124 – Top (1)
“Wow, another war.”
“Really… I’ve never seen so many wars in four years in all of history.”
“Well… It’s a civil war, but isn’t a civil war also a war? I hope everyone lives in peace. Tsk tsk.”
The merchants of Rotaring each tell stories while watching the civil war in Caroling. The merchants express surprise, admiration, or sadness at the fact that war broke out again, but all of them have smiles on their faces.
Of course. No matter how unfortunate it is, we have to distinguish between public and life. For a merchant, it is impossible to give up the opportunity to make a lot of money out of personal feelings. Even if there were merchants who had such feelings, due to the rapid development of commerce in the past few years, all such merchants have long been eaten apart by their partners.
“Where are you going to sell weapons this time? Looking in the direction, it doesn’t look southeast.”
“I am the Duke of Anjou in the west of Carolingian. There are many Royalist nobles around me, and they say that they are struggling because they are too close to Lutesia. But didn’t you hear about it at the last meeting?”
“Ahahahaha… That’s why I couldn’t attend the last meeting because I was very ill.”
The Merchants of Rotaring are strictly listening to the orders of the Royal Palace.
According to common sense in this world, no, common sense even today, it is impossible for merchants to listen to their superiors and act as a group.
In a place where the administrative power is within reach, they will pretend to listen to some extent, but if they get out of the sight of the administrative power even a little, they are the type of merchants who try to make a profit regardless of means and methods, such as tax evasion or manipulation.
“Is that so? If you’re sick, what can you do?”
“What are they doing there! Come quickly!”
“Oops, let’s hurry up.”
However, Rotaring’s merchants do not. He is doing his best to carry out the orders of the royal palace without turning his eyes to small gains.
It’s because I’ve only listened to the orders of the palace so far and it’s full of only good things… No matter how much you always get benefits, isn’t there a guarantee that you will get benefits in the future?
There is a separate reason for merchants to listen to the Royal Palace’s orders.
“Anyway, was this the original number?”
“Yes?”
“It seems like there are fewer people compared to the last time I came to Carolingian. That’s right, that skeleton-looking guy isn’t here.”
“…They’re all in their home countries. They’ve committed a crime.”
“…”
The merchant who asks the question hears the answer and does not ask any more questions. He just shuts his mouth tightly and swallows dry saliva.
Claude, the King of Rotaring, was able to find a way to deal with a force that is difficult to project administrative power as a result of digging through his memories from his previous life.
State-led snitching policy.
This is a method used in many authoritarian countries such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, East Germany, and the Japanese Empire to control those who escaped the state’s surveillance network.
By officially giving those belonging to that particular group the authority to snitch on their colleagues, you can put a very effective leash on that particular group.
The reward for reporting is to distribute the privileges and property of the person accused according to the value of the content of the accusation.
As earning profits is the ultimate goal of merchants, this policy showed a very high effect in the Rotaring Merchants, who were forced to move in groups.
The merchant, who offered illegal activities to get a share with his colleagues, was immediately stripped of his pear by the informer and took his wealth to his colleagues as a share. Was made Of course, there was also a merchant who pushed his colleague for false accusation, but they were also quickly discovered by the intensive investigation of the Rotaring and shared their wealth with their colleagues.
Of course, state-led informants are not only good.
“…”
Realizing that they have all been punished for tipping off, the merchant simply follows the preceding merchant in silence. The lively conversation from a while ago disappears, leaving only desolate silence.
As you can see here, the state-led informant has the side effect of greatly weakening the solidarity of the group.
Weakened cohesiveness drastically reduces the efficiency of work, and this is to the point of spitting out the benefits gained from snitching. Authoritarian governments are not alone in using the state-led informer policy.
Of course, this group of merchants is not maintained because of ties with colleagues, but only for profit, so it can withstand the backlash of the informant policy to some extent. Even if you don’t want to be with others, there is no one who won’t do it if money comes from being together.
…………
“Wow…”
What are these bastards?
No matter how much the government organization was expanded, it was not possible to perfectly control all groups because of the limitations of the administrative power of the pre-modern era.
So I tried to reduce the administrative burden by introducing the inform policy, but I thought there would be side effects. …
“There are a lot of informants, but there are too many.”
I expected that after a while, there would be many merchants who had a taste for snitching, but I didn’t think it would come out like this from the very beginning.
Assuming the informant isn’t false, the informants are lawbreakers, and getting rid of them is obviously just and helpful to me, but…
‘I feel very bad.’
I can’t believe so many reports came in as soon as I issued an edict to distribute a certain amount of the informant’s property to the informant.
Doesn’t that mean that the merchants, no, these peddlers of the trade knew long ago that their colleagues were breaking the law, but turned a blind eye to them?
In the meantime, I thought that even if you wouldn’t listen to me obediently, you would have at least some loyalty because you’ve inherited a lot of rice cakes, such as the unification of currency and the privilege of exemption from customs duties in the empire, but I was mistaken.
If I don’t want to benefit even a bit from seeing this fish, I’ll just pretend I don’t know what I’ve been eating and just shut my mouth.
“It is said that there is no such thing as a noble profession, but isn’t a merchant a job that deviate from that maxim?”
Looking at me tired of the amount of ruinous information, Leclerc shook his head and said so.
Come to think of it, Leclerc did not hide his dislike of merchants from the beginning. It sounds like you’ve been through a lot in the meantime.
“That’s right. From now on, I’ll have to find a way to control the merchants, not just push them away.”
It is not yet possible to determine whether the informer policy should be applied to other groups such as factory workers, but it seems right to apply the informant policy only to merchants first.
Even if merchants are tied to the top, they have a strong tendency to play separately, and at this point, the only way to control such merchants is to push them. Since they initially operate for profit and have a strong personal inclination, they do not care about the negative impact of policies, such as the disconnection between colleagues.
No, if these bastards move as one with a bond between their colleagues, cartel, trust, and other terrible things will come out, so it should be seen as a positive influence, not a negative one.
Ah, the fantasies of Sanong are over.
…………
“The Merchant of Lotharing is passing nearby! Looking in the direction, they seem to be going to the Duke of Anjou in the west.”
“So…?”
As the Rotharing Dragon Merchant is heading west across Carolingian territory, it is inevitable that it will be exposed to numerous forces while passing through.
A neutral aristocrat, Caroling’s petty aristocrat, who did not claim to be neutral in the civil war after receiving a proposal from Rotaring, but left it alone because Rotaring was not worth flirting with, smiled at the report of his vassal.
“How many were there?”
“Yes?”
“How many carts the Order has pulled!”
“Hee… Sorry, too many to count…”
He came to post a report without knowing the proper information. Normally, he would have picked up a rod and threshed it with excitement, but now he doesn’t.
What the vassal said. I mean, he was very satisfied with the fact that there were too many to count.
“Cheuk… Yes? Was there an escort?”
“I saw that for sure! I counted the sword-carrying guys, so fingers… Uh… One, two, three… Ten.”
It is said that the level of a servant follows that of a master, and a vassal who counted escorts by folding his fingers because he is not familiar with numbers recalls that there were ten escorts and reports them.
The nobleman who heard the rumor-like report did not become enraged, but instead changed the smile on his face to a greedy grin.
“Really?”
There are 10 people, so that’s enough to deal with no matter how good the level is. With just 10 people, I can’t deal with all the soldiers of my Baron’s territory, can I?
There are many forces around here, so if you put a dump on them, you can get away from the suspect line. The upper guild, which was unlucky enough to be caught by bandits on the road and disgraced, always appears regardless of the past or the present.
…Okay.