He didn't think the royal guard would mutiny at that moment and push His Highness Fredri to the throne.
It took Claude a long while to realize that it was his Thundercrash that delayed the royal guard's plans and delayed Stellin XI's ascension to the throne by a year.
It was clear that the royal guard was wary of the region. Even if they weren't hostile, they couldn't be considered allies.
The other unexpected thing was that Stellin XI was shot to death in his own palace. That was truly out of everyone's expectations.
Usually, a king that was removed from the throne would either be placed under house arrest for life or forced to live in seclusion. Their lives would at least be guaranteed.
Stellin XI being beaten to death was truly shocking. After all, he was still a monarch and the elder brother of the successor, Frederick I.
Bolonik was delighted and immediately sent a delegation to the royal capital to congratulate him.
The envoy this time wasn't Borkal, but a few councilors from the region's parliament. The one-armed lord, Bennett, was the leader of the delegation.
Bolonik hoped that the region could resume normal relations with the kingdom, just like when Stellin X was on the throne. People would be able to come and go freely and trade between the two sides would develop.
Claude wasn't too optimistic about the region's goodwill. He doubted whether the new king would be able to control the royal capital and stabilize the situation in the kingdom.
The death of Stellin XI made Claude believe that Fredri wouldn't be able to rein in the royal guard. Doing so would leave a stain in the history books that he killed his elder brother to take the throne. That couldn't have been his intention.
From March to June, Gryphon Corps stationed in Whitestag delivered quite a bit of information about the royal capital.
After Fredri I ascended to the throne, he officially issued three decrees. The first was to abolish the seven tax decrees Stellin XI had imposed, which allowed the people of the kingdom to breathe a sigh of relief.
The second was to arrest and settle the crimes of the new merchant nobles who had rebelled against Stellin XI.
The third was to encourage the counties in the kingdom to resume production, and to mobilize the Imperial Guard Corps to eliminate bandits and bandits in various places, and to vigorously rectify public security and order.
From the three decrees issued by Frederick the First, it could be seen that the new king was doing a good job and had a good reputation among the people.
However, the envoy mission returned to the overseas autonomous region in mid-July, and the news they brought back wasn't very good.
How should one put it? The demands of the royal capital were hard to accept, and Claude and the others were even less willing to accept the demands of the ministry of the army.
Sir Bennett recounted the events of his trip to the capital. From his words, one could conclude that the newly ascended Frederick the First was actually just a puppet monarch. The ones who truly held the real power in the kingdom were the old noble families.
Their demands were extremely excessive in the eyes of the Parliament members of the Overseas Autonomous Territory, who still viewed the Overseas Autonomous Territory with the same old standards.
The first request was to remove the overseas autonomous territory title and restore the name of the colony. This could be agreed to.
But the second request was to dissolve the Parliament and restore the governor-general system of governance. The royal capital would then send a governor-general and general to govern the colonies. This was something that all the Parliament members were adamantly against. None of them were willing to give up their authority.
The second request was to restore the taxes and tribute the colonies had to pay to the royal capital. It was obvious that the nobles in the royal capital still viewed the Overseas Autonomous Territory with the same old standards.
The taxes and tribute they requested were only five hundred thousand crowns a year, which wasn't too much of a burden compared to the two million crowns that the Overseas Autonomous Territory collected in taxes every year. It was completely acceptable.
However, it was too much to ask for 70% of their mineral resources every year.
The third request was for the Overseas Autonomous Territory. The royal capital believed that the colonial war was over and that the war zones could be abolished.
At the same time, they requested to reduce the military strength of Thundercrash and Monolith. They would be allowed to keep the names of Thundercrash and Monolith, but their military strength would be reduced by half. The command of the two divisions would also be returned to the Ministry of the Army.
The fourth request was regarding the ocean cruising fleet. The Royal Capital requested that the ocean cruising fleet be placed under the jurisdiction of the Royal Navy, renamed the Beluga Fleet, and placed under the command of the Royal Navy. However, half of the sailors in the ocean cruising fleet were allowed to retire, and the Overseas Dominion would form a separate patrol fleet for the Overseas Dominion.
To put it bluntly, they wanted the Far Sea Patrol Fleet to be returned to the country without compensation.
The last request was also for the Overseas Autonomous Territory. The royal capital wanted the Autonomous Territory to present the manufacturing process and blueprints of the new rifles to the kingdom.
The battle between Thundercrash and Crimson Dragon last year had made the old noble families of the kingdom realize the sharpness of the new rifles.
They had been eyeing the new rifles for some time, but the relationship between the two sides had been very delicate. They were neither friends nor foes. They were afraid of angering Thundercrash, so they could only endure it.
From a certain point of view, the old noble families and the new merchant nobles had the same characteristic: greed.
The only thing better than the new merchant nobles was that they knew their limits. They didn't act as unscrupulously as the new merchant nobles.
