He's in Love with the Devil.

Chapter 37: Immediate implementation

Continued.

The king's orders are given.

The sheriffs, who were on the list for this council, looked pale, but the representatives of the freemen almost cheered - they hadn't believed that they could really get anything good out of this meeting, and had come at the king's behest as a gamble, but now the scales of fortune were tipping in their favor.

The discussion resumed, but it was clear to the deputies that -

This was no longer a petition, but an impeachment like no other.

It was not uncommon to take advantage of the convening of Parliament to bring an action against a minister appointed by the king.

Ever since Mad King Henry ceded to the Parliament in order to launch the expeditionary war against Bressi, the Parliament of Rogaland had the right to impeach "wrongful ministers", but this was often a means for the nobles to restrict the royal officials.

For the first time since the creation of the Council, the commoners had a voice at the table of power.

Despite the fact that the power behind this voice came from the king, the representatives of the freemen leapt for joy at this moment. If the king now asked them to swear allegiance to him on the spot, they could even get down on their knees and kiss the king's boots.

A heated debate erupted in a flash.

Representatives of the freemen, judges authorized by the king, and sheriffs and noblemen argued without budging from each other. Even the great nobles, who had been at odds with each other before, were forced to join forces out of fear that the impeachment might one day be brought against them.

But this was a futile endeavor.

The representatives of the commoners were impassioned in their accusations against the sheriffs for violating the laws of the empire and for their wanton corruption and oppression. Every little thing was exposed in detail, and the judges, authorized by the king, provided them with a strong legal backing.

It was once said that the deliberations of the Imperial Council were in fact the quarrels of a great fair.

So this time, in the biggest bazaar dispute of all, the invincible ones are undoubtedly the representatives of the free people who hide the king's will. They're a formidable force, pressed on by detailed surveys, and by the many laws and regulations provided by the judges.

And the sheriffs were losing ground.

The king, who was behind everything that was happening, sat in his place as if he were an outsider, indifferent.

He did not participate in the argument, but simply watched with cold eyes as groups of petitions were quickly discussed - or argued over - for a verdict. Those results would finally be presented to the King by the Chancellor in unison, and the King would make the final judgment.

The king had a clear yardstick in mind.

The Sheriff of Rogaland had to go through a major blood change.

Not only for the military reforms to come, but also to strengthen the royal family's control over the region. Hundreds of years ago, Mad King Henry created the sheriff system by establishing the "my hire's hire or my hire" system.

In the beginning, the sheriffs did help the king to strengthen his control over the localities, because the position of the sheriff was appointed by the king himself.

However, as time went by, the Earldom gradually overlapped with the county, and the Sheriff system, which was originally appointed by the King, became an invisible "hereditary system of Sheriffs".

This was not something the king could tolerate.

The Duke of Buckingham, sitting next to the King, was proud of his nephew.

He knew clearly that if the king hadn't spent so much effort on that detailed investigation before, and finally joined the whole process of compiling and organizing in person, then this scene today would never have appeared.

--Miracles never come out of nowhere.

Soon, the results of this alternative impeachment came one by one, and the Sheriffs were paralyzed in their seats. The aged chancellor gravely approached the king's table, holding the resolution resulting from the discussion.

The king received the judgment of the council.

Everyone looked nervously at the king.

The judgment did more than strip the Sheriffs of their positions.

The anger of the representatives of the free people had been pent up for too long, and they needed to vent it, and the result was severe punishment - some of the sheriffs were sentenced to imprisonment, depending on the severity of their crimes, but many more were sentenced to death.

The Sheriffs were still holding out hope.

According to the judgment of the council, as many as fifty-six governors, some of whom were counts, would have been executed.

The king wouldn't really directly execute so many nobles, would he?

The representatives of the free people awoke from their short-lived joy of victory, and they looked at the king with the same nervousness, fearing that they would end up with empty joy.

The king went through the verdicts of the council one by one.

In the crowd's suppressed breath, the king pulled out some of the judgments and put them aside. The nobles had a smug smile on their faces, the representatives of the free people could not hide their disappointment and their hearts sank heavily. They forced down their sadness and watched the king's move without blinking.

The king picked up his pen.

Surprisingly, he signed his name to all the judgments.

What did the king mean by this?

Everyone was confused.

"Some of these ......"

The King put down his pen, picked up the pile he had pulled out and put to the other side, and casually handed it to the Duke of Buckingham at his side.

"Execute them at once."

Execute at once!

As if there was a thunderbolt that immediately exploded in the entire hall, everyone was stunned by the king's words. For a moment they could not even understand what the king meant, except for the Duke of Buckingham who received the judgment.

The old Duke stood up and displayed the stack of specially handled judgments for everyone to see:

--- It was the sentences of those who were sentenced to death.

"Take them out."

The old Duke said in a low, forceful voice.

The door to the colorful room opened with a flourish, and an icy cold wind whistled and poured in, and the candles in the hall swayed precipitously. In the cold air, a group of soldiers fishtailed into the room, wearing armor and swords, their bodies shrouded in a fierce aura-these were the royal family's personal soldiers that the Duke of Buckingham had brought out single-handedly.

Amidst the sheriffs' cries of alarm, they were cold and hard as steel, and without mercy they yanked these formerly high and mighty fellows from their chairs, dragging them through the gaps in the hall's long tables as if they were dead dogs.

First there was a deathly silence.

Then the representatives of the free people jumped up from their chairs and cheered loudly as they spontaneously bowed deeply toward the king.

