Chapter 195 Drinking War
After hearing what Vitas said, Viscount Cisse fell into thinking for a long time.
Viscount Cisse knew about Luo Ning's bribery of the Harland family's liquor salesperson and the liquor brewing process.
Maybe it's because the interests are too great, or maybe it's because subconsciously I feel that the Cisse family is more powerful than the Haaland family.
Viscount Cisse did not worry about the Haaland family and decided to touch the interests of the Haaland family. He easily decided to get involved in the wine industry and competed with the Haaland family without consulting other family members.
He never expected that Richard would be so cruel and directly hit the Cisse family within seven inches.
The casino was attacked and many people died, so it had to be temporarily closed.
In addition, compensation must be paid for the death of the gambler and the gambling money brought by the gambler. This amount of money adds up to more than three thousand gold coins, which is also a large sum of money for the Cisse family.
Although the Viscounty of Cisse has been developed for thirty years and has a population of 120,000. The cultivated farmland exceeds the Harland family territory, and heavy taxes are levied on serfs. The annual income from various sources adds up to about 40,000 gold coins, including the profits from the casino. It accounts for eight thousand, the grain tax is about thirty thousand gold coins, and the remaining two thousand gold coins are commercial taxes.
On the whole, Viscount Cisse's financial income is not as good as that of the Haaland family.
The Haaland family's annual trading profits exceed the fiscal revenue of the Viscounty of Cisse, not to mention tax and food profits.
The casino's eight thousand gold coin income is very important to the Cisse family.
Richard attacked the Cisse family's casino. Viscount Cisse must ruthlessly retaliate against the Harland family and show his strength to protect the casino in order to convince the public.
Only in this way can the casino continue to operate.
Viscount Cisse knew the strength of the Harland family. After all, Richard had made numerous military exploits and expanded his army on a large scale last winter. He now had three thousand troops in his hands. The strength is somewhat stronger than that of the Cisse family.
"I was blinded by profit and rashly involved in the alcohol trade. The decision was too hasty."
Viscount Cisse secretly thought that he did not want to have a conflict with the Haaland family, but his current position forced him to be tough on the Haaland family.
In aristocratic competition, toughness is a necessary quality, and so is being decisive and soft-spoken.
How to grasp the scale is the true ability of a noble.
Richard sent people to attack the casino of the Cisse family. Although no direct evidence was left behind, Viscount Cisse immediately made the decision to retaliate and immediately mobilized his men to prepare to attack the Harland family's brewery and let Harland The De family also suffered heavy losses in terms of profits.
Viscount Cisse knew in his heart that if the casino was really attacked by the Haaland family.
In recent times, the Harland family must be on guard, and it is difficult to successfully attack important targets. He is prepared to endure it for three months and wait for the Harland family's defense to relax before launching a surprise attack.
During this period of time, Viscount Cisse increased his penetration into Harland's territory and sent many spies into Harland's territory.
After Richard led the action team back to the territory, he reiterated the importance of confidentiality to the action team members, and then distributed a bounty of 1,200 gold coins to the team members, and the remaining 4,000 gold coins were used as the territory's liquidity.
For every team member who participated in the operation, professionals received a bonus of thirty gold coins, and advanced students also received a bonus of fifteen gold coins.
Doing this job is equivalent to earning a year's salary.
After returning to his territory, Richard stepped up his defenses in the face of possible attacks from the Cisse family.
The Harland Territory has strong vigilance against outsiders. Although freedmen are not prohibited from moving in, the freedmen who move in must obey the arrangements of the territory and can only live near Vicksburg.
Moreover, the freedmen who moved in would not be assigned any land, and could only engage in commercial or handicraft activities in Vicksburg.
If you want to divide the land, you must sign a five-year slave contract. After completing the contract, the land and houses will be divided.
Stopa Territory, where Vicksburg is located, is an agricultural territory and there is nothing that needs to be kept secret.
In addition, the Harland Territory also prohibits the free movement of its citizens, especially those in the Stopa Territory, who are prohibited from entering Fort William and Fort Sophia.
Civil affairs officials will also issue repeated orders to prohibit idlers from approaching the factory.
All strangers who dare to approach the factory will be captured and sent to the mines to mine together with the orc captives.
The factories in Harland's territory not only have security at the factory, but also have troops stationed nearby.
In the years since the factory was opened, more than a hundred people who dared to spy on the factory have been arrested. Some of them were spies, and some were simply too curious.