They would restore the kingdom's native production, improve law and order, stabilize the kingdom's situation, and promote commercial development.
However, they still had the same old view of the Overseas Autonomous Territory. They treated it as a source of resources for the kingdom, and maintained an attitude of suppression and plundering of the economic development of the Overseas Autonomous Territory.
From the first two requests, it could be seen that the old noble families wanted everything in the Overseas Autonomous Territory to return to the way it was before the colonial war. They hated all new changes and developments in the Overseas Autonomous Territory that weren't under their control.
Sir Bennett said that the royal capital told the messengers that if the Overseas Autonomous Territory agreed to these requests, then His Majesty would pardon the Overseas Autonomous Territory for their crimes of sending troops to land on the kingdom's soil to rob military and civilian machinery. They would also be pardoned for their crimes of forming their own parliament and declaring autonomy without authorization.
As for the five generals and the officers and soldiers of the two corps, they would be re-verified by the Ministry of the Army and rewarded by His Majesty the King himself.
General Claude and Bolonik had a high chance of being promoted to general of the kingdom and being granted a noble title. General Skri, General Beechlin and General Eiblont were no exception.
Claude couldn't help but laugh. Was this some sort of enticement? It was a pity that they didn't offer enough to sway the higher-ups of the region at all.
General Bolonik may have wanted to be a loyal subject of the kingdom, but when he heard Sir Bennett's description of the demands of the old noble families, his face turned ashen. He almost took a pen and wrote 'I don't agree' on his face.
"This is intolerable!"
Eiblont was the first to jump out. "What do those big shots in the royal capital treat us as?
Stray dogs wagging their tails and begging for food?
Why do they want us to reduce the strength of two corps? Our two corps are clearly stronger than theirs. If they're going to reduce, they should be reducing their useless corps. "
"By the way, I forgot to mention this.
Sir Bennett thought of something, "When our emissary group returned, I heard that the royal guards were going to expand their military strength by a division, forming a large army with four divisions. The total military strength is equivalent to two regular main force field armies …"
The royal guard originally had three folk and one would be left behind to guard the royal capital whenever they went out to war.
Now that they had four folk, their total strength was more than a hundred thousand men. That was equivalent to the combined strength of Thundercrash and Monolith.
Who knew if they would add a garrison folk in the future? That way, they would be able to take on two enemies at once.
Skri raised his head and asked curiously, "Didn't Stellin XI squander the treasury to the point where even the rats starved to death? Where did the royal guard get the money to expand?"
Sir Bennett sighed. "The royal guard's mutiny was too sudden. No one could have predicted it at all.
"At the same time, the royal guard locked down the entire royal capital. None of the new nobles who followed Stellin XI escaped. They were all captured.
"When we arrived at the royal capital, we heard rumors that the new king sent people to confiscate the properties of the new nobles and found nearly ten million crowns.
"That's why the new king issued those three decrees, exempting the citizens from the seven taxes and lightening their burden.
"On the day the decree was issued, the citizens of the royal capital cheered in the streets, thanking Frederick the First for his grace and benevolence.
"In fact, the ill-gotten wealth the royal guard plundered from the new nobles is enough to sustain the new king for three years if we use it sparingly.
The kingdom's economy should return to normal in three years. "
"How many members of the new nobles were captured?" Skri asked.
Sir Bennett shook his head. "I'm not sure, but there should be a few hundred.
The newspapers I read in the royal capital said that there were forty to fifty of them sentenced to death for their heinous crimes. Their subordinates had their properties confiscated and were sentenced to labor camps. "
Skri thought for a moment. "That's not just ten million crowns. The envoys we sent last time cried and begged for mercy after we captured them. They were willing to pay a ransom of two to three hundred thousand crowns to return them to the kingdom.
If the members of the new aristocratic merchant forces that were sentenced all have the wealth of these envoys, then our new king should be able to earn a lot from the confiscation of their properties this time … "
General Bolonik slammed the table angrily, interrupting General Scripp and Sir Bennett's discussion about how much ill-gotten wealth the new king had obtained by confiscating the properties of the new merchant nobles. "Enough with the nonsense. What do you think about the king's proposal?" Bolonik asked. "What do you think about it?
I'll say this first, I'm firmly against it. What do they think our war zone is? Just the new rifles alone, we can't agree to their demands!
Claude, what do you think? "
What do I think?
Claude shrugged. There was nothing much to say. Rejection was the only way.
The Royal Capital's old aristocratic families had just taken over the kingdom's power, yet they had already become complacent and made so many harsh demands of the overseas autonomous region. Did they really think that they could control the overseas autonomous region?
The first and second demands alone couldn't be agreed to by the council.
Now that the councilors were in charge, who would be willing to have two mothers-in-law serving them?
Forget about restoring the governor-general system, even the request to hand over 70% of the colonies' mineral resources for free every year was vehemently rejected by all the councilors.
