Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 807 Losing is invasion, winning is unification!

Besides the nobles, thanks to the continuous efforts of the Wu King's Palace, the cities and towns around the battlefield have generally remained neutral.

Princess Jeanne had even less confidence in the city than in the local nobles. She frankly told her subordinates that although the nobles were often foolish and wicked, their desires and ways of thinking were relatively easier to understand.

Cities, however, are different. In cities, there are rarely any single individuals who can dominate and have the final say in everything. Their so-called leaders, even if very powerful, can often only make decisions on certain aspects. The power of the entire city is generally held by a council composed of guilds and large merchants.

On the surface, they have a more equitable system that allows more people to have a voice. Compared to a one-man show run by someone solely based on bloodline, this approach seems fairer and more friendly to most people. But when it comes to getting them to do something, things are a different story. Especially in the current situation, when someone needs to step forward and take sides, their reaction speed is even slower—because supporting either King Wu or Sigismund carries the risk of backfiring.

Therefore, although everyone knows that the two groups have begun to engage in real military clashes and have entered a life-or-death situation, no one dares to clearly state their opinion.

Anyone who has climbed to this position cannot be unaware that, sometimes, neutrality is not only not the safest option, but also the most likely to offend people. The two sides currently at war are unlikely to tolerate "neutrality" in the long run.

On the Wu King's side, although they verbally attack and clamor for war every day, their actual actions remain relatively mild, and there has been no concrete action for the time being; but on Sigismund's side, since the arrest and burning of Huss at the stake, they have been openly arresting and massacring heretics on a large scale.

It's clear to anyone with eyes to see that as the conflict intensifies, this situation will only worsen. In many cities, people are pointing out that Sigismund has repeatedly defeated the King of Wu, eliminating peasant armies that, under the Ming banner, are likely affiliated with him. Meanwhile, the King of Wu has also received support from his allies, France and Rome, defeating several crusaders and regaining some ground. This back-and-forth stalemate is the most worrying aspect, as both sides are increasingly losing patience and escalating their actions to extremes.

Now, many people, whether out of self-interest or faith, are deliberately fueling this movement. In some places where there is fervent support for the church, a nationwide crackdown on heretics has begun, and everyone must clearly state that they are strictly severing ties with the Hussites, or else they will face the Crusades.

Although it hasn't yet spread to the relatively distant western part of the empire, given the current situation, chaos there is only a matter of time. After all, everyone taking sides and everyone getting by is a specialty of the Church, a fine tradition of European culture... In this situation, "neutrality" is implicitly considered as supporting the enemy.

However, despite this, many major cities in the lower Rhine region failed to react promptly. Many people were openly communicating with the Wu Prince's court and cooperating with the Ming army in transporting supplies, yet they still publicly maintained a "neutral" stance.

In truth, openly defecting to the Ming army at this point, while theoretically risky, would undoubtedly yield enormous benefits—and even without announcing it, if the Ming army lost, they would certainly be plundered and massacred by the Crusaders. Even without trading with the Ming army, their presence on key roads in the war zone would likely lead to the same outcome. After all, for the Crusaders, massacring a city needs no justification; not massacring a city requires a reason…

As for the reason, Princess Jeanne believes it's due to a lack of accountability. While individual families or merchant guilds might choose to take risks, at the city level, few can make direct decisions. Consequently, many small towns, due to their singular focus on a single industry and reliance on public services provided by the Ming government, quickly and openly sided with the Prince of Wu. Conversely, the major cities are simply unable to make effective decisions.

After all, the dispersion of power means the dispersion of responsibility. When dealing with nobles, you only need to keep an eye on that one person. But when dealing with cities, you often can't even find anyone.

Therefore, the king and the court would even intentionally support a few merchants to become powerful, granting them privileges far exceeding those of other merchants, making them monopolists.

This seems to contradict the fundamental principles of trade, which dictate that everyone should be free to buy and sell, and compete freely. Monopolists often take advantage of this, squeezing prices from both ends while simultaneously driving down prices from suppliers and raising prices from consumers, thus reaping even greater profits. This disrupts the market, resulting in everyone, including the monarch who needs to procure goods, being squeezed dry.

