How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 4

by Dojyomaru

  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.

  One was: “Let’s not allow borders to be changed by military force.”

  One was: “Let’s let the people of each country make decisions for themselves.”

  One was: “Let’s arrange cultural exchanges between the East and West and try to get along.”

  “I heard it from Jeanne,” said Maria. “It really is similar to the Mankind Declaration, isn’t it? I want to know how this story of yours ends. What happened to the world after that?”

  “There were problems, but it was reasonably successful for a time,” I said. “Eventually the God of the East broke up, and because the balance of power collapsed, the state of tension was relieved, avoiding total war between the two camps.”

  “And... wasn’t that a good thing?” Maria asked.

  “Yes, it was, at that point in time,” I said. “However, later, in one multi-ethnic country, a certain people started an armed uprising for independence. If their independence wasn’t recognized, it would go against the principle of self-determination. However, if their independence was recognized, it would mean accepting a change in borders brought about by military force. That contradiction immobilized the countries that had come up with these rules.”

  “Like the Empire has been right now?” Maria asked.

  I gave a firm nod to Maria’s question.

  You may have already realized, but this story was about Earth’s history.

  The God of the East that said “People should be equal” was socialism.

  The God of the West that said “People should be free” was capitalism.

  The worshipers of these two gods had stared each other down during the Cold War.

&n
bsp; The countries that had engaged in talks to avoid a war from breaking out were the members of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in 1975, later the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The rules they had decided on were what was called the Helsinki Accords.

  The reason I was able to immediately notice the contradiction in the Mankind Declaration was because I was familiar with the similar Helsinki Accords. I had studied modern history for my university entrance exams, after all.

  That was why, while I knew the Helsinki Accords had been effective in preventing the outbreak of total war between the East and the West during the Cold War, they had made it impossible for anyone to move during the inter-ethnic conflict between the Serbs and the Croats in Yugoslavia.

  “This is the pitfall you said was in the Mankind Declaration?” Maria said with disappointment.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s a fatal pitfall for a multi-racial state like ours. That’s why the kingdom can’t sign the Mankind Declaration.”

  This might be cruel to say, but if we had been a country like Amidonia, with one subset of races more powerful than the others, it might not have been much of a problem. As long as a race was in a low position socially, or their population was low, they wouldn’t be able to get a movement for autonomy going inside the country. But in a country like ours where many races worked together, it was dangerous.

  It wasn’t an issue when the country was being managed well, but if things went downhill, people would start thinking about partition and independence. Even if things were going well today, they might not be tomorrow. Like Machiavelli had said, one had to be prepared for the vicissitudes of fortune.

  “It hurts to hear that,” said Maria. “Our Empire is a multi-racial state, too, after all.”

  I’d figured it would be, yeah. The Empire had the wind at its back right now, though, so it would be fine.

  In the current situation, with the Demon Lord’s Domain slowly encroaching from the north, there was no place safer than the strongest of all mankind’s nations. No race in the Empire was going to want to change the nation they belonged to.

  However, if the country were mismanaged, or if the threat of the Demon Lord’s Domain were to go away, what would become of the Empire which had championed the Mankind Declaration?

  “Madam Maria...” I began.

  “I know what you want to say. However, I can’t lower the flag now.” Maria smiled with a strong will in her eyes. “Thorny though the path may be, I want the Empire to be a light of hope unto all people living today. It’s clear as day that mankind needs to unite to face the Demon Lord’s Domain. Even if it’s only for a time, the Empire will lift up the flag to unite the hearts of people.”

  “...I feel like I can see why they call you a saint,” I said at last. I found her ideals naïve, but she spoke in a way that drew people to her.

  Though she might have a head-on collision with reality someday, she still held up her ideals, fully accepting that. It was hard to watch her, but I wanted to, nonetheless. That was the sort of charm that she had.

  I’m sure Jeanne has no end of worries... I thought, recalling the younger sister and general who took a more realistic view of things. If Hakuya could have read my mind at that moment, he might have said, “You’re one to talk,” with a vein pulsing on his temple.

  Maria shook her head as if to clear her mind. “I understand what happened regarding your reoccupation of Van. I think, technically, it happened in a way that leaves you without fault. Even if you were moving around behind the scenes.”

  It seemed that Maria was aware that the Black Cats had been involved in Van’s uprising. The reason she wasn’t pressing me on it here was likely because her own nation engaged in similar clandestine activities. I mean, Amidonia had been, too, after all.

  Maria sighed. “However, Souma, I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t understand what?” I asked.

  “Why did the kingdom absorb all of Amidonia?” Maria looked straight at me with probing eyes.

