Are you crazy? Isn't that a little too much?"

"No, no, no, this is certainly a proper amount, and the continuation of the Church requires the maintenance of worldly wealth to keep it flowing, and the establishment of a great empire also requires a sum of money...... I'm sorry Your Majesty, but I've been a little arrogant...... But now the industrious clergy are constantly drawing from the gardens of Sardinia to nourish these worldly people, in exchange for only a few pieces of bread, and a lowly monk cannot even sustain himself after he is unable to work, and in many cases the church needs extra money to keep afloat. It's not that we want too much now, but that we used to take too little!"

Bishop Goethe's face flushed, and he glared fiercely at the civil official who had spoken out against him. And the lord who had opposed him before also stared at him with red eyes, and the two of them confronted each other nervously in the main hall, like two dogs fighting for a piece of meat and bones.

Since the death of His Majesty Nordin, and especially after the tense confrontation in front of the palace hill, the nobles have united with the mother of His Majesty Perris, and formed a "Pending Federation", which will be automatically dissolved after the members of the Pending Federation believe that Perris embodies the qualities of a good emperor.

At this point, the "Harmonious Empire" that once "dukes and civic archbishops" united to pledge allegiance to His Majesty the Emperor no longer existed, and various factions sprang up in the empire overnight, and after all kinds of open and secret battles, they squeezed their favorite candidates into this "Pending Coalition", and these candidates were supported by those factions, and naturally they had to work without work, and they would definitely have to argue for the interests of the principals behind the scenes. In any case, the parliament naturally exists for the purpose of "balancing the contradictions in the interests of all parties," and this approach is conducive to the stability of the country and is more capable of proposing correct national policies.

In this way, the bureaucracy of the empire, after they came to power, seemed to become dispensable overnight, and the local government affairs were naturally dealt with and resolved, and the central affairs were decided by the joint parliament, and only Prime Minister Tamori still occupied a position in this parliament and could speak, and the main task of the rest of the people was to stare at the empty tables in a daze, where there had been a mountain of papers.

Of course, these documents need to be dealt with, but they have now gone from solving problems to being ridiculously arguing.

Today's empire, for example, has had several controversies.

The already impoverished Duke of the Mountain Bunker sent a letter asking for help, borrowing some food from the center of the empire to survive the famine.

"No! must be vetoed!"

A representative of Shang Rao almost jumped from the ground.

"Your Majesty, as far as I know, the population of the mountain bunkers is sparse, and the food they need is not much, and besides, as the saying goes, relying on the mountains to eat the mountains, relying on the sea to eat the sea, their local people can find enough food from the mountains to fill their stomachs. The empire has a lot of things to deal with, how can it allocate funds for this?"

The representatives of the nobility were silent, the mountain people were too poor, and although they were also in the camp of the nobility, there was no need to speak for them.

The representatives of the priesthood pondered for a moment, and finally said

"Your Majesty, of course you have to treat the famine, which in itself is the will of the gods. However, flesh and blood are fragile, and their souls are very susceptible to degeneration. I believe that this relief operation, if it is to be carried out, should be directly allocated to the Church, and this kind of charity is the duty of the Church, and we pious priests can better carry out this task. ”

The clergy's words eventually struck at the soft underbelly of the bureaucracy, and several aristocratic officials immediately accused each other of the clergy, who called them "a bunch of male prostitutes and dog thieves", who were ostensibly clean and self-conscious, but behind the scenes they were engaged in the trade of skins and flesh. The clergy, on the other hand, responded that they were "maggots of the empire" and "things that could not be seen", that they took the money given by the empire, but soaked in filth, and that they ran the convent for the sake of living for the innocent girls, but did not ask them to take all the money from the treasury and sprinkle it on their beds.

The nobles were gradually forced to participate in the war, and the abusive behavior of the middle and lower class nobles was an important part of the workers in the convents, and they were inseparable from this issue. They had no choice but to unite with the representatives of Shang Rao to persuade His Majesty to impose a "night work tax" on the nuns to regulate this increasingly rampant commercial practice.

Until the end, because a mountain duke wanted to borrow dozens of truckloads of taxes and grain from the central government, it turned into a life-and-death decision in the scale country. The merchants did not want the empire to directly support, of course, because they played a rather dishonorable role in this food shortage, and as the largest grain owners in the empire, those nobles would naturally be very conscious of protecting these merchants, as for the priests and bureaucrats, they were like two resentful women, one wanted more power, and the other wanted to maintain their original advantages, and everything had to be mixed up a little.

It was in this muddy water that Bishop Goethe ran out of the crowd to fish, and the focus of his discussion was precisely the issue of church taxation that had already been mentioned.

"Since there is a tax to be collected, it is better to unify it. It is true that the church is running some not-so-glamorous business, but it is all forced. ”

"The church has been around for a long time, and in that time, no one is going to collect taxes, and the church is still very good. "It is not new for the Church to want to collect taxes from the faithful, and the cries have been rising every year, so the Gothic Bishop has only opened his mouth and the opposition has begun to sound.

"In the past, more than eighty percent of the people in the empire were heretics, and before the founding of the empire, the proportion was still as high as sixty percent. The monk did not care about the opposition, but talked about it on his own.

"And now, in just a dozen years, we have converted eighty percent of the people in the country. I can tell you very well that just a few times ago, there was a detailed count within our Church, and now there is not a single lord in the country who does not believe in Sardinia. And that's why our church has grown, to maintain such a large number of believers, to tell them the teachings, to show the kindness of Sardinia, all these things need gold coins to maintain. ”

"What is the reliability of faith in exchange for gold?"