However, the advantage of this system is that it's easy to find the responsible party if a problem arises. For example, if the procurement of grain is contracted out to a certain merchant, then if there's a supply issue, that person can be immediately held accountable and won't escape punishment. At least in France, due to limitations in administrative capacity, many things can only be handled in this way, by entrusting them to supported monopolistic enterprises.

Of course, if conditions are better, more responsibilities can be nationalized and handled by professionals. She had heard that in the Yuan Dynasty, as the system gradually improved, the tax system gradually became more formalized from its initial subcontracting, which is a good example—perhaps European countries should learn from the Yuan Dynasty's management methods later on. However, if administrative capacity is weaker, then it becomes like the Holy Roman Empire next door, where even tax farmers would abscond with the money. That would be a completely different situation.

If this applies to kings, it goes without saying that ordinary people would have to ask them to do anything.

Furthermore, don't expect these people to be more benevolent than the nobles simply because they lack absolute power. In reality, they only become so passive, merely avoiding and shirking responsibility, when facing powerful kings and lords. When dealing with ordinary people, it's hard to say who will avoid whom. They might very well allow the other party to experience both the tyranny of the nobility and the incompetence of the council simultaneously.

Therefore, it was common practice to support a powerful merchant, making him the king's proxy and granting him absolute power in the city, even in Paris. However, the Wu king's team was not adept at this tactic. They could understand the varying degrees of independence between vassal states, and the system of combining fiefdoms and direct rule, but they couldn't comprehend why a major core city would become a vassal state. And this wasn't entirely the Wu king's fault for being incompetent; even the monk Daoyan wasn't very good at it…

The royal court had attempted to intervene, but with limited success. The monk Daoyan personally took charge, but currently, among the major cities of the Rhine River basin, only Strasbourg, located in the heart of the region, had actively responded to King Wu's call. Some merchants and guilds were even able to simultaneously carry out official orders while claiming that the council hadn't approved their actions, rendering them invalid. Daoyan was thoroughly exasperated; he wasn't just angry, but found it all too bizarre and was on the verge of losing his composure.

Princess Jeanne has a significant advantage in this regard, as she is more adaptable than him. After all, this is common knowledge in Europe.

Here, people are still using Aristotle's political science books. The introductory political education provided to the nobility by church scholars is also based on these works. Aristotle himself had already described these issues. In his theory, all forms of government can be divided into six types. Good political systems are called "orthodox systems," including monarchy, aristocracy, and republic. "Bad systems" are called "abnormal systems," including tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. The goal of an orthodox system is the public good of the city-state, while abnormal systems pursue the private interests of the rulers or ruling groups.

Aristotle believed that among the three "good forms of government," monarchy was the most ideal, while republic was the least ideal and a compromise. Among the other three "bad forms of government," tyranny was considered the worst, while democracy was considered relatively less so.

However, some of Aristotle's terminology differs from commonly used expressions. In fact, the six types of government he described fall into three categories: rule by one person; rule by a minority; and rule by the majority.

In Aristotle's discourse, both monarchy and tyranny fall under the category of personal autocracy. The difference lies in the fact that a monarch ascends to power through legitimate means, with the aim of serving the public good and governing the country through his personal qualities and virtues; while the power of a tyrant is illegally seized by the ruler, with the aim of pursuing personal gain, and usually maintaining rule through violence and oppression.

Similarly, aristocratic politics and oligarchy are essentially the same thing. The difference lies in the fact that Aristotle defined aristocracy as "wise men," or highly qualified elites. These "nobles" acquired power through their character rather than lineage, and served the public interest with their superior virtue and wisdom. Conversely, if a small number of wealthy individuals hold power and pursue their own interests rather than the public good, it constitutes oligarchy. In Aristotle's view, this leads to social inequality and conflicts between different "classes."

The distinction between republics and democracies is even simpler. Both are ruled by the majority of the city-state, but the difference lies in the fact that republics take into account the interests of both the rich and the poor. However, if the common people pursue the interests of themselves and their small groups, rather than the public good of society as a whole, then it becomes an evil form of democracy.

