Chapter 117 Crisis (Ⅰ)

"Today's defeat in Derlin Town will prompt Cottar to dispel his arrogance and underestimate the enemy, and take a more positive attitude towards the alliance proposal made by the hobgoblin lord Letu. When Cottard provokes war again, follow him to conquer In addition to the troops of the cold-blooded tribe in Delin Town, there will be more and more brutal goblin troops! When that day comes, how will we deal with it?"

Weiss' question made the square fall into silence, and the atmosphere became extremely oppressive.

"If the goblins also participate in the war started by Cottal, it will be difficult for our armed forces in Delin Town to stop the invaders from both directions of the Great Swamp and the 'Screaming Jungle' at the same time." Mayor Tyndall said with a heavy voice. The tone of the voice broke the silence, "Under the current situation, we first need to decide whether it is necessary to stick to our homeland. Before the enemy has launched a second wave of offensive, we simply abandon Delin Town and lead the residents of the town to flee to Port Leiden. Wouldn't it be a wiser choice?"

The idea proposed by Mr. Mayor immediately aroused boos in the square, and voices of opposition emerged one after another. Joan, who accompanied his grandfather to the meeting, stood in the crowd, rubbed his ears that were buzzing by the sound waves, and silently observed the excited faces around him. He could conclude that most of the participants did not need accurate statistics. Against abandoning the homeland.

In fact, as far as Joan is concerned, he doesn't really dislike the idea put forward by Mayor Tyndall just now. Anyway, he didn't have any property that he couldn't let go of in Delin Town. If grandpa was willing to part with the fruit forest in the back mountain, Joan would be more than happy to take grandpa, Jamie and Gray to take refuge in Port Layton. However, Joan also knows that his duckweed-like mentality of being happy with the situation is not representative. On the contrary, "relocating to the land and relocating" is the general mentality of the residents of Delin Town who were born and raised. Uprooting is not just an easy move, it also means being forced to give up houses, fields, and all the businesses run by grandparents.

In this rural town with an underdeveloped commodity economy, the vast majority of residents make a living from farming, and family assets are mainly reflected in land, while other forms of assets—especially currency assets such as gold and silver—occupy a small share. Once people give up the land and fields in their hometown, they will become impoverished. Not only will they lose the source of income for subsistence, but they will also lose the social status and social relationships attached to the land and fields. Except for a very small number of wealthy businessmen with large monetary assets, in the eyes of most other townspeople, fleeing from their hometown is almost equivalent to becoming a beggar in the slums of Port Leiden-before they are completely desperate, people are obviously unwilling to accept such a fate.

"Since everyone doesn't want to flee their homes, our only choice is to resist to the end." Mayor Tyndale raised his hand to signal everyone to be quiet, cleared his throat and continued to analyze the current situation: "The militia in this town alone are no longer able to resist the lizards. The human and goblin alliance forces, we must seek help from the outside world as soon as possible, I think everyone has no objection to this. Then the next question is who should we seek assistance from? Who has the ability and courage to defy the Lizardmen and goblin alliance forces? Threats, are you willing to take huge risks to help this town?"

There was a brief silence in the meeting place, until Flint Anvil stood up and replied in a loud voice: "The colonial government has an obligation to protect the people under its rule. We should send people to Leiden Port as soon as possible to report Lord John Norfolk, Governor of the Colony of Alfheim, and General Charles Gates, Commander of the Garrison, for help!"

The appeal of the old dwarf won a great response in the hall. Joan also thought this was a feasible strategy, but he soon noticed that his grandfather shook his head repeatedly, and his face became more gloomy, as if he didn't agree with Flint's proposal.

"Grandpa, shouldn't we ask His Excellency the Governor for help?" Joan asked inexplicably.

"It's right to ask for help, but your Excellency the governor may not be willing to send troops to rescue our town." Old man Tire sighed, "As for the reason, it's not honorable to explain it in detail."

At first, Joan thought that his grandfather was criticizing the colonial government's dereliction of duty. However, after listening to Mayor Tyndale's next speech, he suddenly realized that what his grandfather said was the "disgraceful" role played by all the residents of Delin Township in this matter.

The Alfheim area where Derling Town is located is an overseas colony belonging to the "Holy Ashean Empire". Compared with the mother country separated by oceans, the political ecology of the colony is very different. The Holy Ashan Empire located in the old continent is a typical centralized regime. His Majesty the Emperor who lives in the capital Ashan Holy City is also the religious leader of the whole country. The political power and theocracy are concentrated in one person. The Holy See manages the secular and religious affairs of the entire country. The provinces outside the capital are managed by the bureaucrats and bishops selected by the cabinet and the Holy See, together with the local nobles and gentry, together constitute the ruling class of the entire country, forming a complex and interlocking administrative management from top to bottom system.

In this administrative system, the "taxation power" related to the country's fiscal revenue is contracted to wealthy businessmen. If necessary, the tax contractors don't mind paying a small amount of money to hire rogues and even extraordinary professionals to collect taxes by violent means. People have a thousand reasons to criticize the tax package system, and even more reasons to criticize the greed and cruelty of the tax package merchants and their henchmen, and use all means to squeeze and exploit the people at the bottom. But people also have to admit that even though the tax package system is bad in every way, at least it can actually collect the tax money, and then guarantee the expenditures necessary for the effective operation of governments at all levels.

Compared with the mainland of the empire, the administrative system of overseas colonies presents a completely different ecology, with three main characteristics. The first is that the land is sparsely populated, the transportation is inconvenient, and the colonial capital lacks connections with surrounding towns; The rest of the middle- and lower-level officials were recruited locally, and the salaries of bureaucrats at all levels were borne by the colonial government; third, the living environment in the colonies was quite harsh. There is a large piece of virgin land here that attracts the colonists to travel across the ocean to reclaim it. However, the number of monsters entrenched in the jungle and the wasteland is far more than a hundred times that of human immigrants. The hordes of wild boars or goblins left no particles left, and the tragedy of entire villages being slaughtered by orcs and even giants was commonplace. It is not easy to survive in this hostile land. Many colonists who came to the New World with their dreams to live in the New World were beaten badly in the face of the cruel reality, and finally had to flee back to the Old World in desperation.

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