Chapter 21 The Old-Fashioned Noble
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.
We have negotiated a research project developed in cooperation with Langton University, and prepared a royal banquet with Princess Anne to raise funds to support the "Arctic Scientific Expedition". It can be said that Purficott's week The utilization rate 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 wrangling with the members of the Noble Council. During this period, he had many formal or private discussions, but no useful consensus was reached, let alone any action. What's the result?
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, not any. What disastrous consequences.
After all, they are all aristocratic families with a history of 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 still benefit from it. The Empire received compensation sufficient to cover its losses.
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 from a certain perspective, this view is not wrong, and it was even correct a hundred years ago, but for the Duke of Gloucester, who has long recognized that times have changed. He said that this view was really hard for him to accept, 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 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 hard work 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 the empire and sacrifice themselves, and the empire will reciprocate. With our power and status, the royal family and the nobility co-rule. This has been the case since ancient times and will always be the case in the future.”
This was the support given by the founding emperor of the Victoya Empire when it was first established. The promise made by the nobles has also been 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 need not only at least one war horse and one pack horse, a suit of decent armor and weapons, but also 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 and fight, they also need to learn how to dismount and, more importantly, how to command their followers. Fight on the battlefield instead of being 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 line up and charge as depicted in some movies and TV shows, or to engage in head-to-head confrontations between cans and cans.
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.
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. The empire has also experienced the change of 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 the high positions of the empire, and always try to maintain the same things as they did in the past.
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.
So for today’s empire, the things of the old aristocracy are gradually no longer applicable.
The Duke of Gloucester has 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 fief's ability to respond to disasters. In the face of this disaster, they still wanted to maintain their rule over the fief, even by The impact of this disaster is a return to the past, when fiefdoms were feudal states and vassals were 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 When the country is a whole, they can use the strength of the country to develop a larger market and earn more profits.
Therefore, when dealing with crises and disasters, they prefer to preserve cities, ports and their factories, and maintain the operation of industrial production.
The empire’s power is limited and it is impossible to protect everything. The different interests between the old and new nobles have also led to endless quarrels and disputes between them, making the establishment of a crisis response committee difficult. Difficulties abound.
(End of this chapter)