Of course, even in medieval Europe, this theory had its share of skeptics. The main problem was that its classifications were often too forced, lacking logical coherence. Some definitions, while sounding plausible, unfortunately had no practical significance.

For example, even Europeans today know that aristocratic politics and oligarchy are essentially the same thing. It's strange that Aristotle insisted on defining a "good aristocratic politics." As for how to select these "social elites" without relying on bloodlines, nobody knows.

Even Europeans know what aristocratic politics looks like in reality—isn't France experiencing it right now? The nobles do indeed call themselves saints and elites, but their actions have only made a mess of the country that the former kings painstakingly rebuilt. To the point that now, in scholarly discourse, European aristocratic politics has become synonymous with incompetence, sitting on the same table as democracy.

Some even argue that Aristotle's judgment was based solely on the small city-states of his time. If the scope were broadened, then aristocratic oligarchy was even worse than democracy or tyranny. Therefore, although many cities use different narratives to mask their true situation, it is still quite easy for those who have studied these basic theories to recognize it.

Of course, after the rise of the Purple Horde, there were more voices surrounding Aristotle's views. In particular, some Greeks would subtly express their opinions, saying that the Purple Horde's seizure of Dadu and its self-proclaimed title of Palestine were illegitimate. These people were not legitimate Roman monarchs, but rather the tyrants most opposed by the sages. Therefore, more and more people began to pay attention to this theory.

However, Aristotle's classification relies heavily on "morality," which is too subjective and difficult to define definitively. He could not explain what exactly constituted "legitimacy" when monarchs and tyrants acquired power, or how to define it. These were precisely the issues that the emerging Purple Horde Khanate urgently needed to address.

He could indeed argue that legitimacy hinges on bloodline; anyone descended from heroes or demigods, or of divinely chosen lineage, meets this criterion—in fact, many monarchs in reality have claimed this. So why does he specifically add the requirement that "the monarch must possess virtue and morality"? Even ancient Greek epics suggest that many descendants of demigods were villains, not necessarily good people…

As a result, later scholars who supported him were led to extremes by him—some of them believed that any monarch must have morality, but this morality is different from that of ordinary people and does not need to be understood by ordinary people.

However, this claim has also drawn much opposition. Guo Kang, a prominent figure in the Purple Horde, previously published an article warning that if these theories were to develop further, they could easily lead to arguments such as "As long as God has chosen me, I am always right," or even circular reasoning like "God has chosen me, therefore everything I do is right; although God hasn't explicitly stated it, what I'm doing now is right, therefore it proves God has chosen me," all to prove their victory. This would inevitably lead to heresy. Therefore, the church must be vigilant against this.

This rebuttal is quite famous; even Princess Jeanne heard about it when she was in France, which shows how controversial Saint's theory is.

As for how this "legitimacy" was determined, the Purple Horde Khanate never systematically discussed it. This was because people like Guo Kang were exceptions within the Khanate. Successive Baisai Khans and the vast majority of elders were completely uninterested in verbal battles and debates about legitimacy.

Or rather, in their view, legitimacy is determined by who can fight. If they win, the other side is gone, and no one will argue about it anymore; if they lose, they're just like the Greek dynasties. Even if they're the rightful heirs of Rome, so what? Therefore, there's no point in arguing about it.

When it really came down to a dispute, they would raise the banner of Rome and declare that a nation of their caliber had the right to attack anyone.

When Basil conquered Hungary, all of Europe was shaken. French envoys even warned him that the commotion was too great. Small-scale battles might be difficult to manage, but wars of this scale, involving the annihilation of a nation, should respect basic rules, such as Thomas Aquinas's theory of "just war"—at least on paper. It's unacceptable to so directly invade and annex a kingdom that even held a high position in the Papacy's court, without even bothering to maintain appearances.

But Roman officials bluntly told them that this was a war of unification, a recapture of Roman territory, not an invasion or annexation. The envoy pointed out that even at its most powerful, the province of Pannonia didn't cover such a large area. The officials replied that if they won, the result would be unification. Only a loss could be considered an invasion.

This view also circulated in the French court, and Princess Jeanne actually quite agreed with it. Therefore, she was too lazy to argue with anyone about whether the King of Wu was legitimate.

(End of this chapter)