Chapter 464: The royal dilemma 4
Chapter 464 – The Royal Family’s Dilemma 4
Northwest Bay?
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
The Foreign Minister said in a relaxed tone.
“The lords of the northwest have been very deferential to the Royal Government, and I think they will cooperate with the Royal Government in implementing the blockade strategy against Jarls, and they will restrain the merchants under their rule.”
The Minister of War suggested, “Let’s purchase more steel and ordnance from the Northwest Gulf, the products there are cheap and good, this way the skills save money and make up for some of the losses in the Northwest Gulf.”
The king nodded his head and agreed down, “Then let’s do it.”
The Finance Minister continued to suggest, “The Cloudy Mountain Range also produces tea and valuable timber, we should support the industry there to balance out the shortage of goods caused by the blockade of Jarls.”
Suggestion after suggestion was recorded by the scribe, the kingdom’s top brass prepared a tight net for Jars.
The meeting eventually returned to the topic that couldn’t be avoided at the beginning – what should be done to resettle the southern nobles at this stage?
The king sighed helplessly, “I’m going to take out a portion of land from the royal domain and divide it among them.”
The courtiers present were shocked.
Rupert urgently persuaded, “Your Majesty, this can’t be done, according to the number of families of those southern nobles, the land of the king’s domain will not be much bigger than a duchy after the division.”
The king explained to the crowd, “Here’s what I’m thinking, only pick out a portion of the more influential families to grant territories, and they can’t be armed. Well …… let’s just go with the top third in order of influence.”
The land of the king’s territory could be more fertile than the south, he didn’t believe that part of the nobles would refuse.
“For the middle third of the families, give the adult men of the family a position in the military and political departments, so that they have something to do, but slightly raise the treatment on top of the existing allowances.”
“The remaining third of the minor nobles. Alas …… let them make their own way.”
……
After Catherine left the council chamber, she depressedly walked on the corridors of the royal palace, and she planned to go to the garden to take a break.
Just as she passed a corner, a hurried figure collided with her.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch ……”
A pretty figure covering her head crouched on the ground.
“Really!”
Catherine somewhat helplessly assisted the person in front of her.
“Erin, you are also too presumptuous, where are your manners as a royal princess?”
She counted down her sister somewhat angrily.
Ever since the trip to the Northwest Bay, this little princess had been a bit of a big talker. She looked her sister up and down.
“You just got back from school this time?”
Instead of a court dress, Erin was in a simple neutral outfit at the moment, her platinum blonde hair tied back in a ponytail behind her head.
It was the same outfit she wore when she ran towards school.
It was a school she had built herself, choosing the site, designing the building, and hiring the teachers was all done by the young princess herself.
Unexpectedly, the students were all from commoner families, quite literally, and a large percentage of the youngest children in the lower grades were abandoned orphans, so it could be said that the school doubled as an orphanage – it was like a convent that didn’t teach theology.
The cost of running such a school is naturally not low, but as a princess of the kingdom, Irene was born into her own fief, where the harvest provides most of the funds, and her little sisters donate to the school from time to time.
“Forget about the grooming and the school for now! Sister Wang Wang, I need to see father immediately.”
At this moment, Ayrin was like a leaping canary, her face mixed with this expression of guilt and anxiety.
Catherine boarded up her face, crossed her arms and frowned as she asked, “What happened to make you lose your temper so much, tell me first, did you get into some trouble again?”
Seeing that she was misunderstood by her sister, Irene shook her head into a rattle, “No, no, alas, my dear sister, I can’t say it in a sentence or two, I have a letter here for you to see for yourself, it’s from my friend in the Northwest Bay.”
Catherine took a sheet of paper from her sister’s hand.
“My dear friend Betty …….”
The opening paragraph of greeting was scanned by Catherine with a glance.
Betty, that was the name her sister had used when she was in the Northwest Bay, and she knew this.
What followed piqued her interest.
“At a meeting last week at the time of writing, the Statistics Committee, headed by Earl Garnard, put together a figure that the maternal mortality rate in the Northwest Bay four years ago was surprisingly high at more than twenty percent, which is not necessarily accurate because the Statistics Committee had not yet been formed, and it was obtained by the statisticians through inquiries made by visiting the homes of families with children living there, but it should be be about eight or nine percent.”
“The first time I came across this statistic I was stunned, it meant that one out of every five soon-to-be-mothers would be lost forever, it was horrific. The Statistical Commission recorded the family background of the sample – that’s what they called the respondents – when they collected the dataset, and the data showed that rich or poor, noble or commoner, there was an extremely high rate of maternal mortality, with better off families likely to be would be a little bit higher than the first point in families that were not well off, but in terms of the whole the difference was not that great.”
“If you ask a midwife, you’ll learn that a woman who has just given birth often develops a fatal condition – puerperal fever. Many of these women suffer from high fevers, chills, excruciating pain in the lower abdomen, struggling and hollering, and finally pass away tragically. This is the terrible price that used to be paid for human reproduction.”
“However, data from the Statistical Commission show that the maternal mortality rate has begun to decline year after year in recent years. Do you know where the dividing point is between these two scenarios? I think the smart you should be able to guess it quickly.”
“Yes, it’s that pamphlet we compiled together, the one used to publicize hygiene, which records all the disinfecting measures proposed by Count Greiman, which, as corroborated by the microscope, have been effective and efficient. The statistics on maternal mortality now suggest that the so-called puerperal fever is caused by microorganisms that can only be seen with a microscope, which is true when you think about it, because a woman who has given birth to a child is just like a soldier wounded in battle. In all the battles of Arda’s army, similar sterilization measures were able to greatly reduce the rate of fever among wounded soldiers, so it should be effective for women in labor as well.”
“Count Greiman has used his administrative power to promote the New Life Movement in the territory in recent years, and doctors everywhere have been forced to understand the contents of this pamphlet, so I think that should be the main reason for the reduction in the maternal mortality rate.”
“Dear Betty, I hope that you will be able to mobilize your influence in the circle of nobles in the royal capital ……”
(End of chapter)