Regardless of whether they were spies sent by other nobles or people who were too curious, as long as they were sent to the mines and kept company with orcs, they would basically not survive for too long.
There are many innocent souls in the mines.
Richard attacked with disguised caravan mercenaries, so he was naturally wary of the caravan coming in from outside.
Caravans from outside are not allowed to enter secret-related castles such as Fort William and Fort Sophia, and can only trade in the market outside Vicksburg.
The market was built on a piece of flat land, surrounded by tall walls, and there were troops stationed at the door.
After the goods are counted in the market, the gold coins will be settled immediately. The caravan will go back with the gold coins and cannot move around the territory at will.
In recent years, Harland has arrested many businessmen wandering around.
Richard ignored the pleas of the nobles behind his back and sent all those who did not follow the rules to the mine.
Harland Territory is a typical mountainous territory. If you want to enter this territory, there are only a few roads.
Generally speaking, there is one mountain road, one flat road, and three water roads.
A mountain road leads directly from Barony Sharp to Fort William. This road passes through Iron Mountain Castle. There is a squadron stationed on the road and no commercial travelers are allowed to pass at all.
The flat road leads from the Barony of Dirham into the Barony of Stopa. This road can go all the way to Black River Fort and is also the main road used by caravans.
Through the three rivers, ships can get close to important places such as the Brick Kiln Factory, Fort William, and Fort Sophia. There are also checkpoints and garrisons to prohibit foreign ships from entering the territory.
In the Grant Kingdom, the rights of the lord are very important. If Richard objects, even official ships will not be able to enter the Harland territory.
Because the territory had great restrictions on outsiders, Richard was not afraid of attacks from Viscount Cisse.
A large garrison was stationed at Vicksburg.
Although the Harland Territory Brigade is small in size, it only has four and a half squadrons with less than 700 people.
But a regular army of 700 men was enough to defeat most of the attackers.
Unless Viscount Cisse sent hundreds of elite soldiers and launched a surprise attack, the Vicksburg garrison could be defeated.
However, when hundreds of strong men entered Harland's territory, the intelligence department was not just for nothing. They would soon discover the anomaly and mobilize their troops in advance to eliminate the invading enemies.
Three months passed slowly like this. Viscount Cisse had made all preparations, but the information he needed never came.
Viscount Cisse deployed more than a dozen intelligence agents to Harland Territory. Due to the policy of restricting the free movement of territorial citizens, these intelligence agents could not penetrate into the core of Haaland territory at all, and could only live a difficult life near Vicksburg.
Although Vicksburg has a large population and good agricultural conditions, it is not the core of Haaland's territory.
Most of the higher-ups in the territory are in Fort William, and even Sophia and Margaret returned to settle in Fort William after the war last year.
Sophia's magic laboratory was moved to Fort William.
Unable to enter Fort William and unable to contact the senior officials of Fort Vick, these lurking spies were unable to obtain any useful information at all.
But the pressure from above was very tight, so I had no choice but to make up information to fool people.
And Vitas, the intelligence officer of the Viscount of Cisse, is quite shrewd, and these fabricated intelligence cannot be hidden from his eyes.
Because the Haaland territory restricts the movement of people, it is heavily guarded against intelligence personnel.
Vitas had no other way but to collect some public information from people lurking in Vicksburg to analyze the military, political, legal, and economic intelligence of the Haaland territory.
As Vitas learned more about Haaland's territory, he became more frightened and felt that the chance of winning was getting smaller and smaller. He began to dissuade Viscount Cisse in the hope of stopping the attack.
Because there is no precise intelligence, it is difficult for the attack to succeed.
Viscount Cisse once again summoned territorial officials and asked Vitas to take action and come up with precise information.
"Dear Lord Viscount, the Harland Territory is a closed territory that does not welcome outsiders. They are very guarded against intelligence penetration, and they also have a capable intelligence force within the territory. It will take a long time for our personnel to
slowly Slowly infiltrated into the key departments of the Harland territory, and now there is no useful information at all. We only know that
the Harland family steel factory is in Iron Mountain Castle, and there are troops stationed nearby.
A large-scale brick kiln factory has been established in the Harland territory, and every year A large number of bricks are produced, and even the roads near Vicksburg are paved with bricks. The kiln that produces bricks is less than 20 kilometers away from Vicksburg, and outsiders are also prohibited from approaching. Through public intelligence analysis, we
know Fort William has four infantry brigades, one cavalry brigade, and a certain number of auxiliary troops in each castle.