  ...Well, obviously, I had expected she’d want to follow up on that point. Because, right now, Elfrieden had not just Van, but all of Amidonia under its rule. However, this was nothing I had ever wished for.

  “I do, of course, intend to offer a full explanation, but let me say one thing first,” I said. “We were not the driving force behind this. If anything, we’re a reluctant participant.”

  “...What in the world happened?” Maria asked.

  I sighed. “At the very end, we were outwitted by one little girl.”

  ◇　◇　◇

  If you asked what had let her outwit us, I would have to admit that it was because we’d been looking at things too narrowly. The eyes of the Elfrieden Kingdom had been focused solely on Van.

  With the call for assistance from the citizens of Van and the area around it to provide a just cause, we had planned to reoccupy Van in a way that didn’t infringe on the Mankind Declaration. That was the planned course of events.

  For starters, though we were supposed to receive heavy reparations as a result of the earlier fighting, I couldn’t imagine that a Principality of Amidonia being ruled by Julius was going to have the financial power to pay them.

  The bureaucrats who had managed Amidonia’s finances had apparently up and vanished before the outbreak of hostilities, and they hadn’t reappeared even after Julius’s return to power, after all. I didn’t think people who put the military first, like Julius and those he surrounded himself with, were going to be able to get Amidonia back on its feet.

  Furthermore, with Gaius’s sudden death, the transfer of power hadn’t gone well. Even if we hadn’t meddled, it was clear that the country would have been heading for turbulent times.

  The various lords hadn’t taken Julius seriously and kept acting rebelliously, and if he’d raised taxes to pay the reparations, the people’s discontent would have been bound to explode. If a civil war had broken out, he wouldn’t have been able to pay the reparations.

  That was why I had moved to make it so I could reoccupy Van.

  Now, even if he had failed to pay the reparations, it might not have been that profitable, but I could still keep up appearances as the victor. I had abolished the Carmine and Vargas duchies, after all, and had secured enough rewards for the domestic audience. Now, as for the request from the people of Van, it was actually a method that was open to me when the Empire came to demand its return. I could have installed an interim Lord of Van, then had them request integration with the Kingdom of Elfrieden.

  Even so, I chose to return the city for a time before making a move like that, in order to let the Empire take the position that they had mediated.

  If I had taken advantage of the hole in the Mankind Declaration at that point in time, forcing them to recognize our sovereignty over Van, it would have been throwing mud in the Empire’s face. That was why I had agreed to return it, to let the Empire look good. Doing it this way, even if we took possession of the city again, it wouldn’t do anything to shake the Empire’s authority.

  So, in that way, while the kingdom’s eyes had been only on Van, something unexpected had happened outside of it.

  The reoccupation force from the kingdom began forming themselves up to defend the city from the forces of the principality, which would no doubt be coming straight back with Julius leading them, but... in the end, Julius never returned to Van. When the forces under Julius finished putting down the riots and had tried to return to the newly-reoccupied Van, a new report came in. Multiple reports, in fact.

  At the same time as the Elfrieden Kingdom had dispatched its troops, disturbances had broken out in many places, all across Van, and all at the same time. Each of them was different.

  One said that people who had been oppressed by their lord had rioted, wiping out the lord’s family and occupying their city.

  One said that a major noble who looked down on Julius’s abilities had launched a rebellion to replace him.


  One said that a noble who was pained by Julius’s suppression of the people in the northwest had taken it upon himself to shelter those who had escaped and was taking a stance against Julius.

  One said that Roroa’s supporters, upset that Julius had ignored the existence of his younger sister when he’d taken the throne, had raised troops to resist him...

  The list went on, and there were as many reasons as there were uprisings.

  Among the uprisings, there were even cities that had seen the Jewel Voice Broadcasts that came from the Elfrieden Kingdom and requested that they be annexed like Van. Strangely, though their reasons varied, they all did it at the same time, as though they had been conspiring to do it in advance.

  Before we knew what had happened, the Go board that was the Principality of Amidonia was overflowing with black stones of rebellion, and the white stones that were the forces of the principality under Julius had been put in a state of “damezumari,” a shortage of liberties.

  With no way to tell friend from foe, the forces of the principality under Julius, despite being inside their own country, were surrounded by enemies on all sides. Once they found themselves in that situation, fighting the forces of the kingdom while also quelling the rebellion became impossible.

  The forces of the principality under Julius saw a rash of desertions, and the footsteps of the rebel forces drew ever nearer.

  Ultimately, the forces of the principality scattered, and Julius fled with a meager retinue to seek asylum in the Empire. Thus, for a time, Amidonia became fractured and leaderless.

  From the kingdom’s perspective, we were able to reoccupy Van, and an enemy state had fallen apart. It was an unexpected turn of events, but we couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.

  ...Up until this point, at least.