Don't Mess with That Dragon-Chapter 719 - 106: Land Tax
Under the feudal nobility system of the Middle World, for the vast peasants living under the rural system, the small noble lords overseeing them are considered as the greatest authority.
My noble knight, is not my knight,
In comparison, so are the peasants.
The King grants nobles land, allowing them to act as agents for feudal rule. This method completely transfers the rights of local administration and tax collection to the nobles, letting them manage and govern the extensive country regions on behalf of the throne.
Because of this, many peasants in the countryside only know the lords, who control their lives and deaths, and are unaware of the existence of the King.
Under the hereditary system of noble titles,
In isolated villages, the ruling noble family governs the peasants for generations, gradually cultivating immense authority over time.
This,
is why the Blue Dragon Kingdom, after defeating the Three Kingdoms, did not immediately conduct reforms in vast rural areas, instead allowing the minor nobility to conspire in rebellion until they gathered enough to execute a powerful attack and eliminate them.
Undoubtedly,
under the strong authority minor nobles have over the peasants they control, if the Blue Dragon Kingdom rushed into action, it might find itself caught in a "people's war," causing significant losses to the Kingdom.
The most threatening enemies are not those already revealed,
but those hidden in the shadows, waiting to stab you in the back.
After exposing all the hostile old noble factions, they gathered strong military force to crush them completely, sweeping the outdated noble systems into the dustbin of history.
Without their leaders,
even though local minor nobles spread rumors blackening the Blue Dragon Kingdom, utilizing long-built authority to foster resistance and even hostility among the people,
Nevertheless,
without their noble leaders, these leaderless people are indeed the easiest to manage.
Just like in a certain nameless village,
simply distributing three days' worth of food from the noble castle made the authority painstakingly built by the noble lord completely collapse.
In its place, the authority of the Blue Dragon Kingdom's regime was established in this remote area.
Through the virtual dreamlike network set up by Austin, the Blue Dragon Kingdom managed to train batches of competent grassroots officials, rapidly implementing segmented governance over newly occupied territories.
With various management knowledge, the grassroots officials with modern ruling concepts, under the powerful national strength of the Blue Dragon Kingdom,
steadily captured many villages in the new territories, establishing the authority of the Blue Dragon Kingdom, extending power to the countryside, thoroughly bringing these areas under control.
In this process,
things weren't entirely smooth.
Some remnants of minor noble lords, after their rebel armies were defeated, didn't give up, colluding with their knights to attack officials sent to the grassroots by the Blue Dragon Kingdom, causing considerable trouble.
Due to these scattered rebellions, the Dragon's Nest army couldn't be deployed to suppress them, instead relying on police and militia accompanying grassroots officials for confrontation.
Overall, it's not particularly troublesome.
With advanced weapons, such as bullets inscribed with fighting qi alchemy runes, they can inflict considerable damage to knights who have truly cultivated fighting qi.
Generally, in face-to-face encounters, the noble remnants of small regions are no match for the militia.
The real trouble comes when they hid in the night, using geographical advantages for harassment warfare, even moving into the mountains, colluding with forest bandits, attacking convoys, raiding villages, etc.,
Because of their geographical advantage, although the Blue Dragon Kingdom's militia can suppress opponents in frontal battles with powerful weapons, they struggle to act effectively once the opponents move into the mountains.
Therefore,
after suffering further severe blows, the remnants of these small noble forces have become a chronic problem for grassroots officials in various remote regions.
Even so,
on the whole, the Blue Dragon Kingdom's transformation and digestion operations have continued massively, with many villages undergoing foundational reconstruction, and issues encountered during the process not able to reverse the overall trend.
Especially after the Blue Dragon Kingdom gained basic trust in rural grassroots, after reclaiming the territories and forests from old noble lords into state ownership,
It announced that to celebrate the inclusion of these districts into the Blue Dragon Kingdom family, all areas in newly occupied regions would incur only ten percent tax.
This action,
immediately caused a sensation in the vast newly occupied rural areas, leaving many base-level peasants in disbelief,
knowing that before, they used to pay more than seventy to eighty percent of the harvest in land taxes to their lords. After each harvest, those managing officers would stand fiercely by the fields, taking the vast majority of the freshly harvested grains to the lord's warehouse, leaving only twenty to thirty percent.
Even in years of natural disasters, the land tax never dropped below fifty percent.
It was rumored that in some dangerous frontier lands, the land tax was as low as twenty to thirty percent, but those newly developed areas were not only dangerous but also nowhere comparable to the Blue Dragon Kingdom's ten percent land tax!
Furthermore,
according to explanations from grassroots officials, this ten percent land tax already included miscellaneous taxes like the head tax.
In other words,
after paying the ten percent harvest, the remaining ninety percent belongs to oneself!
How could this not drive those vast numbers of peasants mad?
The entire newly occupied area was tremendously uproarious due to the dissemination of this policy, with local farmers and peasants often crowding around grassroots officials in the newly established village government, cheering loudly upon receiving confirmation, shouting "Long live the Blue Dragon Kingdom" and "Long live His Highness Austin."
If at the beginning, the Blue Dragon Kingdom had issued this policy, these oppressed, pitiable people might not have believed it under the propaganda of their noble lords.
A sudden windfall might have even made them suspicious.
However, with various policies like distributing three days of food for free to celebrate the village government's establishment, building genuine popular support, the Blue Dragon Kingdom established solid authority at the grassroots.
For this reason, once this message was officially announced and confirmed, most peasants believed in the policy's authenticity, cheering loudly.
