How did William rule such a huge kingdom before that?

He first put the territories on both sides of the Channel of England inhabited by the Normans, including Normandy, Brittany, Paris, Amiens Wissan and other places on the south coast of the Channel, and Wessex and London on the north coast of the Channel under his direct jurisdiction, and established a strong centralized rule.

As for other frontier territories, including remote Ireland, Wales, northern England, Scotland, Gascony, etc., as well as territories that were more hostile to the Normans, including Flanders, Anjou, and other places canonized to his relatives, cronies, nobles, and meritorious Norman soldiers, and even he canonized vast territories such as Northumberland and York in the north of England to his young son Richard as his princely domain.

However, as he conquered more and more territories, and Lorraine, Scotland, and Aquitaine came under William's rule, the previous system became less and less applicable and anachronistic.

The kingdom of Lorraine was better, closer to Normandy, and William could send enough officials to govern it, but places like Aquitaine, Toulouse, and the newly conquered Scotland were beyond William's reach.

Of course, for now, there is no problem with the continuation of this system, at least while William is still alive, his vassals will remain obedient and will not act as encroaching on his direct territories and separating their autonomy.

But after his death, or when Richard succeeds to the throne, there is no guarantee that the dukes and counts of these remote places will remain loyal to the new king.

The ancients said: "Those who do not seek the overall situation are not enough to seek a domain; Those who do not seek eternity are not enough for a certain time. ”

William was convinced of this, and he was not "When I die, who cares about his floods?" Louis XV, the Sun King, pursued not a temporary hegemony, not a short-term prosperity, but an eternal inheritance that could be passed on to future generations.

So how can this be done? How can Richard and his children and grandchildren be able to sustain the legacy he has worked so hard to create?

The Roman Empire, which lasted for thousands of years, had the answer with its political system and provincial system.

The thousand-year-old Roman Empire, despite its ups and downs, failures and divisions, was eventually able to control most of the conquered territories and assimilate the local peoples to Romanize until the fall of the Roman Empire.

Among them, the provincial system of the Roman Empire played an important role, especially the role of this system in assimilating different peoples and accelerating their Romanization.

Although the thousand-year-old Roman Empire collapsed with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Romanization still did not disappear, and the princes of European countries held the banner of the Roman Empire wherever they had ambitions and abilities, such as William's opponent the Holy Roman Empire, which was a country that inherited the name of Rome.

As a powerful conqueror, William also hoped that the peoples of his country could eventually eliminate ethnic barriers by learning from the Norman culture, so that all the peoples in the Norman kingdom could become truly Normans.

But this is not easy to say, William had already made many attempts at Normanization, and in the Kingdom of England, through intermarriage with local nobility, there were already many Anglo-Saxons Normanization, but in more remote Ireland, Scotland, etc., the results were not so ideal.

William was not a man to give up easily, and since the provincial system of the Roman Empire was beneficial to the assimilation of the peoples of the country, he was naturally very willing to implement it.

The word "province" derives from the Latin provincia, meaning "commission", originally referring to administrative districts within the Italian region or outside the territory governed by officials appointed by Rome, and later to refer specifically to those territories outside the Italian region that had to pay tribute to the Roman state.

For each established province, the Senate was to draw up the relevant regulations for the administration of the province, determining the extent of the province's rule, the number of towns to which it belonged, and the rights and obligations of its inhabitants, and the types and quantities of tribute to be paid by the province.

Within the provinces, the Romans and their allies enjoyed preferential treatment and privileges, but the inhabitants of other provinces were exploited by the Roman rulers using a tax system.

In addition, the land and resources of the provinces were nationalized by the Roman Senate and became state property, which was managed, transferred or leased by the state.

As a general rule, the Senate would appoint one governor, three lieutenant governors, and one treasurer to each of the provinces. The governor is usually a retiring consul who has full powers of life and death in the province.

Although William admired the provincial system of ancient Rome and attached great importance to its role in strengthening the rule of the conquered regions, it was not without its flaws.

In William's view, the provincial system had two major defects: one was the strong exploitation and oppression of different ethnic groups, which could easily lead to rebellions and was not conducive to the implementation of assimilation policies; The second is that the power of provincial governors is not constrained, which is prone to breed corruption and separatist forces.

In this respect, the ancient Chinese province of Xingzhongshu was different from the Roman provincial system.

In order to prevent the emergence of local separatist forces, and even disregarded the close economic and cultural ties on both sides of the Yangtze River, the Yangtze River was used as the boundary to divide Jiangxi Province, Henan Jiangbei Province, and Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces, so that the southern separatist forces could not adopt the strategy of "defending the river must defend Huai", and the Guanzhong region was classified into Zhongshu Province, so as to prevent the Guanzhong region from following Yuwentai and standing on its own.

In the beginning, the provincial system of the Roman Empire was not so much an administrative system as a colonial system, and the inhabitants of the provinces were merely objects of plunder and oppression, and the provincial system was only a concrete instrument of this oppression.

Normally, the provincial governor of Rome was only accountable to the Senate, and during his term of office, his power in the province was not limited in any way, he had the power to levy and raise armies, to wage foreign wars, to confiscate other people's property, to destroy cities, to sell the inhabitants into slavery, and to sum up the power of the provincial governor in one sentence, that is, to do as he pleased, without limitation.

This unrestricted power eventually led to the emergence of local separatist forces in the Roman Empire, and from this point of view, the ancient Chinese provincial system was more superior.

Of course, with the changes in society, although the names of the provinces in China are similar to those of the ancient provinces, the connotations are very different, and in general, the status of provinces and provinces is equal.

In the future, the provincial system that William intends to implement will inevitably restrain the power of the provincial governor, and divide the judicial, financial and military powers of the provincial governor by adding equal positions such as provincial justice, treasurer, and provincial military governor, so as not to cause the provincial residents to suffer serious exploitation and oppression, and can also prevent the emergence of local separatist forces.