Herald of Steel

858 Tibian Noble Treaty

"Great! Then do as I say and you will be back to your fiefs in no time."

With the nobles properly scared that Alexander would really massacre them all, it did not take long for these nobles to throw Manuk under the bus.

As for how Alexander was so sure that Manuk had truly deserted them, well he had no concrete proof but his hunch was that since no one had bothered to ransom these people something must have happened.

He did not know what so made something up

And that was what brought him to the present, whereupon listening to the captured Zanzan nobles' confession, Alexander turned to address the Tibian entourage,

"Look! This is what you are really fighting for. This is what your so called honorable king plans to do."

"To sacrifice all of you. Just to save himself."

"Do all of you still want to fight for your king? For what?" Alexander spread his arms widely in a grand manner as he posed, before suggesting,

"I will again offer you the chance- join me now and partake in the special benefits I provide, or wait to have your family slowly fade into obscurity."

"....."

The nobles did not immediately answer and some continued to question the captured noble for more details long after their time was due.

But ultimately, they were indeed convinced that Perseus did indeed intend to betray them.

And this left them in a limbo.

They could either continue to follow Perseus and after winning get Amenheraft as their lord.

Or they could take the guaranteed deal with Alexander, which came with some perks as testified by some of the others who had already bent the knee.

The decision was not hard for most.

Thus over the next few days, Alexander was inundated with nobles coming to swear their fealty to him, and from each of them, he would ask the following:

An absolute oath of loyalty denouncing Perseus and accepting Alexander as their new lord.

Swearing to come to Alexander's aid when called upon during times of war.

Having a certain number of envoys in Zanzan's senate building to represent the areas they governed.

Restriction on the size of their personal army based on individual noble's land.

Granting permission to open new temples worshipping Gaia within their privately owned lands.

Ensuring the safety of traders and merchants traveling through their lands.

An extradition treaty.

A flat 1 percent sales tax was placed on all goods entering a city, with few exceptions- such as grain, and salt.

A 3 percent land tax was implemented on all landowners, to be paid annually.

A 1 percent land tax was to be paid to maintain the temple of Gaia by all landowners.

And lastly, the nobles were demanded to open up their treasury and allow Alexander to take half of everything they had.

Now these were only the bullet points of the treaty and the actual thing was quite a few pages long, involving many legal phrases and twisted clauses that prevented any side from worming out of it by a sly tongue.

Among these points, there were naturally a few curious points, such as point 3 which was about sending envoys, point 5- about opening the temples, and even point 7- the extradition treaty.

For point 3, Alexander explained that Tibias would soon be divided into province like administrative zones, and two nobles from those areas would be chosen to represent their parts in Alexander's 'court'.

The reason why he did not call it court was self evident.

As for the details of what opening a temple would involve, well Alexander decided to leave that for later, only making sure to get the nobles' permission long beforehand.

And lastly, what point 7 really meant was that if the guards, or more formally police felt that there was a criminal hiding in a noble's property, they reserved the right to search it.

Outside of these slightly confusing points, there were also some contentious points that caused many of the nobles to haggle.

Especially the last four- 8, 9, 10 and 11.

But it was not only the points that Alexander brought that were curious.

For there were arguably some missing points too, as one might remember when compared to the one Alexander had presented to the Zanzan nobles.

To be precise- where Alexander did not ask for the nobles to stop minting their own coin, nor was there no clause about what the nobles could tax the men working under them.

And the reason for this was because Tibias was unlike the feudalistic Adhania.

In Adhania, the king shared his power with the greatest nobles, and then those nobles shared power with their lesser peers and so on, thus dividing up the country with many spheres of influence.

But Tibias was a much more centralized country.

The king had much greater power over his subjects, with perhaps his greatest ability being able to appoint and remove governors to any city he wished without any reason.

This was in much contrast to Adhania where each noble had their sphere of influence and not even the king would interfere with how he ran things except on very few special occasions- like if he was blatantly the basic laws of the lands, destroying the province or fomenting rebellion.

Thus An Adhanian king could really only exert influence on the other provinces through the use of his faith and the power of oath the nobles swore to him.

But in Tibias, the noblemen were more like rich landowners.

They could not directly levy taxes on the farmers working the lands but was only able to enforce the rate set up by the court, which was in the hands of the royal family.

They also certainly could not mint their own coins, with that sole power belonging to the royal family, although unfortunately for Alexander, none of the coin mints were in the capital, but situated much south, where Tibias had their largest gold mine.

And the nobles were of course strictly forbidden from raising an army, although Alexander had made that written in the treaty once again because he was wary about that thing that much.

From all this, it could be seen that, unlike Adhania, Tibias allowed its king to stick his nose in most noble's business, which conversely meant that the nobles could only pressure the king through economic means- such as not letting goods pass through their lands, making tax collection harder, etc, or by banding together and politically pressuring him.

But unlike their Adhanian counterpart, they faced deficiencies when it came to directly waging war on him, as only the king had an army, ready to put down any rebellion before it could even start going.

Of course, such a structure was only possible due to the state being quite small in size, only 300,000 to 350,000 sq km, as compared to Adhania's 4 million sq. km.

And this was one of the reasons why Perseus was still able to keep on fighting despite losing so many men even though his country only had a population of around 5 million.

By leveraging the centralization.

Alexander's 8th point- the implementation of a sales tax at 1% was half of Tibias's previous rate of 2%.

But that actually caused a lot of the nobles to be displeased, as they claimed,

"My lord, this was one of our biggest sources of income! We had taken half and given His Majesty half. But now….."

The faces many of these shameless nobles put on made Alexander roll his eyes as they made it seem like he was driving them out of their house and leaving them destitute.

Whereas just the money these men earned from their lands would be more than enough to lead a very cushy life.

So outside of Alexander simply muscling them to accept it, he also reasoned,

"This tax can be discussed once again in five years. But for now, the common people need some respite."

"Many have lost brothers, fathers, sons- which is not only just tragic but also means they have just lost their only source of income."

"So they will certainly enjoy the decreased prices."

Alexander was also afraid that with so many good, working men dead, there would be rampant inflation throughout the country as people flocked to the markets but found there was nothing to buy as all the people who would have manufactured these stuff were dead.

So by reducing taxes, Alexander hoped these demand pull inflation might somewhat be negated.

These two reasons combined, as well as the promise that Alexander would be open to renegotiating after 5 years finally convinced the nobles to acquiesce.

But what they were far less amenable to was the 3% percent land tax and 1% tithe.

"This is outrageous! We paid only 1% to His Majesty!" Almost everyone had shouted, with some even accusing Alexander like so,

"Lord Alexander, we thought you were a magnanimous leader when you had brought up the plight of the regular people as you set the sales tax"

"That's why we were willing to take that tax cut."

"But this! It is too much."

They had a façade of righteous anger on them.

It appeared Alexander would have a hard time making these men pay these taxes.

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