Souma had told Julius, “Those who acquire a principality with difficulty will keep it with ease. Those who acquire a principality without difficulty will find it difficult to keep,” paraphrasing the words of Machiavelli. As might be expected, Julius, who had used the influence of the Empire to regain Van with ease, was finding it difficult to rule.
There were some stories that seemed emblematic of the crumbling of his power base, too.
As mentioned already, Julius issued an order banning people from watching the Jewel Voice Broadcast, but this order was only followed in the areas close to Van. Everywhere else, people apparently said, “Who cares what some order from the capital says?” and kept on watching.
When trust in the center is shaken like that, each city starts to gather soldiers and mercenaries of their own. If you consider that, at this time, the kingdom was abolishing the armies of the nobles and the three dukes, creating one unified National Defense Force, then this was a move in the opposite direction.
Every petty lord raising his own army was something Julius shouldn’t have been able to tolerate, but if he censured them for it, there was the risk that the lords would band together and revolt against him.
However, looking at the end result, this was a chance to let the pus out. Machiavelli would have pointed out that this was precisely the time when cruelty should have been used. Even if it resulted in a revolt, he could eliminate hostile forces and intimidate those who were hesitant to commit to him into falling in line.
However, Julius didn’t do that.
Maybe he was the sort to let sleeping dogs lie, or he didn’t want to lose any more manpower when it had already been reduced by the war. There was no way to know his reasons without asking him.
And so… that lack of planning was his first step into the quagmire.
One month ago, there had been a popular uprising in the northwest of Amidonia.
It started with riots over the shortage of food.
Those had happened in the kingdom as well, but the food crisis grew deeper the further you went into the rural areas. It seemed that the northwest of Van was especially hit hard, and “hundreds” was no longer enough to count the number who had died to starvation.
The people of the domain turned to their lord for aid, but the lord refused it. Because he had gathered troops, the little food he had in storage was being used to maintain them.
The lord’s attitude caused the people’s anger to explode, and they attacked his manor. The lord had to use the troops he had gathered against the people of his own domain, whom he had enraged.
What was more, the soldiers were largely people from his domain who had missed meals themselves. When they were confronted by angry people from the same domain, they were quick to abandon their posts and scatter.
The lord narrowly escaped and made his way to the princely capital, Van, where he demanded that Julius quell the riots.
Julius pondered the request. If the riots dragged on, there was the risk that the flames would spread to other areas where dissatisfaction was smoldering. Besides, if he showed strength here, the nobles would no doubt fall in line.
Having made that judgment, Julius led the regular forces himself to put down the rebellion. The peasants might have been angry, but they were no match for the regular forces, and the rebellion was gradually being quelled. In the villages of the northwest, the horrific sight of the corpses of peasant rioters lying in the streets became widespread.
Julius was about to end his suppression of the rebellion in the northwest, but then another even more surprising report came in.
The people of Van, which he had left vacant, had risen up and occupied the capital. What was more, they had dispatched messengers to the Elfrieden Kingdom pledging allegiance and requesting reinforcements, and the kingdom had accepted their request and immediately dispatched its armies.
In other words, Van had been reoccupied.
Maria gave me a look that seemed to demand answers. “And so… that’s how you came to reoccupy Van.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “It was a request from the people of Van, after all.”
Mind you, I had used Kagetora and his Black Cats to incite the uprising in Van. They had lain in hiding near Van, connecting with power brokers in the city as they watched how things developed, waiting for the best timing to reoccupy Van. The reason the reoccupation had happened so swiftly once the messengers had come to deliver their pledge of allegiance was that those forces had already been deployed near the border.
“The Mankind Declaration prohibits any change to the borders of countries brought about by the use of force,” Maria said. “The people of Van rose up and forcefully occupied the city. If the borders of Amidonia are changed by this, it will violate the Mankind Declaration. If that is the case, as the head of the treaty, the Empire will have to mediate between the two nations again. I am sure we will have to handle the kingdom harshly, too.”
“Can you do that?” I asked.
Maria fell very silent.
“The Mankind Declaration also recognizes the right of self-determination for all peoples,” I said. “If the people of Van wish to belong to Elfrieden instead of Amidonia, doesn’t the Empire, as the chief signatory of the Mankind Agreement, have to accept that and support them?”
Maria must have know that. That was why she was unable to say anything.
I sighed a little, then told Maria clearly, “This is why the kingdom didn’t sign the Mankind Declaration.”
The three main articles of the Mankind Declaration were:
First, the acquisition of territory by force between the nations of mankind would be deemed inadmissible.
Second, the right of all peoples to equality and self-determination would be respected.
Third, countries that were distant from the Demon Lord’s Domain would provide support to those nations which were adjacent to it and were acting as a defensive wall.
It was a wonderful thing, ideologically. However, there was a contradiction in these three articles that the Empire hadn’t noticed.
It was true that, if these three articles were sternly enforced, it would prevent external conflicts. However, this text would make internal issues that arose intractable.
To use this case with Van as an example, if the people’s right to self-determination was accepted, the signatories of the Mankind Declaration would have to accept what the people of Van had done.
However, if that meant that the borders of Amidonia would change, they also couldn’t accept it. Furthermore, the logic that, if Van became independent, it would no longer be a signatory to the Mankind Declaration didn’t hold water. If Amidonia suppressed the people of Van who wanted independence, they would be censured for failing to respect the right of peoples to self-determination.
In other words, the signatories of the Mankind Declaration would be forced into a state of inaction.
Some of you may be wondering how the Empire could have failed to notice this. However, it was the sort of thing that wouldn’t occur to anyone until it actually happened. After all, people on Earth in the 20th century hadn’t noticed it, either.
“Have you heard the story I told Jeanne?” I asked.
“…Yes,” Maria said. “It was a story about people who were afraid of getting caught up in a fight between two gods establishing some rules to avoid a war, right?”
In the story I’d told, there were two gods: the God of the East, who said, “The world should be equal,” and the God of the West, who said, “The world should be free.” It was an era in which the followers of these two gods were staring daggers at one another. The countries that were close to the boundary between these two gods worked with countries in the east and west to establish some rules in order to avoid being caught in a war between them.