"God bless the King!"

"God bless Rogaland!"

The great nobles were pale as paper amidst the waves of sound.

Little did they know that after everyone stepped into the palace, in front of the main entrance of the palace - where the warrior queen had massacred a large number of nobles in the first place - the bright red carpet was swiftly removed, and a high guillotine was quickly built.

All of the executioners from the vicinity of the city of Merz had arrived at the Rosebud Palace three days ago.

They had been waiting for the order for a long time.

After the warrior queen Elinor, the second m******e against the nobles in Rogaland was staged.

The moment the king's signature fell on paper, the judgment of doom fell on the sheriffs whose duties he had forgotten.

........................

General Edmund sat in a more remote corner and watched it all unfold rapidly.

As the representative of the Angell State, it was already an unprecedented honor for him to set foot in the Rose Palace, so don't expect to get much of a seat. The heated argument just now also had nothing to do with him, it had always been the case that the Angell State was in a state of autonomy.

The people of Angell were proud of their bravery and ashamed of their cowardice.

But at this moment, General Edmund felt a rare sense of timidity.

A kind of awe grew uncontrollably, he saw a terrifying power in that uppermost young king. That was the will of the Iron Blood Monarch, perhaps there would be a day when this young king he would bring unprecedented changes to the entire world, the moment the king's soldiers walked in, General Edmund seemed to see that kind of future.

He suddenly felt immensely grateful.

--Gratitude that the Angell State had made the right choice as early as possible.

What chilled General Edmund's heart even more was that executing so many sheriffs didn't seem to mean anything at all to the king himself.

He calmly declared the council to proceed.

The nobles began to join in the ensuing discussion with trepidation.

No one made any criticism of the king's hard-heartedness just now - they remembered the rumors that the king had compiled a civil book of taxes for each county some time ago.

They wondered if they were on the list, and chose to remain silent, hoping that they would not be the next target of the king's attack.

The meeting moved on, and the Duke of Buckingham was next to present a motion.

The Duke asked the Council for an increase in the number of his own soldiers, citing the urgent need to secure Rogaland before the Bressie Expedition left.

Not long ago, when Archduke Grice contested for the throne, one of the reasons he used was the Bressy Expedition. Now the Duke of Buckingham has once again brought it to Parliament.

The representatives of the freeholders, who had just won a victory by the king, passed the motion unanimously and almost without hesitation - it should be mentioned that the king also appointed new sheriffs on the spot, and the new sheriffs were still in the acceptable range for the representatives of the freeholders of the various counties.

The nobles consulted for some time in discreet whispers.

They held grudges against the king for his exploits during this time, but the sheriffs had just bloodied the earth, and no one wanted to be the one to stand out.

In the end, a portion of the noble representatives chose to abstain from taking a position, a portion of the churchmen expressed their opposition, while the rest agreed.

The motion to expand the royal family's own soldiers passed without incident.

The king's plan moved forward steadily.

Knowing that he had pushed the great nobles hard enough today and that he needed to stop at an appropriate point, he stopped getting involved in what was to come and let the great nobles file a lawsuit over the dispute over the territory.

One of the less pleasant things happened.

The nobles represented by the Earl of Constant submitted a petition to the council "requesting for a new survey of the royal forest", protesting that the royal forest had expanded to three times the size of the Lion King's era, and that the Charter of the Forest had become a dead letter. They demanded an explanation and response from the royal family.

Coming.

General Edmund, who had been in a state of observation, subconsciously looked towards the throne.

It's coming.

The king said in his mind.

He knew better than anyone else how much pressure he had exerted on the great nobles during this time. And these great nobles who had been rooted in Rogaland for a long time would never fold their hands and accept the stripping of power from the king. Right now was the counterattack from the nobles.

The royal forest.

It was a word that could easily give people the wrong impression, on the surface it seemed like it was just a small patch of forest for the king himself, but that was not the case. The Royal Forest of Rogaland is so vast that it covers a large portion of the Rogaland countryside, and it's not just the woodlands that are categorized as the "Royal Forest." [1]

It all depends on how the King himself and his foresters define it.

In the time of Poulain, the royal forests expanded indefinitely, and are now indeed, as the Earl of Constant's remonstrances say, as vast as they have ever been.

The nobles were putting pressure on the king.

They were not idle when the king sent his commissioners to the counties. The nobles were also collecting evidence that the king had violated the Charter of the Forest, and had also attached a formidable indictment - against the king's foresters.

The evidence may not have been as fine as the King's tax rolls, but it was not to be underestimated.

The indictment was sent to the king.

The nobles were prepared for the king to throw it on the ground and immediately lash out at the Sheriff's trial that had just taken place.

There were whispers in all directions.

The king flipped through the advances. People peered at the king and then regretted not being able to tell from the king's demeanor what mood he was in or what he was thinking.

The nobles sat in silence and refused to participate in other discussions as a silent persecution.

In the tense atmosphere, the king turned over the entire Advice. Instead of storming into a rage, he let out a laugh, "Did you write this Advice in person? Mr. Earl of Constant."

Author's Notes:

King: The guillotine has been prepared for you, are you touched?

[1] The royal forests of the medieval period covered a wide range of areas, and the relevant regulations were extremely strict. In the Book of Judgment, under William I, nearly two-thirds of the land in 30 territories was set aside as royal forests. There were frequent confrontations between Parliament and the Crown over the royal forests, and under King John and Edward I, the nobles demanded that the king make concessions on the royal forests.