HBWnovel Chapter 1234: High Debt
Chapter 1234: High Debt
Lyongrad was peaceful, but other places were not so good.
At this moment, the Kursk Plain no longer has the hideousness it once had.
Three years ago, a war broke out here that scared everyone.
Even now, the demons living here cannot forget that war.
However, many people in Dayan regard this place as the beginning of everything.
Because since the end of the Battle of Kursk.
The strength of the entire Da Yan has grown by leaps and bounds, completely establishing its position as the world's overlord.
This also led to a large number of Da Yan people going to the Kursk Plain almost every year to see the war that had happened...
To the west of the Kursk Plain is the once extremely powerful Papal States.
After the defeat, the Papal States paid an indemnity of 500 million.
However, the Papal States did not dare to complain about this. They had to stand at attention when being beaten. Besides, the Papal States had no power to resist.
After three years of forbearance, Holdress finally managed to put together a decent army.
However, his high-pressure control made life miserable for the people in the country.
At first, most of the people agreed with Holdress's revenge plan.
But later, these citizens discovered that although Holdelis always claimed that he was doing it for the good of the country, he never took the feelings of them, the grassroots people, into consideration.
The demands of the lower class people are actually very low, they just want to have enough food to eat.
But Holdress had clearly gone berserk.
Holderis now only wanted to defeat Lyon and regain everything that belonged to the Papal States.
Holdress was indeed popular among the people at the beginning, but as time went on, what Holdress didn't know was that he had gradually become detached from the masses...
In the first year, Holdress was able to take good care of all the people.
But by the second year, Holdress saw that Dayan had defeated the Dwarf Empire and extended its reach to the East Continent. He became more and more anxious and decided to use all the strength of the country to strengthen the army.
Squeezing national potential and pushing the entire country onto the track of war.
This will certainly enable the army to expand rapidly and build a strong army in a short period of time.
But what are the consequences? The consequence is that now, the common people in the Papal States can't even afford to eat meat.
Dayan imposed sanctions on the Papal States, causing neighboring countries to not dare to ship goods in.
The Papal States can now only produce and sell its own products, but the problem is.
The products of the Papal States are basically industrial products, and the former farmers have now been pulled into factories to work in three shifts 24 hours a day.
Who still farms?
Farming was only allowed because there was not enough food, so Holdress retained some farmers and let them farm honestly.
Only enough food would be left for human consumption, and the rest would be taken away by Holdress.
Farmers don't want to farm anymore. They envy the factory workers because at least they get high salaries.
But where did these salaries come from? Of course, it was from the merchants in the Papal States, and from the bonds issued by Holdress using the national credit.
The money from issuing bonds is used to expand the military and pay wages to the people.
Holdress had one small caveat: the bonds they issued had a five-year term.
The problem is that there are still two years before the settlement, and within these two years, a war will surely break out in the Papal States...
This was Holdress's real intention.
To put it bluntly, it is to get something for nothing and squeeze the wealth out of everyone's hands.
But Holdress screwed himself...
Because of Dayan’s sanctions, the situation in the entire country took a sharp turn for the worse, and panic began to spread among the people.
Moreover, it happened to coincide with a natural disaster that was rare in decades, resulting in a poor harvest and a production reduction of at least 20%.
Don’t underestimate this 20%. It is 20% of the food needed by the entire people of the Papal States.
This means that one in five people in the Papal States now have no food.
However, what is funny is that when these people want to buy food with their wages, the merchants simply raise the price.
Food prices are five times higher than usual!
The common people were very distressed. They had to go home and discuss the situation with their families. When they finally made up their minds to buy food, it turned out that all the food was sold out...
In feudal dynasties, you can restrict people's literacy, but you absolutely cannot deny them food.
Due to the lack of food, Holdress was unable to find a solution for a while.
This caused the entire Papal States to fall into chaos.
Many timid but extremely hungry people have started begging, and some brave ones have even started robbing.
Some people with lofty ideals went directly to the palace to petition, trying to get Emperor Holdress to find a way to save these people.
But Holdress didn't have any good solutions at the moment.
After listening to the reports from his men and learning that 20% of the people had no food to eat, Holdress finally uttered something absurd.
"Let the people suffer, and let Lyon bear the blame!"
Leon: I'll carry you Dam!
Howard Reese then announced to the nation that the lack of food was due to Dayan's blockade of the Papal States.
And Holdress also sent out a large number of lackeys and hawks to spread the news that it was Lyon who caused all this.
Many ignorant citizens of the Papal States immediately turned their attention to Lyon.
Lyon is innocent of this, too.
Don't you think about yourselves? I blocked you and you can't eat.
Then let me ask you, why do you rely on imports for your food?
The Papal States has much more fertile land than the Divine Empire.
Dayan can keep people’s jobs, but what about you?
Holdress is still playing political games, trying to throw all of this onto Lyon, making the people hate Lyon.
But some people were smarter. They remembered that when Holdress issued the bonds, he specifically stated that the bonds could be temporarily canceled.
That is, ordinary people can exchange bonds for cash, but without any interest.
Many ordinary people are really starving and have no other options.
They all wanted to cash in their bonds and use the money to buy expensive food.
At first, the bank of the Papal States was able to cash out the money, but then the Demon Empire came in to disrupt the situation...
Under Leon's instructions, the Demon Empire began to smuggle large amounts of food into the Papal States.
But all of this smuggled grain will inevitably be eaten up by the grain merchants.
Then they were sold to the citizens of the Papal States at a high price.
Once there is more food, people will have more and more money to buy food.
But the biggest problem is that the current Pope uses bonds to pay his salary...
There were very few gold coins in the bank of the Papal States.
So when the bank staff saw a long line of people waiting to redeem their bonds outside the bank, they knew the sky was falling...
(Good afternoon???>