"Explain this!"

"I have nothing to say about this, my lords, this is Sardin's will. ”

This answer obviously had no way to satisfy those present, and even louder commotion sounded.

"Goth, you son of a bitch, bastard! I've heard for a long time, you're not even a descendant of a nobleman, are you going to treat all the adults here as serfs?"

This sentence obviously hit Bishop Goethe's soft underbelly, his body shook slightly, as if he had been hit hard, and after more than ten seconds, Goethe slowly eased up, but he no longer had the same demeanor as before.

"Don't you understand why you nobles are different from serfs? Lord Count of Lorraine, do you know that the son of a Count was burned to death by the serfs of the realm not long ago. ”

When it came to the origins of Sardinia, the nobles present were somewhat silent.

Naturally, there are several methods of origin, some of which are oracles, which were picked up by the last legendary hero: a shepherd herding sheep, and then proved his identity through the prophecy on the oracle, foreshadowing a great drought and saving the race, and then informing everyone as an oracle. But there is also the "holy dream", in which Sardin informs many tribal chiefs of his identity, and then oracles them from their mouths. There is even a Dharma, it is Sardinia who has mercy on the world and personally traveled to the world, and this kind of Dharma is still very marketable, after all, it is also a very glorious thing to see the true God with his own eyes.

In short, the true origin of religion is nowhere to be found, except for a very reactionary law that is interesting, which has been passed down by word of mouth among a few great nobles: the origin of Sardinia came from a down-and-out tribal patriarch whose tribe had been annexed in a war, and who himself had fled and survived. In order to survive and live a better life, he made up a series of stories with a beginning and an end in other tribes, winning the respect of Berao, eating and drinking. Later, when some of the patriarchs learned about it, they trumpeted his story and revered him as a messenger of Sardinia.

The Prussians called the heroes of their tribe paladins, and they were all warriors who defended Sardinia, the only true god in the world, who had boundless powers, ruled over all beings, and sent the dead to the kingdom or the abyss. The leaders of the tribes are the descendants of the Holy Messengers, and they have an honorable position and divine power, and they are the ones who will go to the kingdom. And the rest of the people must obey them before they can go to the kingdom. According to this religion, the noble descendants of the Privus also created simple scripts and laws, as well as so-called "language" to represent the "sacredness" of the nobility and for the saints to communicate.

At the time of these words, Goethe obviously clenched his teeth, and the surrounding nobles also changed their faces, they all closed their mouths in unison, and even a few nobles cast reproachful glances at the Count of Lorraine who had just spoken, and the Count of Lorraine was a little helpless, so he had to snort heavily and sit back in his chair.

"I think it's reasonable to charge a tithe tax on every believer. In the past, lords loyal to Sardinia would often exchange their spoils, including a tenth of the harvest from hunting, for Sardinia's protection, but this income was abolished after the empire was established. ”

So there is the above scene.

"There is not a single tax in the Empire that is so high as a tenth!"

"But you never take more than one!"

"Then how are you going to explain to the farmers that you have to pay taxes from now on because Sardinia's bounty is coming to an end?

"No, of course they won't resist, the farmers can pay the fee, and as for the serfs who can't pay the fee, shouldn't they have you responsible?"

Before the representative of the aristocratic elite could speak again, an old duke suddenly stood up, and his presence undoubtedly made the mood of the audience stagnate.

"Your Excellency the Duke of Malta......"

On the surface, this old man was a devout religious believer, and he never asked about mundane matters, and rarely compared himself with the nobles of the country, but he owned the largest and most fertile dukedom in the whole of Abbasquia, with the largest number of manors and peasant servants, and a large amount of income from the territory was soon invested in the territory, so that he earned one imperial gold coin after another. In addition, he also has a fierce son, Knight Ward, the Knight Captain of the Rainbow Knights, who has only served for a few years, but during these years he can exist as the supreme leader of the royal family's armed forces. It is precisely the blessing of these halos that can make this gray-haired old man the most important of the nobles.

He stretched out a slightly pale and withered palm, shook it lightly towards the noble councilors, and said in a somewhat hoarse voice: "Since the servants in the manor are part of the aristocratic property, it is reasonable for this eleventh tax nobleman to go out of the cold. ”

Several young nobles seemed to be a little out of breath, as if they were about to say something, but they were finally pulled by the elders around them. Joke, is there a nobleman in the empire who has more serfs than the Duke of Malta's family, and if he can pay it, what reason can anyone else call it bad?

"Thank you for your support, Sardinian will always protect your soul, Lord Malta!"

"No, Lord Bishop, God loves the world, but I love the Empire. The old man coughed lightly twice, and then said in a louder voice: "The eleventh tax is likely to be the largest fee paid by the empire since its establishment, thanks to the merits of the previous emperor, the benevolence and righteousness of your majesty today, this money, we who are vassals, but I hope that it is far more than us, Lord Bishop, you should collect this fee from everyone in the empire except the emperor, and then at least sixty percent of it will be handed over to the treasury, which Your Majesty deserves." ”

The Duke of Malta's words undoubtedly shocked everyone at the Imperial Council, just kidding, everyone came here to make money, how could there be a stupid person who sent money to come over. Even Prime Minister Tian Sen opened his eyes, and looked at this tribal elder who had no qualifications in front of him in some disbelief, but now he has grown a lot and learned to wag his tail in front of the emperor.

Everyone