The reason was simple. That would be taking money out of their pockets. Who would be willing to give 70% of their profits to the royal capital for free and take the rest for themselves?
At this moment, even the most loyal people would ponder whether it was worth it to do so ….
As for reducing Thundercrash and Monolith's forces to two folk and taking the ocean patrol fleet under the kingdom's navy, it sounded simple. Claude wanted to ask why.
The Imperial Guard Corps had promoted Frederick to the top of the world for his meritorious service, and they had expanded into a large corps. The Thunderclap Corps and the Monolith Corps had guarded the overseas colonies without losing a single inch of land, and they had even given the kingdom a new colony. However, the meritorious service of opening up new territories had to be reduced. Who would be willing to accept that?
The ocean patrol fleet, on the other hand, was the spoils of war of the two corps and wasn't under the kingdom's navy in the first place.
The war zone had reorganized the captured Allied Fleet into an ocean patrol fleet responsible for guarding the borders of the war zone. They had invested a lot of money in order to form an army, but now the capital wanted to nationalize the fleet without spending a single penny of capital. Perhaps they even had the intention of restricting the overseas autonomous territories' ocean transport ability to the kingdom's mainland. It was simply a pipe dream.
In the end, they even set their sights on the new rifles. That was the lifeline of the region. Not to mention the five generals, even most of the council members were against giving the blueprints and manufacturing process to the royal capital.
Nobody wanted to see their enemies fight them with the new rifles. It would be too late for regrets then.
Take the grenade, for example. Claude gave the manufacturing process and manufacturing process to the old noble houses. As a result, the nations of Freia began to copy and research the grenade.
The Shiksan catapulted two corps in the war zone and caught them off guard, resulting in heavy casualties.
No one wanted to experience such a war again.
Claude didn't really care about information about the new rifles being leaked. The real key to the new rifles lay in the bullets, and the bullets came from the gunpowder invented by Madam Sonia.
He kept the formula of the gunpowder a secret and only the students in Angelina's lab made it.
Every time they made a large batch, it would be enough to last them half a month. Each bullet only used a tiny bit of gunpowder the size of a booger.
Without gunpowder, the bullets would misfire, and a misfiring rifle would be worse than a spear.
Claude could give the new rifles to the royal capital, but he definitely wouldn't give them the gunpowder.
Of course, that was only in his head. Once the new rifles were in the hands of the old noble houses, all the nations on the continent would know how to make them.
Claude couldn't guarantee that someone from another country wouldn't invent something similar to gunpowder to solve the problem. If that really happened, he wouldn't even have the time to cry. He would have to suffer in silence and wouldn't be able to complain about it.
That was why he definitely wouldn't agree to the request of the old noble houses.
"How do we reply to the royal capital's request?" Bennett asked. He was the leader of the emissary group, so he was very concerned about that.
Claude smiled. "Why should we reply to their request? We just have to write down the conditions we can agree to and give it to them.
It's like haggling in a grocery store. They're asking for a price and we're bargaining. If we can't come to an agreement, we'll just call it quits. "
"Alright, it's decided then. Everyone, let's discuss what conditions we should give to the royal capital," Bolonik said as he slapped the table.
Soon enough, the members of the executive committee discussed for a while and wrote a reply letter to the imperial capital.
The letter stated that the overseas autonomous region could revert to its original name, but it had to retain its parliament and military authority.
Next, the region could pay 500,000 crowns as taxes and tribute to the royal capital. As for the mineral resources, they could be sold to local merchants at a discount of 30% of the market price.
As for the two corps of the region, the request was simple. They were to be funded by themselves and be under the jurisdiction of the region's military to fulfill Stellin X's decree to defend the colonies.
I hope the royal capital will approve the rewards and promotions of the two corps as soon as possible and record it in the archives. You can't make things difficult for me.
Apart from that, the patrol fleet was the spoils of war from the colonial war and was under the jurisdiction of the region. It could help the royal navy build a new fleet, but the royal capital refused to allow the patrol fleet to be under the jurisdiction of the royal navy.
There was also no mention of the new rifles. It was a clear message to the old noble houses in the royal capital not to even think about getting their hands on them.
"What if they don't agree?" Bennett asked.
"If they don't agree, we can just drag it out. It's not like we can rely on the mainland.
At most, they won't give us any rewards or promotions. That won't affect us at all.
Our soldiers are already used to the royal capital's unfair treatment of us. I'd be surprised if they agreed. Will the sun always rise in the west in the future? "Claude replied nonchalantly.
As he expected, the reply was like a stone sinking into the ocean when it reached the royal capital. There was no response at all.
On the other hand, Jarl Hadro, the general of Gryphon stationed in Whitestag, sent a handwritten letter to the region. The letter stated that the big shots in the capital were furious after reading the region's reply. They were cursing the region for being traitors and that they would be the first to send troops to attack the region once the kingdom regained its strength.