Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 293 Wealth
For the next two months, Salomon and his entourage chose to stay in Rendenium, more content with their current situation than with the time they had spent living in fear in the Brittany mountains.

With the year-end busy, Vig ignored the group of freeloaders and focused his energy on the annual assessments of the various municipalities.

Overall, the situation this year is quite good, even exceeding expectations at the beginning of the year, giving Vig a vague sense of unreality.

£30,000 was the royal family's total annual income, and this was with agricultural tax at only 15% and no increase in other tax rates. Their financial situation was far better than that of the Ragnar royal family back then.

At the cabinet meeting, everyone looked at the report in their hands and fell silent, especially Goodwin and Orm, two former officials of the previous administration.

Back then, Asura and Parfis devised countless outlandish methods to amass wealth, only managing to collect a little over ten thousand pounds, while simultaneously inciting widespread public resentment and severely weakening the authority of the monarchy. In terms of business acumen and wealth accumulation, Vig was far superior to them.

Goodwin thought to himself, "Making him resign as prime minister was the worst mistake Ragnar ever made."

He looked through the subsequent content and found that the textile industry had the fastest profit growth, far surpassing other industries such as iron smelting, brewing, shipbuilding, and papermaking.

In retrospect, the king's decision to go to great lengths to develop the textile industry, even at the cost of war with Flanders, was absolutely correct.

On the expenditure side, the total annual expenditure was £23,000, with military spending approaching £8,000. The standing army was expanded to four infantry regiments, one mountain infantry battalion, one ranger battalion, and one field medic battalion.

The navy has more than fifty ships, including thirty-two two-masted warships and two newly commissioned three-masted warships. The remaining ships are mainly transport ships, as well as training ships and the Thames defense fleet.

Secondly, there are expenditures related to immigration. This year, 46,000 new immigrants were added, 40,000 of whom came from Denmark, completely emptying out central and southern Denmark.

After several wars, last year's refugee crisis, and this year's large-scale immigration, the population of the Kingdom of Denmark is less than 200,000. As residents have increased their land ownership, their motivation to migrate overseas has decreased, and Denmark will no longer be a major source of immigrants.

The cabinet and the three counties of London, Cambridge, and East Anglia were extremely busy settling these Vikings, spending a total of seven thousand pounds.

By this time, the population of the directly controlled territories reached 830,000, of which 260,000 were Viking immigrants. Including the residents of the noble territories, the total population of the kingdom was between 2.4 and 2.5 million.

More than ten minutes later, the cabinet members had finished reading the briefing, and Vig began to comment on each item.

Firstly, there's the financial aspect. Once the new immigrants' lives stabilize, they will become producers of agricultural products and consumers of handicrafts, and their income is expected to increase significantly next year.

Secondly, there is the issue of population. After several years of large-scale immigration, the population of Northern Europe has declined, and it is expected that there will be fewer and fewer immigrants in the future. The only way to supplement manpower will be from Eastern Europe or Finland.

The problem is that the Vikings had certain cultural differences with the Slavs and Finns, so immigrants needed more time to adapt to their new lives, and it also increased the administrative burden on the receiving areas.

Therefore, Vigé no longer insists that the cabinet continue this year's immigration scale, but rather let things take their natural course, maintaining a level of several thousand people per year.

The ministers were relieved to discover that the King had lowered the assessment standards in this area, especially Justice Minister Orm. New immigrants were unfamiliar with the kingdom's laws, and theft and robbery were frequent occurrences, causing Orm to waste most of his time on this last year, occasionally even muttering legal verses in his dreams.

With a decrease in immigration, the number of cheap laborers has declined, and the cost of constructing large-scale projects has increased. Next year, Viggo intends to slow down this process.

"The road from Rendelium to York to Tynburg was completed a year ago. I have decided to extend this most important main road northward from Tynburg to Edinburgh, and then connect Edinburgh and Glasgow. There is no need to rush; the construction period is tentatively set at two and a half years." After the meeting, Vig stretched and left the cabinet. After a busy year, he finally had this peaceful and leisurely holiday.

After lunch, Vig leaned back in his recliner, ready to take a nap, when Helge suddenly approached him to discuss his eldest son's marriage.

This was a question worth considering carefully. Vig got up, opened the window, and let the biting cold wind dispel his weariness as he pondered suitable candidates for marriage.

In traditional Chinese opera and storytelling, maternal relatives such as Grand Tutor X and Imperial Uncle X are often portrayed as villains, but this is not the case in reality. In certain special circumstances, such as the transitional period when a young emperor ascends the throne, maternal relatives can safeguard imperial power and counterbalance the power of other factions.

If the influence of the maternal relatives is to be eliminated, the only way is to follow the example of the Ming Dynasty and have the heir marry a daughter from a commoner family, thus severing the political foundation of the empress's family. The price is the loss of the help of the maternal relatives.

After much deliberation, Vig decided to follow the current practice and have his eldest son marry the daughter of a noble family. "In the meantime, you secretly compile a suitable list, and then I will have the intelligence system investigate their personalities and family members."

Helijf gave her husband's "I knew it all along" look.

"It's always the same. You always like to dump things you're too lazy to deal with onto me, or onto the cabinet."

After complaining for a few minutes, Helgeve realized that her husband had already left the office. She rushed to the window and saw him wearing a black cloak, carrying a wooden box in his left hand and a fishing rod in his right, walking away surrounded by the guards.

On the open north bank, Vig, wearing a thick sable coat, sat on a fur-covered folding stool, gazing at the murky and slow-flowing Thames.

Beside him was a small silver charcoal brazier, and behind him was a thick, makeshift windproof curtain to block the biting cold wind from the north.

"Hopefully I can catch a few perch."

Vig muttered to himself, occasionally glancing at the dock area downstream. Four trolley cranes were still running tirelessly, countless figures were rushing back and forth, and the chimneys of the taverns on the shore were emitting wisps of white smoke, clearly indicating a bustling scene.

Crucian carp, crucian carp, mullet, crucian carp.
As time passed, more and more river fish appeared in the bucket, but Vig still hadn't caught the perch he wanted.

As dusk fell, lights began to illuminate the houses on both sides of the river and the stone bridge spanning the river. Vig wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and went home for dinner with a slight sense of regret.

For the next few days, Vig continued fishing on the riverbank as usual, until the fifth day when he finally caught a pale yellow bass with five black spots.

"Haha, this is a good spot. Quick, throw in more bait to create a feeding area."

Vig excitedly removed the fishing hook, just then a servant rode up on horseback and urgently conveyed an emergency to him: Denmark had been invaded, and Uber had been killed in battle!
Why is the news from Denmark always so bad?

In a daze, Vig loosened his grip slightly, and the perch in his hand suddenly swung its tail, then fell into the river and swam away, twisting its body.

(End of this chapter)