The negotiations between the royal envoys and the council broke down once more. In the eyes of the royal envoys, the region was no different from a traitor.
That was because they had proposed conditions that the kingdom would never agree to. They wanted to use the crisis of famine in the kingdom's agricultural harvest and the fact that the kingdom was fighting against the invading Nasri to create a de facto separation and independence for the autonomous region. If that wasn't rebellion, what was?
Claude and the other generals proposed that they would recognize Aueras as their sovereign in name and maintain a unified stance in foreign affairs and military affairs.
However, they would maintain an independent position in the administration, personnel, finances, military and other aspects of the region and wouldn't be under the jurisdiction of the kingdom.
However, they could accept the ministry of the army as the governing body in name. Any promotions and promotions would be sent to the ministry of the army. That was merely a notification and didn't require approval.
Apart from the conditions set by the Dominion Dominion, the Dominion Executive Committee also proposed a series of conditions for the ocean trade between the two sides. For example, both sides would adopt low or no tariffs on imported goods. Previously, there were no tariffs on goods imported from the United Kingdom when they entered the overseas colonies, but the special products of the overseas colonies would have to pay high taxes when they entered the United Kingdom. This was also one of the United Kingdom's ways of restricting the development of manufacturing in the overseas colonies.
From a certain perspective, the kingdom spared no effort in restricting the development of the colonies. It could be said that it was Stellin X's foresight.
The overseas colonies were so large and rich in resources. Relocating the manufacturing workshops in the kingdom would obviously reduce the cost of production.
If the kingdom didn't impose any restrictions, a large portion of the wealth of the people would flow to the colonies. That meant an increase in population migration as manufacturing required all sorts of skilled workers.
When the colonies developed, it would be difficult for the kingdom to effectively govern them. After all, they were separated by the Silent Ocean and too much distance meant more variables. So, it was better for the colonies to remain as a source of resources for the kingdom.
However, a colonial war changed the future of the colonies. Various reasons and timing led to the current state of the colonies.
Just as Stellin X predicted, the economic development of the colonies meant that they would break away from the kingdom's control. They would no longer be able to treat the colonies as a source of resources for the kingdom.
The reason the council proposed such a trade clause was because the colonies could produce all sorts of goods needed by the kingdom. Be it in terms of quality or price, they were superior to what the kingdom could produce.
In the eyes of the parliament members of the Dominion, the 27 million people in the kingdom were a huge sales market.
So, the high tariffs imposed by the kingdom on the goods produced in the colonies were the first to be removed.
There were also various other commercial provisions regarding ocean trade. The purpose of these members of parliament was to break the monopoly of the old aristocratic families and the new aristocratic families in the kingdom. For example, the pricing of goods, exclusive agreements for goods in a certain region, and so on. They wanted a market for goods and were not afraid of free competition.
It could be said that the councilors of the overseas autonomous territories who were related to manufacturing were the true promoters of freedom of commerce. They were not like the new business nobles of the kingdom who advocated freedom of commerce. Those new business nobles were purely selling dog meat. They talked about freedom of commerce, but in reality, they wanted to monopolize commercial interests and did not allow commercial competition.
The councilors were much more straightforward in this regard. They weren't afraid of competition. What they wanted was fairness and a pass to enter the market.
As long as they allowed the products of the colonies to be sold in the kingdom, they were confident that they could crush all competitors with their cheap and high-quality goods and seize the kingdom's market.
Of course, in order to get the kingdom to agree to the conditions, the region agreed to pay 300,000 crowns as taxes and 100,000 crowns as tribute to the Stellin royal family, a total of 400,000 crowns.
They could also provide 1.2 million crowns worth of food and produce to the kingdom as taxes for the next three years after the colony was dissolved.
As for the mineral resources, the council rejected the kingdom's request to provide them free of charge. However, they could give the kingdom a low-interest loan so that the kingdom could purchase all sorts of mineral resources at a 20% discount from the market price to satisfy the kingdom's current military production requirements.
The loan would be secured by the taxes and tribute the colonies would pay to the kingdom in the future.
However, in the eyes of the emissaries from the Royal City, the conditions proposed by the Autonomous Military Region and the Executive Committee were treacherous lies. They angrily rejected the conditions and ignored the Autonomous Military Region and the Executive Committee's request to pass the conditions to the Royal City for the higher-ups to review. Hence, the negotiations broke down.
However, due to the kingdom's dire situation, the envoys tried their best to curry favor with the kingdom and worked as councilors in private. In the end, the only motion on the table was approved.
The colonies would send 1.2 million crowns worth of food and produce to the kingdom to help the kingdom fend off the threat of the upcoming famine.
