Urban Sims

"boom!"

When Duke Paris' head was thrown on the floor of the palace meeting hall by Count Hill like a piece of garbage.

"ha!"

Seeing the heads rolling on the floor, all the noble ministers, including King James, were startled.

Then came great joy.

King James said angrily: "This traitor! The royal family didn't treat him well, and he actually raised an army to rebel. He died well, huh, this is what he should end up with!"

King James also announced that he would deprive Duke Paris of his title and territory, chop his body into pieces and feed it to the dogs, arrest other members of the Paris family, and imprison and convict all of them. No one could be spared!

All the nobles and ministers also celebrated with their crowns.

"The kingdom gave the Paris family 300,000 troops in the hope that they would defend Dongjing and resist the Soliu Kingdom. It was better for them, instead of doing a good job of guarding the border, they turned around and attacked the king."

"Parris, that bastard, besieged the royal capital for three months. He completely destroyed the pharmaceutical production factory and robbed half of the workers. We lost at least tens of millions!"

The pharmaceutical production factory was set up outside the city. After the rebels besieged the city, the pharmaceutical production factory suffered devastating damage. It would take at least several months to repair the factory.

"Not only the loss of money, but also many people from various families died. Not including the Royal Capital Defense Force, each family lost at least more than 10,000 outstanding family warriors in the battle. Several of the sons and grandsons of some earls died. , it’s such a pity that these outstanding nobles died!”

Hearing this, some nobles immediately knelt down and begged: "Your Majesty, the families have suffered such heavy losses, please give them some compensation. Duke Paris and the hundreds of nobles who follow him, the royal family can give them some compensation." Take back all the territory and give some compensation to each meritorious family!"

Boom~

After hearing this, more nobles immediately stood up to show their merits for their families, hoping to receive certain rewards and compensation.

The rebellion had just ended, and the palace was already scrambling for the fruits of victory.

King James' head immediately grew larger.

After the death of Duke Paris, the party members around him were cleared away, leaving at least hundreds of territories free.

These lands are not only coveted by the nobles on the royal family's side, but the royal family themselves are also very excited and are ready to take a big bite. It is best to swallow them all.

But after the rhythm was brought up by a certain noble, King James felt an unusual headache in the face of a large number of people asking for rewards.

Zhou Ming did not get involved in these discussions.

He only said a few words to Earl Hill, hoping that the king would pardon Earl Hill's sins, allow him to perform meritorious service, lead the remaining rebels to surrender, and immediately return to the border to garrison to prevent the Soliu Kingdom from imminent imminent move.

King James nodded in agreement, and Earl Hill breathed a sigh of relief and knelt down to thank him.

Afterwards, Zhou Ming stood aside and watched various nobles competing for credit in front of the king.

But he found that one person had been particularly quiet. He looked at the head on the floor and didn't speak for a long time.

He is Duke Rudolf.

In fact, Duke Rudolf has a good relationship with the Paris family. He and Duke Paris are also old acquaintances and have a warm relationship with each other.

But he didn't expect that as one of the "three pillars of the kingdom", Duke Paris would end up so miserable. Not only did his head fall off, but his body had to be chopped up and fed to dogs.

To be honest, Rudolf, who has lived for more than seventy years, has not seen many scenes like this.

I was deeply touched by this.

Because Rudolf, who is also a Duke, was hypothesizing in his mind: If he were in the position of Duke Paris and then raised an army to rebel, if he failed, would he end up like Duke Paris, with his head chopped off and he would look like garbage again? Throwing it around the same way?

Seeing Duke Rudolf's expression, Zhou Ming spoke in his ear:

"Isn't this a normal thing? Since ancient times, the winner takes all, and the loser's clan dies. What's so surprising?"

Hearing this understatement, Rudolph snorted: "Huh, if you were in my position, you wouldn't speak so lightly."

"So Duke, you are in the right position, aren't you? If the royal family wins, the interests of the Rudolph family will not be harmed; if the rebels win, the Rudolph family with huge wealth will still be the target of wooing, and there is no need to worry about the family's demise, but..."

Zhou Ming asked curiously: "I didn't find a son of the Rudolf family in Duke Paris's military camp. Duke, you didn't place a bet on Duke Paris?"

"That's not your style."

"snort!"

Duke Rudolf snorted again: "Duke Paris is courageous and arrogant, but his talents are not one-tenth of his father's. Apart from being good at conspiracy, I don't think he can achieve anything big!"

Zhou Ming nodded. Duke Rudolf has always been known for his "accurate judgment of people". He rarely made any mistakes in his comments about others.

but……

Zhou Ming said: "If the royal family does not have a pharmaceutical production factory, if these nobles do not support the royal family, and Paris launches a rebellion, what choice will the Duke make?"

"That's a different story."

