Chapter 7: Imperial Clash

  Several officials said that someone deliberately passed by several grain stores this morning, and the flour there was sold out. This is the prelude to the soaring grain prices!

  "A commoner consumes an average of one pound of bread per day, which is a considerable burden on their income!"

  "Provocation! This is sheer provocation!" "For Rome, for the Empire, attack France, march on Versailles!" "We must return in kind!!!" "Right! Declare war! Drink deep of French blood!!!" A row of generals were already excited beyond measure. The excitement of those generals was justified, because the French had raised tariffs to such an outrageous level that they might as well have put it in black and white that they intended to rob the Empire's treasury!

  As the generals present were about to escalate the situation into a full-scale imperial war council, with saliva flying everywhere, the civil officials exchanged opinions in a low voice. The Constantinople official, who was seated at the lowest rank among the officials managing the city, proposed that in order to avoid hoarding food and driving up grain prices, we must take action as soon as possible.

  Cheap old dad asked about the situation in Poland. The Minister of Finance, Eriksson, who was responsible for managing and recording the Constantinople tax, frowned and said that due to the Polish coronation war, very few Polish grain ships arrived in Constantinople.

  Foreign Minister Leo said sternly, "This move to raise tariffs is obviously a deliberate act by Cobell, taking advantage of our predicament! The Empire must lodge a protest!!"

  "What do you mean?" asked Cheap Father to the Imperial Minister of Finance.

  The Minister of Finance, Ericks, gave a signal to an official sitting next to him, who handed over the prepared document to the guard to pass it to Grandfather.

  When grain merchant ships arrive at the port, the financial court responsible for managing the port will purchase grain with money and then stabilize the price of grain through coordination with the Chamber of Commerce. Although this would cause a significant outflow of funds from the treasury in the short term, we can increase the export tariffs on essential goods for French nobles such as perfume, silk, lace products, coffee beans, face powder, and wigs. After completing transactions at the port, French merchant ships are not allowed to leave with currency; they must purchase equivalent goods here. Eriks believes that the revenue from export tariffs can basically offset the impact of this incident.

  I frowned, the items that the Minister of Finance said need to increase export tariffs are all luxury goods!

  Cheap dad looked at the manuscript in his hand, raised his eyelids and glanced at the Minister of Finance: "Do you want to use the trick of raising luxury goods export tariffs as a knife to cut towards the French upper class? Not bad, very good thinking. Anyway, all the nobles in France are concentrated in Versailles Palace, Kolbel let our people bleed, we will make those French nobles suffer a bit. A pound of coffee beans soared from 10 écus to 20 écus, 30 écus, even the richest nobles would frown. And Kolbel, who caused all this consequence, will be hated by the entire French class, and thus eliminate our biggest enemy. But have you thought about the consequences of doing so?"

  Consequences... If that were really done, it would be walking into Colbert's trap! Increasing the export duties on luxury goods is increasing the cost to merchants of selling them in France. The French merchant who buys something for one franc and has to pay an export duty will have to add this cost when reselling it in metropolitan France. As soon as Rome increases taxes, Colbert can lower the price of domestically manufactured goods by reducing profits.

  People are after profit, in this way, the Roman goods that occupy the mainstream of French luxury goods will be expelled, and French luxury goods will occupy the French market at the lowest cost, squeezing out the Roman goods that can be replaced by France! For example, coffee is a commodity that cannot be replaced. If Colbert is ruthless enough, he can let the Sun King set an example to make drinking coffee an unrefined behavior, thus cutting off the entire coffee market! Moreover, there is a major flaw in the proposal put forward by the Minister of Finance, which is where Rome will find a substitute for France, this grain-producing country.

  This is no simple provocation, this is a trap set by Corbulo for his Sun King to ensnare the Roman beast!

  People think that the grain for living is not a luxury that can be had or dispensed with! The empire has to spend money to buy grain in order to maintain stable grain prices. If it follows the example of the Roman finance minister and increases taxes on luxury goods to fleece the French nobility, the money obtained will fill the gap created by buying grain. As a result, no matter what the Roman Empire does, its financial revenue will be harmed.