At the same time, the supplies would be treated as the taxes and tribute they had to pay to the royal capital for the past two years. The envoys signed and confirmed it.
After the matter was settled, the envoys from the royal capital followed the fleet that escorted the provisions back to the kingdom's mainland.
For the envoys, the 1.2 million crowns worth of food and produce would be more than enough for them to report back to the kingdom.
If they were to use them sparingly, they should be able to tide through the crisis.
For Claude and the others, sending the envoys away was one thing. The region had too many things to deal with at the moment and didn't have the time to waste on the envoys.
In the eyes of the councilors, the food and produce were nothing more than a small sum of money to send to their poor relatives.
The more prosperous the region became, the less willing they were to return to the days when they were ruled by the kingdom.
Claude then went to Port Patres in Robisto to discuss the design of the first batch of ironclad ships with Liboyd.
After three trials of the ships, Liboyd finally admitted that the designs Claude drew for the ships made sense.
He removed the gunports below the deck and the heavy muzzle-loading naval guns, and increased the hold and the area below the waterline to stabilize the ship.
However, the final design was still a little oval-shaped and not slender enough. More importantly, Liboyd wasn't willing to remove the three masts of the ship.
His reason was that in the event that the black stones were burned out at sea, the ship would have to rely on sails to move forward. Even though it would be slow, there would still be a chance of returning to port.
Claude didn't want to argue with Liboyd in that regard. After all, Liboyd was a late learner in warship design. The people he worked with were all sailing warship designers, so it was inevitable that their designs would have the shadow of sailing ships in them.
Claude could only hope that the first batch of ironclads would be slowly improved and the future would be even better.
There were a total of six ships in the first batch. They were replicas of long-distance, three-masted sailing warships. Claude defined them as destroyers.
There were six medium cannons installed on the ships, which were the enlarged versions of the light infantry field cannons.
There were four at the front and two at the back. There were also three fixed light infantry field cannons on the sides.
The effective range of the medium cannons was 1,800 to 2,000 meters, while the light cannons on the sides had an effective range of 1,200 meters.
In the current naval warfare model, sailing warships could fire their cannons at each other from a distance of two to three hundred meters. That was the era when swords and sabers were used to hack and slash at each other.
The only worry was that naval warfare required the best cannoneers to use their eyes to aim at the enemy's warship. Whether or not they could hit their target depended on experience.
Claude didn't have the capability to come up with some sort of aiming device for naval warfare.
As the admiral of the region's fleet, Moriad fell in love with the ironclad warships the moment he went on sea trials. He told Claude that it didn't matter if he could hit the enemy's warships or not. The enemy wouldn't be able to do anything to his warships anyway.
Besides, if the cannons couldn't hit their target, would they be afraid that they wouldn't sink the enemy's warship? Those thicker ships could easily dominate the seas and take on ten enemies at once.
Port Patres in Robisto State had become the largest shipbuilding base in the overseas autonomous territory. In order to support the production of ironclad warships, the five generals of the autonomous territory gathered many councilors and invested in the construction of a large iron refinery in the nearby East Mosilaga Mountain. The refinery was specialized in the production of rust-proof iron plates and rust-proof iron plates needed by ironclad warships.
For this reason, he had specially hired two Rune Wizards with high salaries and benefits to research on how to mass-produce anti-corrosion, waterproof, and rust-resistant metal plates and special steel plates for navigation purposes …
In the long range plans of the autonomous region, a fleet of more than 40 ironclad warships would be established in the future, as well as more than a hundred ironclad transport ships. The total investment would be around 12 million crowns, and it would be completed over ten years, with an annual investment of 1.2 million crowns.
That was why the iron refinery was a great investment prospect.
Once the fleet and transport ships were formed, they would be able to recoup all the investment in three to four years.
It could only be said that the ships of this era were still in a crude and crude state. They were built to imitate sailing warships.
Had it not been for Claude's insistence, Liboyd would have wanted to remove the waterproof cabins.
The reason was very simple. He believed that the reason why a sailing wooden-hulled warship needed to have a waterproof cabin at the bottom was because the wooden-hulled warship was not sturdy enough.
The ships they built, on the other hand, had thick metal plates welded together. They were sturdy enough to not leak.
Fortunately, Claude managed to convince him that without the waterproof cabins, the ship would sink even faster if a leak were to occur. Even if it was for the waterproof cabins, it would still be worth it to add a month to the construction.
Liboyd had originally planned to complete the six so-called destroyers within four months and design a second-class, five-masted, ocean-going warship that Claude named a cruiser.
By the time Claude returned to Lanu, it was January of Year 599 of the Sacred Light Calendar.
