Chapter 571 Dealing with it alone
The development of the Hussite War caused the Holy Roman Empire to fall into division. The north represented by Brandenburg and the south represented by Austria both wanted to compete for Bohemia. The Holy Roman Empire could only survive in this division.
In the southern Italian region, Rome continued to develop local agricultural and commercial resources after regaining most of the northern regions. Venice was also filled with lagoons by the empire, and houses were built on it to increase the population. Provide taxes and food for the central empire.
These actions are inseparable from Mason's operation. He also obeyed the emperor's orders to transform this place. The original Venetians are basically gone, replaced by Romanian-speaking Romans.
Although the empire destroyed the appearance of Venice, the local geographical location gradually developed commercial trade. It's just that this time the owner has changed.
"My lord, the order of His Majesty is to return to Constantinople."
Mason has been in this high-ranking position for several years. This time he received the emperor's will, and it seems that he will be promoted.
Of course, in order to prevent himself from being imprisoned by the emperor, he asked his family to be careful not to show off their wealth too much.
Alas, having money is really troublesome. The wealth owned by the alliance of the Mason family and the Taziu family ranks among the top of the Roman wealth list. Their goal is to surpass Crassus, the richest man in the Roman Republic. It is said that his wealth exceeds 200 million silver denarii, which should be 7 million lei now. They are moving towards this goal.
Mason has also gained a lot of benefits for the family. For example, the public works in the province of Dalmatia are basically contracted by their family. There is a lot of money in it. There are also some local government material procurement, trade transit and fund exchange with Switzerland and other countries, which are basically contracted by the Mason family. Just the construction of houses locally can earn more than 200,000 lei.
Overseas colonies are also an important project. Various constructions on Sara Island are basically paid for by their family. Andreiburg has become a small town of 2,500 people, with large sugarcane plantations, coffee plantations and cotton plantations. There are already some workshops in the town. The local food cannot be self-sufficient. Every year, the family buys wheat from Sofia and other places and sells it to the local area to earn the difference.
In addition to selling agricultural products, slave trade is also an important foreign exchange income. Under the influence of Rome, it has become the norm for the upper class in Europe to have black slaves to serve, and because this commodity is only available in Romania, people buy it in large quantities every year. The price of strong ones can be higher, and it is endless.
Therefore, Rome increased the arrest and castration of African blacks. But the output of Abyssinia could not keep up, so Mason set his sights on the inland of the island. The first slave capture was only 50 people, while Zanzibar could buy more than 200 slaves at a time. Mason seized this business opportunity and bought a large number of black slaves and transported them to the north, and then sold them to Europe after castration.
Now Mason can be said to be a winner in life. For the emperor's order, he naturally went to the capital immediately. Don't let the other party wait impatiently.
"Wait for me to hand over the work, that Preyas!"
Butler Preyas quickly came to Mason.
"Master."
"Tell the lady that we are going to Constantinople, let her pack her things, and we will go in a few days."
"Yes"
Mason thought happily, wondering what position the emperor would give him when he entered the capital this time?
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Peter himself had nothing to do, so he went to the bedroom to play with his children.
Queen Sophia gave birth to two sons and two daughters for Peter. The oldest Alexius was only five years old, and the youngest Sophia had just started to learn to speak.
Four children were lined up, and Anna was holding Sophia. Such a warm scene made Peter feel his heart melt.
"So cute. If they had many wives and concubines like in the East, they would have dozens of children."
Peter remembered that the Eastern emperor with the most children was Li Longji, who had 30 sons and 29 daughters. As a result, 15 of them died young, 5 were killed, and one was frightened to death. Conclusion: The quality is worrying. (Here we are talking about before the Ming Dynasty, the one in the Qing Dynasty does not count here)
Too many children is not a good thing, and with so many, what if there is fratricide in the future? So we have to separate them quickly.
But now the children are still young, so we don't have to worry about them for now, and they can be divided in Africa, which should be no problem.
Peter continued to tease the children, not thinking that the crown prince was handling a lot of affairs. This was all allowed by the emperor, and the purpose was to train his ability to handle government affairs.
"Your Highness, this is a letter from Sigismund, hoping to maintain friendly relations between the two countries."
"Well, he did this simply because he was afraid that the empire would get involved in Bohemia's affairs. The reply was that the empire was willing to coexist with him in peace, but hoped that he would not overdo it."
With the experience of the past few years, Alexander could imagine Sigismund's difficulties. It was said that he still had a debt of 280,000 gold coins to pay off. It was too difficult. Is there anyone in the world more miserable than him? He was imprisoned for not paying back his debts, and he failed in his expeditions everywhere.
"Your Highness, this is the implementation of the inheritance tax. We are conducting pilot projects in Constantinople and Adrian, and the public's response is very strong."
"Are they all qualified?"
"This is the case in Constantinople, but we have heard from Adrian and Tervono that in order to get more money, local officials directly lowered the standard from 1,000 lei to 500 lei, so that the extra tax goes into their wallets.
Not only that, some people who meet the requirements directly bribed local officials to have their names removed from the standard so that they don't have to pay taxes."
Alexander got angry when he heard this, "How dare you do this. Your Majesty formulated the inheritance tax to prevent them from infringing on the interests of the common people. I didn't expect that you could do this. It's really eye-opening."
Baptiste saw that the crown prince was angry, so he said, "Your Highness, although the goals of your majesty's policies are good, people's hearts are always thinking about themselves, and this situation is also normal."
Originally, he tried to persuade the crown prince not to be so angry, but Alexander got even angrier. "So, we're just going to let them do this?"
"Your Highness, don't be angry. Now is the time for the government to show its determination. These officials must be cleared out, and this policy must be publicized to the people so that they support the government, so that we can implement it smoothly."
Alexander nodded, "Let's do it this way. Those officials must be dismissed immediately. Many of those selected in the past few years are like this. What's the situation?"