shortage of merchants. I'll give you preferential prices. Whether you sell your goods within Baghnia or abroad, I've given you a way to make a living. Whether you want to go or not is up to you.

If you follow the trend, you'll definitely survive. But if you try to go against the tide... well, the third trick is waiting for you.

The three main measures were: enacting an agricultural tax law and investigating tax evasion.

Chris's new agricultural tax regulations exempt land under 200 acres from taxes, while those with more than 200 acres are subject to tiered taxes... The more land you own, the higher the agricultural tax will be, until you can't afford it and you keep losing money by owning the land.

For those large landowners who refuse to cooperate, Chris will send out the newly formed tax bureau and its players. With efficient action and ruthless methods, they will quickly investigate the taxes of the uncooperative large landowners, check whether their land holdings are legal, and whether they have truthfully registered their farmland and paid farmland taxes on time.

Basically, it can be said that 99% of these landowners who opposed Chris were filthy; they weighed less than four ounces on a scale, but more than a thousand pounds on a scale.

Before the crackdown, they could become wealthy and successful businessmen in big cities. After the crackdown, the whole family had to go. Chris didn't have any strange constraints about taking responsibility for one's own actions. He believed in the principle of collective punishment, where if one person did something wrong, everyone in the family would be held accountable.

Tolerance towards evil people is cruelty towards good people.

Using these three methods, Chris quickly brought over 80% of the King's Plains under his control, and then distributed the land. Giving land to farmers for free was a foolish thing to do. The reason why farmers in the new China were able to receive land was because they paid a bloody price for their rights. Don't think that farmers' farmland is free or a windfall.

Most of the peasant families in Bagnia did not participate in Chris's efforts to unify the country, nor did they die or shed blood for him.

For this reason, distributing land free of charge to the farmers of the King's Plains is a betrayal of those who followed Chris from Bolas all the way to Waltradnoy, and is extremely unfair and unjust.

Chris thought about it for a long time, and he thought of the Qin Dynasty's twenty-level military merit system. This system could obviously motivate farmers with land, but Chris was a little afraid that they would be too motivated.

Chris needs more than just soldiers; he needs farmers who can take root in the land.

So, after thinking about it, he decided to stick to the old rules.

Bingtian.

Soldiers can receive fifty mu of land, and militia members also have land, but only twenty mu. These military lands cannot be traded, have their owners changed, or have their nature altered... Farmland is farmland and cannot be turned into residential land or other miscellaneous uses.

As long as a soldier is in office, the land belongs to him. After a soldier dies in battle, his family can continue to own the land for thirty years until someone in the family joins the army, at which point the land use rights continue.

If a soldier is discharged, he can continue to use the land for fifteen years, and the same rule applies to the militia.

Land was limited, so whoever enlisted first was given priority to be assigned to the Ueda (upper field), while those who came later were assigned to the Nakada (middle field) or Shimoda (lower field).

Using this tactic, Chris was able to recruit enough new soldiers and militia to form ten legions in the shortest amount of time on King's Plain.

Regardless of the quality of these soldiers, Chris has at least distributed half of the land in King's Plains, and subsequent policies to support farmers have followed.

For example, in promoting agricultural technology, the Church of the Earth Mother Goddess, the Church of the Goddess of Agriculture, and the Kingdom's Agricultural Technology Department, composed of players, all go to the countryside together.

For the sake of the farmers' faith, the priests dared not neglect their duties. They tirelessly traveled to various rural areas throughout the King's Plain, imparting their accumulated agricultural techniques to the farmers free of charge.

The latter was working particularly hard to complete Prince Chris's mission. However, because of the actions of the former two, some fun-loving players discovered a new source of amusement. They also joined in on the religious activities and even asked Chris for a religious propagation license, deliberately causing trouble for the two.

In addition to agricultural technology support, Chris also took advantage of policies such as building water conservancy facilities, interest-free agricultural loans, promoting superior crop varieties, improving seeds, and seed subsidies.

Chris also considered the peasant families who did not receive land, as they also had a way to survive and were not likely to starve.

The first option is to rent land from other families. Those families that were allocated land by the military will definitely have people who can't cultivate it all, leaving some vacant land.

Secondly, players can join the various road and canal repair teams organized by Chris, or sign up as workers in various craft workshops to earn money and food to support their families.

Even those who have lost their ability to work or have limited labor capacity still have low-paying, low-difficulty jobs waiting for them in big cities, such as scavengers and sanitation workers.

If all else fails, there are the orphanages and nursing homes that Chris funded himself to provide a safety net.

As long as they still have the will to live and don't lie at home waiting to die, they are not likely to die.

Chris has turned Kings Plain into a large testing ground, a demonstration site for Bagnia, provided that the policies he introduces are successful or that nothing major goes wrong.

So next year, or in the second half of the year, Chris will slightly modify these policies and roll them out across Bagnia.

Oh, right, there's also the Baojia system. Chris implemented it in the rural areas of King's Plain. He prioritized appointing local village chiefs who were doing well and had no bad reputations as Baozhang, giving them secure jobs and government jobs.

As for the lower-level civil servants who passed the exams, Chris still had other uses for them, and there weren't enough people to send to the countryside for the time being... The operation of the city and the formation of various engineering teams alone had already used them up.

Chris is facing the same old problem... a lack of manpower.

He lacks both highly skilled personnel and qualified grassroots staff. The same applies to the military; he lacks generals and, more importantly, a large number of qualified soldiers.

In short, regardless of the grain yield of King Plains this year, Chris has already implemented a series of measures to help farmers, and countless grains have been distributed under various pretexts. At least before the summer harvest this year, there will be no large-scale starvation deaths.

As for the small number of people who might starve to death, that's inevitable. No matter how much Chris considers or how good the safeguards are, there will always be some fools and bad guys who risk their lives to defy him, and there's nothing he can do about it.

Don't underestimate the stupidity and mindlessness of some people, because such people live in their own little world, with their own rules and worldview. You can't reach a consensus with them or understand their thought process.

Besides agriculture, Chris also began to build an army on a large scale, numbering the regiments from one to ten. He planned to use the veterans of his two existing regiments as the backbone to form ten regiments after the summer of this year.

Because of the news that the old man was going back to his country, Chris clearly realized that the Kingdom of Minicia had no intention of giving up control over Bagnia, and that there was a high probability that another war of national defense would be fought this year. Moreover, due to the players, the intensity of the war would not be low.

On the contrary, the Bohemian Empire has sent a delegation to discuss a truce with Chris.

Chris believed that Bohemia didn't want to fight, because according to Connie's intelligence, food prices in the Retalia Empire were rising steadily, suggesting that its military was purchasing large quantities of rations.

It is obvious that the Retelia Empire has plans to launch a war this year.

If we were to attack Bagnia, the Reteria Empire wouldn't need to make such a big fuss. If we were to attack Minicia, the Bohemian Empire would be laughing all the way to the bank... After eliminating the impossible options, only one possibility remains.

Given this situation, the Bohemian Empire naturally had no desire to continue fighting its poor neighbor, and it was perfectly reasonable for them to want a truce with Chris.

Under these circumstances, the legion Chris plans to form will naturally be more defensive in nature. As for how to attack... well, that's up to the player's warband.

(End of this chapter)