  The former would reduce Rome's revenue by filling the food gap, as Rome is short of food not for tens of thousands of people, but for hundreds of thousands of Constantinople soldiers and civilians and over millions of permanent residents in Anatolia, and the money consumed each year will be a huge sum. The latter, although temporarily allowing Rome to pass through difficulties and gain benefits, would soon occupy Rome's luxury market in France, causing huge losses to personnel and families relying on luxury goods within the empire, and the imperial finances would also suffer a severe blow. How important is a sound national financial system for war? French Finance Minister Colbert, who has the money to conquer other countries at will, clearly has more say!

  The scratching of the quill pen stopped, and the meeting fell silent. I sat quietly in my chair, thinking, thinking about how to respond to the counterattack from France.

  Know yourself and know your enemy, you can win a hundred battles.

  Does the empire have no land for planting grains?

  On the contrary, the empire sits on the lower middle plain of the Danube River. In the past, Romania, Serbia and Hungary, which were built on this land in that world, were all major grain-producing countries, with more than 10% of their national economy relying on agriculture!

  But why is this predicament happening?

  It's human selfishness!

  Since the invention of perfume, because the production of perfume requires a large amount of raw materials, after the development of the Danube River downstream plain, roses are everywhere. Why? Compared to cheap food, planting roses for perfume processing plants is more profitable.

  You can't have your cake and eat it. The Empire's perfume has taken over the entire Western European market, bringing in a huge fortune for the Empire, which no one can deny. Therefore, perfume and grain have always been a difficult problem to choose between. Although successive rulers had strict orders, under the impact of Poland's cheap grain exports, the ban was lifted due to pressure! A small portion of the enormous wealth obtained from exporting perfume is used to buy grain from Poland, while the vacant land is used to plant more raw materials and increase perfume production!

  What about the Middle Danube Plain?

  There's also a lot of land there!

  The precipitous cliffs of the Katerlak Gorge, the existence of the Southern Carpathians, blocked the fertile grain-producing plains of the middle Danube from being used by the Empire.

  The key is now obvious, the empire does not have no grain, but can't transport it!

  What about Colbert? If we say that this world really has a force similar to the many characters in the game with ability values exceeding 90, it is obviously France. And Colbert, to exaggerate, his political value must exceed at least 120. The effect is like Uesugi in Nobunaga's Ambition, where he can easily cut down 50,000-60,000 troops with just a few thousand soldiers.

  I'm not kidding. Since Kolbell took office, the Empire has had to deal with this guy every year, and I heard that the previous finance minister still wakes up in the middle of the night screaming his name even after he's retired.

  For such a strong man, I racked my brains to recall that there was roughly someone in French history. In the past world, Colbert was the Minister of Finance and Navy Minister of Louis XIV, dedicating his life to France's conquests and the unparalleled achievements of the Sun King.

  In this world, Colbert also excelled in fulfilling his destiny or the mission entrusted to him by God, making France prosperous! This Frenchman, recommended by the Sun King's trusted men, emerged and knocked down the French nobles who were entrenched in the important position of Minister of Finance. After being appointed as the Auditor General of Finance by Louis XIV, he rebuilt France's financial system within three years. Then this Frenchman held high the banner of mercantilism, frequently using tariffs and a series of measures to strike at the economies of enemy countries, thereby controlling their revenue. Although some of his methods seem somewhat childish 300 years later, don't forget that in this era, Colbert was a wise man who led others by more than one step, and many of the traps he set were not yet clear to others.

  But our finance minister cannot be blamed for handling the French export tariff issue in this way. Faced with such a malicious policy change, the empire can only use the same policy to counterattack and force the other side to compromise. However, this may lead both sides into a prisoner's dilemma.

  Prisoner's dilemma, an economic definition of self-imposed constraints and being outsmarted by one's own intelligence. In the context of current issues, when a country unilaterally raises tariffs, another country will react in the same way, triggering a tariff war, causing both countries' goods to lose market share in each other's markets, ultimately harming their own economies.

  However, the problem lies in the fact that the goods manufactured by this newly born strong country of France are all available in the empire, and the French market is not large within the imperial market. Therefore, import tariffs, which are the most effective weapon, are useless against the French. But Rome, as an old brand empire, is different on the French side, with a high market share of various luxury goods! More importantly, even if export tariffs can be used to fill the gap in grain purchases for the time being, without new grain purchasing countries, the empire will continue to be constrained by France, which has replaced Poland as the empire's largest grain importing country.

  What a thorny issue!