Their brewery is near Fort William, which is also the core of their territory. According to some public data analysis, the Fort William garrison has There are four squadrons of infantry and a cavalry of 300 people. The number of Warcraft cavalry reaches 100.
Our intelligence personnel can only penetrate into Vicksburg. This castle is garrisoned with a brigade. The Harland Territory brigade is smaller. We have only trained four and a half squadrons with about 700 people.
We can only collect this little information in a short period of time."
For more than three months, Viscount Cisse thought of many ways, but still could not restore the gambling mentality of gamblers. of trust.
After all, many people died in the casino that day.
A conflict broke out between Viscount Cisse and a big shot like Viscount Richard. Gamblers did not dare to go to Viscount Cisse's casino to avoid getting involved in the conflict.
If there are no gamblers in the casino, it will naturally close down.
Viscount Cisse heard about the conflict between Richard and the Holland family, and sent people to the royal capital to contact the Holland family, thus joining Prince Felix's camp.
Driven by the Holland family, Wangdu established a casino robbery investigation team.
The investigation team communicated with Richard, but in the end they didn't even see Richard in person. Instead, they were told that the Harland territory was in rebellion, and Viscount Richard was fighting the rebellion.
If the investigation team left Vicksburg, their safety would not be guaranteed by Viscount Richard.
Official investigations cannot shake the well-established aristocracy at all.
Moreover, the Grant royal family has no tradition of getting involved in noble conflicts. Prince Felix can mobilize only a few people.
Richard also found someone in the royal capital, and the Harland family aligned themselves with Prince Chris politically.
Whatever Prince Felix supports, Prince Chris will definitely oppose.
The official investigation team stalled, and the casino business faced competition again.
Because the Elena Castle Casino is closed, many powerful people in the Flame Castle have taken action to establish a new casino in the Flame Castle to compete with the Cisse family for the market.
The Cisse family has deep roots in Flame Castle. The previous Viscount Cisse served as the commander of the Wild Lion Legion for twenty years.
However, it has been more than ten years since the commander of the Western Serbian Army resigned, and many of the people he promoted back then have withdrawn from active service.
The main foundation of the Harland family is in Black River Castle, and their relationship in Flame Castle is far inferior to that of Viscount Cisse.
But when it comes to conflicts of interest, favors often don't work, especially favors from more than ten years ago.
Once a casino is established in Flame Castle, it will be protected by the top management of the Mad Lion Legion, and its security will exceed that of Elena Casino. The Cisse family will have no way to compete.
The situation has reached this point. Unless the Harland family nods to admit defeat, gives up the liquor business, and resolves conflicts, the casino can recover.
But the Flame Castle Casino has been opened, and it is difficult for the Cisse family to compete with the high-ranking officials of the Mad Lion Legion.
The casino business is bound to decline, which Viscount Cisse has already clearly understood.
Giving up the liquor business is simply not feasible.
Since he could not obtain information and attack the roots of the Harland family, Viscount Cisse could only launch a trade war.
He dispatched professionals in the territory to attack the Harland family's commercial salespeople everywhere. He killed many people in one time and robbed goods worth thousands of gold coins.
Of course, Richard would not show weakness if something like this happened. Immediately retaliate in kind, and also send professionals to attack everyone who has anything to do with Baron Cisse.
In the following months, hundreds of people were killed or injured in the two territories. Even professionals, more than ten people died in the two viscounties combined.
The conflict between the two sides has affected the stability of Northern Xinjiang and alarmed the top brass of the royal capital.
King Charles communicated with the Parliament of Nobles and sent high-ranking officials to mediate.
The mediating official was Richard's old acquaintance Jerram Holland. The inclination of King Charles can be known from the fact that people from the Holland family were sent to mediate.
After receiving the news, a hint of coldness flashed in Richard's eyes, and he remembered the incident in his heart.
The royal capital has sent people to mediate, and Richard must make a gesture of agreeing with mediation and being willing to reconcile.
Under the direction of Jerram and others, the Royal Capital Mediation Group finally decided to divide the liquor market. The market in Gascoigne Province was assigned to Viscount Cisse, and the markets in Gedda and Lach Provinces belonged to Haaland. family.
(End of chapter)