Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 21 Conservative Nobles

Time is a very strange thing. Sometimes when you wish it would go by faster, it will always go by slowly.

But sometimes when you want it to slow down, it always slips away without you realizing it.

For Purficott, although the past week passed very quickly, it was quite fulfilling because he had been implementing various things. At least this week's time was not wasted.

He has negotiated a research project to be developed in cooperation with Langdon University, and has prepared a royal banquet with Princess Anne to raise funds to support the "Arctic Scientific Expedition". It can be said that Purficott's time utilization rate this week is still very high. .

But for the Duke of Gloucester, the past week has been a disaster.

He spent a lot of time arguing and arguing with the members of the Noble Council. During this period, he held many formal or private discussions, but no useful consensus was reached, let alone any results.

Those nobles did believe that there would be a devastating disaster in the future, but they felt that this disaster would not affect them, or that even if it affected them, they would only suffer a certain amount of property losses, rather than have any catastrophic consequences.

After all, they are noble families that have been inherited for hundreds of years, and are the "cornerstone of the country" that the Victoria Empire relies on. They should not and cannot suffer losses due to a natural disaster. Even if they do, they can get enough from the empire to make up for their losses. compensation.

Although not all nobles are so short-sighted, it has to be said that some nobles can only see their own immediate interests and forget the responsibilities they should fulfill as nobles.

A considerable number of people even feel that the empire prospers because of nobles like them. Therefore, when disaster strikes, the first thing the empire must ensure is the interests of these nobles. Only when their interests are protected can the interests of the empire be achieved. Assure.

Although this view is not wrong from a certain perspective, and was even correct a hundred years ago, for the Duke of Gloucester, who has long recognized that times have changed, this view is really It was so explosive that he couldn't accept it, and he even wanted to throw his white gloves at the noble who said such things.

But in the end, the Duke of Gloucester endured this breath and patiently argued his interests with these nobles, hoping that they could put aside their disputes, unite and make joint contributions to the safety of the empire.

But the Duke of Gloucester's efforts only resulted in a unanimous response from the nobles: "If the empire needs it, we will send our family members to join politics and the army to serve and sacrifice for the empire, and the empire will reward us with our power and status." , the royal family and the nobility co-govern, this has been the case since ancient times, and it will always be the case in the future."

This was the promise made by the founding emperor of the empire to the nobles who supported him when the Victoria Empire was first established. It was also the foundation and governance model of the Victoria Empire in the past.

I have to say that this was no problem in the cold weapon era.

After all, in a society with underdeveloped productivity, only aristocratic families could afford to raise qualified knights and afford the education expenses of their children.

To be a qualified knight, you not only need at least one war horse and one pack horse, and a suit of decent armor and weapons, but also need at least five to seven years of martial arts training and military education.

Knights don’t just need to be able to charge on horseback and duel for women. They need to learn how to mount a horse to fight, they also need to learn how to dismount to fight, and more importantly, how to command their followers to fight on the battlefield, instead of The pigs were herded and slaughtered. Contrary to what most people think, the main role of knights is to serve as grassroots officers in the army, not to charge in formation as depicted in some movies and TV shows, or to engage in head-on confrontations between cans without any fancy.

Because of this, the power and status of the nobles within the empire will become higher and higher, and their influence will become more and more deep-rooted as the family reproduces.

The emperor divided the nobles into feudal lords, and the nobles governed the local areas, thus forming a stable national structure of the Victorian Empire before the invention of the steam engine.

However, the emergence of the steam engine not only brought about the rapid development of productivity and earth-shaking innovations in the military, but also brought about great changes in the social structure of the empire.

More than seventy years have passed since the emergence of the steam engine, and the empire has also experienced four generations of emperors. The emerging big businessmen are already eager to become the new nobles of the empire.

But the old nobles still firmly occupy high positions in the empire, and are always trying to maintain the same things they used to do.

The conflict between the old and new nobles has become the main problem of the empire in recent years. If the colonies had not been expanding and the internal conflicts of the empire were filled by the profits imported from the colonies, the problem would have erupted long ago.

Therefore, for today's empire, the old aristocratic things are gradually no longer applicable.

The Duke of Gloucester had already seen this clearly during the preparations for the crisis response committee.

The old nobles were more concerned about their own three-acre land. They hoped to strengthen their fiefdom's ability to respond to disasters. In the face of this disaster, they still wanted to maintain their rule over the fiefdom, and even took advantage of the disaster brought about by it. The influence goes back to the past when fiefdoms were feudal states and vassals were the emperors.

They did not believe in Perficott's scientific calculations, but they also believed in the astrological predictions of the Royal Astronomical Society, but they were indifferent to the horror of the disaster.

In other words, the nobles are not afraid of this kind of extremely cold natural disaster that can freeze most ordinary people to death. They have enough conditions to ensure their survival, and enough power to ensure that the empire is the first to provide disaster relief. Protect their interests for a while.

As for confidence? You only need to look at the problems faced by the Duke of Gloucester now to know where their confidence lies.

On the contrary, as the new aristocratic merchant class, although they also want to safeguard their own interests, they prefer this to be a complete country rather than divided feudal states, because only when the entire country is a whole Only then can they use the country's strength to open up a larger market and earn more profits.

Therefore, when responding to crises and disasters, they prefer to preserve cities, ports and their factories and maintain the operation of industrial production.

The empire's power was limited and it was impossible to protect everything. The different interests between the old and new nobles also led to endless quarrels and disputes between them, making it difficult to establish a crisis response committee.

(End of this chapter)