Although he was reluctant, Duke Rudolf had to admit in his heart: If Zhou Ming had not intervened, the rebellion launched by Duke Paris might have been on a completely different camp than it is now.

And after this rebellion, the royal family, which has been cleared of a strong force, will inevitably increase in strength.

The royal power will be enhanced.

The strength of the remaining two dukes will be significantly weakened.

Once the royal family digests the land and interests of the Paris family, it will be difficult for the nobles to violate this kingdom and the king's will.

This is what Duke Rudolf does not want to see, but it is happening.

But so what? Although the Rudolf family is the richest, they have less than 5,000 private soldiers. Duke Hansen does have an elite corps of 10,000 knights, which can be used in field battles, but when attacking a city, it is far weaker than Duke Paris's border defense regiment.

Therefore, after this rebellion is put down, the superstructure and future development direction of the Yadud Kingdom will undergo earth-shaking changes.

…

Two months later.

After countless discussions and arguments.

The royal family and the nobles finally reached an agreement on how to distribute the fruits of victory.

The Dongjing fiefdom, which accounts for about 25% of the kingdom's land area and has a total of 122 pieces, was distributed as follows:

The royal family received 22 relatively high-quality fiefs, which were used to entrust the descendants of the royal family and meritorious royal personnel.

The 60 noble families who had made great contributions were each awarded a medium-sized fief to commend their meritorious service.

There are also more than 40 nobles who have made minor meritorious services. They did not receive fiefs, but each received a reward of 50,000 to 200,000 gold coins, as well as more magic potion sales agency rights in the kingdom.

The remaining 40 fiefdoms, because the climate, environment, and soil are more suitable for growing medicinal materials, were classified as "medicinal material planting areas" and were unified under the management of pharmaceutical production plants. Within these "medicinal material planting areas", each meritorious person Nobles can apply for a piece of land to grow medicinal materials for free. As long as the medicinal properties meet the standards, the pharmaceutical production factory will underwrite all the medicines, and they will not worry about making money.

Of course, ordinary businessmen and civilians can also apply for planting land within the "Medicine Planting Area", but they need to pay a certain fee.

All these fees are finally turned over to the national treasury to serve public utilities.

For example, let's form a new kingdom army and create an elite army of 100,000 people.

For example, the enrollment of Brno Magic School will be expanded, allowing a large number of talented civilians to enroll, greatly reducing tuition fees, and increasing the kingdom's magical strength.

There are also public projects such as building roads and bridges.

This all requires a lot of money.

There are so many expenditure items, and it is impossible for Zhou Ming to always pay for them himself.

Including the royal family and various nobles, they all need to share some of the burden.

Whoever shares more will have priority in making money in the future.

So King James made a statement on the spot: "In the future, 20% of the revenue from the pharmaceutical production factory will be directly attributed to the national treasury."

The other nobles saw it in disbelief, and also received tax quotas one after another. Some received the annual tax quota of 10,000 gold coins, some received 5,000 gold coins, and some received 3,000 or 1,000 gold coins... Except for the king, the nobles contributed a total of about The tax limit is 500,000 gold coins.

500,000 gold coins can probably sustain the kingdom's financial expenses for a month.

Zhou Ming found that scene very funny. When receiving the tax credits, each of these nobles seemed to have suffered a big loss, and their faces looked like they were constipated.

However, when the words "paying taxes are glorious" became deeply rooted in people's hearts, not only nobles but also some businessmen participated in the people who wanted to be taxpayers and "big taxpayers", and the tax amounts they received were even more surprising.

Even some civilians with large assets are vying to be "taxpayers" with voting rights.

Taxpayers have become a symbol of status and status.

Of course, this was all a few years later.

…

in addition.

In the process of dismantling the rebels, Zhou Ming made great contributions and in the process of distributing the fruits of victory, he came up with many plans that satisfied everyone. What should be his reward? At a palace meeting, James The king and the noble ministers discussed the matter for two or three hours.

Finally, the opinions were unified.

There are three rewards belonging to Zhou Ming:

1. Promotion of title, from viscount to earl... Zhou Ming became the youngest earl in the Kingdom of Yadud, and a real earl. Zhou Ming took over all the "black swamp" land in the southern border of the kingdom.

2. Reward 500,000 gold coins and some treasures... This is actually not worth mentioning. With Zhou Ming's current net worth, this is simply a drop in the bucket.

3. Pardon the Leylin family.

The last point is the real drama. Because of Zhou Ming, the Leilin family, which has been in ups and downs for more than three hundred years, is about to rise again.

And the speed of getting up is quite fast, because so far, the Leylin family has only been exiled for a little more than two years.

After the pardon edict was issued, everyone was paying close attention to what kind of changes the return of the Leilin family would bring to the upper echelons of the kingdom.