Life of Being a Crown Prince in France

Chapter 452: Chapter 365 The Counterattack of the Indigenous Indians

Joseph began to examine the land redemption plan submitted by Brian closely.

At the beginning of the document, it was first declared that public lands illegally occupied by the nobles must be returned without compensation.

Joseph couldn’t help but nod slightly. This version was finally an improvement over the previous ones.

In France during the feudal era, land ownership was extremely chaotic, and almost nobody could absolutely own a piece of land. A large amount of feudal land was collectively owned by the King, nobles, the Church, and local governments, or rather, it belonged to no one in particular.

Moreover, the rights to possess, use, and profit from a land often belonged to different people. The feudal lords were not actually the owners of the land, but they had the right to collect taxes and designate the cultivators. Of course, the King also had a part of the tax rights.

Many of these lands were public lands, such as forests, ponds, wastelands, and the like, which usually accounted for half of all the lands in a village. According to regulations, peasants could mow, chop wood, and graze on these communal lands, while the nobles could hunt there.

However, over the course of hundreds of years, the nobles had used their power to encroach upon these communal lands, converting them into their own hunting grounds, summer retreats, fishponds, or turning them into cultivated fields and levying taxes on these illegally occupied lands.

In the first two versions of the land plans, the public lands possessed by the nobles were to be redeemed by peasants at a proportional rate. The rationale was that the nobles had also incurred significant costs to “develop” these lands.

But Joseph knew that this was far from simple.

The amount of public land seized by the nobles was vast, and some not-so-wealthy nobles even relied on these lands for their livelihood. It wasn’t something that could be resolved with a simple decree of abolition.

The King could issue a decree to reclaim the public lands, but a large number of desperate nobles might also band together and plunge the country into chaos. And the nobles were the most influential group in feudal society.

Joseph continued to read the document in his hand:

The annual tributes and tithes would no longer be redeemable. Serfs under the annual tribute could pay 25 times their land’s annual output value in a lump-sum land redemption fee, while other types of tenant farmers could pay 30 times. In addition, the transfer fees for such redeemed lands would be five times that of a normal transaction. Furthermore, peasants must first pay all overdue annual tributes and other taxes before they could redeem their land.

Attached to the document was an estimate of the total amount for the land redemptions for all of France—between 38 to 40 billion livres.

Joseph was almost amused with anger.

This was clearly the work of Mirabeau and his cohort.

Abolishing annual tributes and tithes was meant to annoy the Old Nobility because these new nobles hardly relied on such feudal rents to live.

And a one-time payment of 25 to 30 times the land’s annual output value was something that ordinary tenant farmers simply couldn’t afford. Just looking at the total amount of 40 billion livres, one could tell that if French peasants could come up with so much money, there would be no need for any reforms of the land system—being so wealthy, who would care about the issue of land ownership?

Not to mention the tens of billions in redemption money, in reality, more than half of the French peasants couldn’t even make up the overdue rents. That is to say, they didn’t even have the qualifications to participate in the redemption.

This redemption plan was clearly prepared for the Capitalist Nobility to merge and speculate on land. They were the only ones who could afford such expensive land.

After purchasing the land, they would be able to control land prices and make a fortune by reselling. And the peasants would still have to rent their land, only this time, instead of feudal rents, it would be exploitation by capitalists for surplus value.

Joseph could imagine, after the initial excitement of being freed from the shackles of feudal rents, how disappointed the peasants would become when they fell into another form of severe exploitation, and how much disappointment they would feel towards the Royal Family.

Yes, the peasants would blame these problems on the Royal Family—who else to target but the “head of the household,” the largest and easiest target? Perhaps this could provoke the long-delayed but inevitable crisis…

Joseph couldn’t help but rub his temples.

Although this version of the land redemption plan was an improvement—the previous one had even required peasants to redeem 30 years of feudal rents before they could purchase land—it would still intensify the social conflicts in France.

In history, the Feuillants and the Girondin Party collapsed quickly, primarily because their land redemption policies were opposed by everyone in the country.

Honestly, Joseph felt like initiating a deep-reaching purge himself at this point, to clear away the nobility—just following the historical methods of the Jacobins.

However, if he instigated such a purge, his own family would be the first to lose their heads…

How to stabilize the noble class while reducing the burden on the peasants as much as possible for land redemption, and at the same time take into consideration the attitude of the capitalist class?

He rubbed his hair irritably and began to make revisions to the land redemption plan with his pen.

Some of the feudal taxes still needed to be redeemable, and the way public lands were dealt with was completely wrong. This was to take into account the livelihoods of some of the Old Nobility.

The redemption amounts of 25 to 30 times the annual output value of the land were definitely unreasonable, and it was not feasible to require payment in one lump sum. Here, considering loans from banks to the peasants was an option. The total redemption cost for the country should not exceed 15 billion livres.

A minimum guaranteed area per person should be set. Before exceeding the guaranteed minimum, peasants should redeem land at the most favorable cost, with the amount gradually increasing for any surplus area.

Furthermore, the longer the cultivation time and the higher the yield per acre, the cheaper it would be to redeem the land…

Having written these, Joseph still felt somewhat dissatisfied. So he sent the revised document back to Brian, letting the intelligent minds of the era think it over once more.

But Joseph did not anticipate that this “crack” in the policy of land redemption would soon catch the attention of another group.

…

London.

Upon exiting the chambers of Congress, the British Foreign Minister, Marquess of Wellesley, scowled as he climbed into his carriage and immediately headed for 10 Downing Street.

"How does it stand?” Prime Minister William Pitt Junior was clearly waiting for him, personally opening the door to his office to welcome him inside, “Your expression doesn’t seem too upbeat.”

"The situation in India is likely far worse than we imagined,” the Marquess of Wellesley took off his hat and hung it on a nearby rack, then shut the door and said solemnly, “During the questioning in Congress just now, the people from the Whig Party said that Mysore’s army suddenly attacked Cannanore, over 200 individuals from the East India Company were captured, and we also lost several ships.”

William Pitt Junior’s expression changed immediately; he cursed the intelligence system in his mind for such a significant matter being known to the opposition before him, and then looked towards the Foreign Minister, “What on earth do those Indian natives want?!”

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