It wasn't that Claude didn't want to return to Lanu for the new year's eve, but Sheerah threw a tantrum. She knew that Claude would have to return to Ferde Manor to spend the night with his mother and wife, Kefnie, and leave her alone.
So, she pestered Claude and insisted that she liked the sea and wanted to walk by it every day, forcing Claude to spend the new year's eve with her in Port Patres.
Just like that, Claude accompanied Sheerah to the seaside of Port Patres for more than two months in the cold wind. After the new year's eve, Sheerah had grown tired of the seafood and returned to Lanu with Claude.
Of course, Sheerah knew that Claude felt guilty for not seeing her for more than a decade, which was why he was so obedient to her. So, when they returned to Squirrel Manor in the western suburbs, she chased Claude home.
Ferd Manor spent the new year's eve and the new year in a rather quiet manner. Almost no one came to visit. Even a few noble ladies who were on good terms with her mother and Kefnie hurriedly dropped by to give them gifts and then excused themselves. Her mother and Kefnie weren't used to it.
Mother, in particular, had a lot of things to say but no one to listen to, which made her very unhappy.
"Why did you only come back now?"
She blamed it all on Claude, thinking that it was because he wasn't at home that the guests didn't come to visit.
Claude replied that he was too busy with military affairs and couldn't leave.
Mother, on the other hand, grumbled that the colonial war was over. Why did he have so much to do? It's not like he has to go to the battlefield. Can't he just spend a couple of days at home?
He might as well resign from his post.
Claude could only smile bitterly. He couldn't explain it to his mother. She often used her late father as an example. She said that Morssen was the chief administrator of Whitestag and had so many official matters to attend to, but he still returned home every night and entertained guests from time to time.
Back then, House Ferd was so famous in Whitestag that everyone would give him face when he went to town to buy things, either at a discount or at a reduced price.
Claude, on the other hand, still had to travel around after becoming a general and didn't spend much time at home. His situation was even worse than his late father, Morssen.
She was probably the only person in the world who would compare Claude, a general who wielded the highest military authority in the region, to her father, a small town administrator, and conclude that Claude was inferior to his father.
Claude looked at Kefnie and wondered if she mentioned Sheila in front of his mother, so his mother brought up the topic of him not being home to teach him a lesson.
However, Kefnie behaved normally and dressed politely as usual. Claude took off his military uniform and changed into something more suitable for home use.
As soon as Claude returned home, someone came to visit. It was Weyblon, who brought his wife along as usual.
His mother was delighted to have someone to talk to, and took Mr Weyblon's wife to their gossipy tea party.
Weyblon, on the other hand, came to tell Claude the good news. The military industry in Lanu, which he was in charge of, had finally produced its own flagship product. Claude provided the helmet for the soldiers.
Mr Weyblon had brought a sample. The helmet was oval in shape, with a pointed crown, and four small holes punched into each side of the convex rim, for the inner lining.
With the lining, there was no need for the helmet to be placed directly on the head. That way, a bullet or shrapnel that hit the helmet wouldn't cause a broken neck or severe concussion.
That was the mission Claude gave Weyblon and he had finally completed it.
What he didn't understand was why there was a sharp point at the top of the helmet.
Mr. Weyblon explained that a few technicians in the military industry thought the helmet was too bald to look good, and wanted to make a point so they could use it as a tassel during a fashion review. It would make it look more majestic.
Claude could only shake his head. Helmets were helmets, after all. They provided protection for the soldiers' heads during battle and effectively protected them from the shrapnel and musket fire of this era. There was no need for them to be so fancy.
Making a pointed top and putting tassels on the helmet would make the helmet useless. On the battlefield, soldiers could use the helmet as a pot when they wanted to drink hot soup and cook something to eat. They could also use it as a basin or a ladle to scoop up water.
Having a pointed top would be the same as having a hole in the top of the helmet.
Had Claude not seen the casualty report, he wouldn't have asked Weyblon to make the helmet either.
According to the report, 60% of the soldiers who died on the battlefield were killed on the spot by bullets or shrapnel. That was why Claude had Weyblon make the helmets for him.
"Get rid of the pointed top. The helmet can't have a hole at the top."
After Claude explained the practicality of the helmet, Weyblon came to a realization and agreed to do it immediately.
"Bring these helmets to HQ tomorrow and let General Bolonik take a look at them. After they pass the inspection, we'll place an order to make 200,000 helmets to equip the two corps.
We'll have to think about whether the local troops should be equipped with helmets. "
After some thought, Claude said, "After the helmet is finished, you can experiment with the shovels I drew for you last time. They'll soon become the standard equipment of our military, and the profits will be high."