Chapter 572: Chapter 334, Please Abdicate Your Throne_2
“All I can think about is the power of our family,”
“But I must ask again, is it really worth it to gamble the lives of countless civilians and warriors of the entire kingdom for one’s own selfish desires, even to the point of becoming a traitor to the empire?”
“This is betrayal of the empire, and we cannot possibly win! Even for the sake of our family, we should fully accept all demands of the Alliance Government, which represents the will of the empire. I also firmly believe that the alliance will give us a fair settlement.”
“I am a warrior of the kingdom, but I am even more a warrior of the empire! Father, I cannot bear to watch you make mistake after mistake, leading our entire nation and all its people into an abyss from which there is no salvation.”
At this point, Prince Eureka knelt on one knee, his voice filled with sorrow:
“Please abdicate, Father King!”
Following his plea, half of the officials, generals, and lords in the room also knelt down: “Please abdicate, Your Majesty!”
King Altai, who had been leaning forward, slowly sat back in his seat with a long sigh, seemingly unable to speak.
…
“…A formal ceasefire agreement has been signed, Altai Panbos shall abdicate, and the kingdom of Panbos shall be inherited by Eureka Panbos. Altai is to face trial by the Alliance Military Tribunal, where he is charged with multiple war crimes,”
“Following the signing of the ceasefire treaty, the remaining nearly two million troops under Panbos control will surrender to our forces in phases and unconditionally, accepting full oversight.”
“Officials and special envoys of the Alliance Government will enter smoothly into the new government of the kingdom of Panbos to assist in the reform of the government, and supervise the implementation of policies.”
“After the surrender of the kingdom of Panbos, we have gained control over more than 60% of the planet’s population and 72% of the usable land area. The remaining nations will no longer possess the power to oppose us.”
“Governor-General, I am sure that we have now achieved complete victory!”
Gu Hang set aside the document he had finished reading.
The situation was, after all, progressing in the direction planned by the General Staff of the Alliance.
With the war coming to a halt, it could largely be considered over.
Of course, there would inevitably be some suppression operations, cleanup operations, and even though most of the remaining nations would probably follow in the footsteps of Panbos and surrender – after all, they no longer had the Knight Titans – it was unpredictable whether some smaller nations might continue to resist fiercely, leveraging various factors.
But after all, those were only minor issues.
The entire Heijian Star could now be considered an official part of the Alliance.
And Gu Hang paid no small price for it.
Especially considering that so-called major decisive battle.
Although the Alliance Army, under the command of Perbov, seemed invincible, annihilating various enemies and achieving the ultimate victory, the cost to the Alliance was also significant.
The Alliance side lost over two hundred thousand personnel in total.
Of course, most of these losses came from the vassal forces.
But the core troops of the Alliance didn’t fare much better.
The Alliance lost over two thousand armored vehicles, including 477 Lion Tanks; more than forty Windfalcon Fighters were shot down; nearly eighty thousand men forever left the military ranks, with the dead exceeding forty thousand.
This was almost the largest single battle loss since the establishment of the Alliance.
Of course, the victory had its gains.
Or rather, the gains were far greater than the losses.
Firstly, Gu Hang received over twenty thousand points in rewards from the series of battles that the Alliance Army fought in the kingdom of Panbos after entering it.
And indeed, it was through this decisive battle that the Alliance had thoroughly cemented its mission to conquer the entire planet.
Additionally, there were the ‘Alliance’ legalization documents issued by the Central Government of the empire.
Gu Hang could now say that he was the master of Heijian Star, both in name and in actuality.
The reason for such an eager expansion was that he saw Heijian Star as having immense potential for development.
The natural conditions here were actually much better than those of Rage Owl Star.
Rage Owl Star might have been a nice place during its heyday, but now it’s a wasteland, and when compared to an agricultural planet like Heijian Star that hasn’t been overly exploited, the gap is quite significant.
With a population of four hundred million, it was also ten times that of Rage Owl Star. Although the quality of the population differed greatly, the quality of the population on Rage Owl Star wasn’t top-notch from day one either. Wasn’t it through over three years of tireless adult education that they had managed to raise it a bit?
Even if the population quality on Heijian Star might be even worse off, Gu Hang believed that all issues could be resolved.
Later, he would transfer Osenia from Rage Owl Star over.
That lady was the Prime Minister of the Alliance Government, not just the Prime Minister of Rage Owl Star. Since the Alliance had now become an interstellar organization with direct control over two stars, it was only right for Osenia to start overseeing Heijian Star as well.
Gu Hang hoped to further promote political reforms on Heijian Star.
The old model of the Luman Kingdom was no longer suitable.
To put it plainly, Gu Hang’s rule over Heijian Star wasn’t very legitimate before, so he had adopted an approach more akin to a suzerain governing a colony.
But Gu Hang believed such a system wasn’t sustainable.
If you don’t treat others as equals, they find it hard to consider the Alliance their ‘homeland’ and to feel a sense of belonging to the Alliance.
The biggest problem the Alliance faced now was that the core population was still too small.
Especially after seeing places like Korolya III boasting populations of hundreds of billions, Gu Hang felt this all the more acutely.
Therefore, the upcoming reforms on Heijian Star had to strive for ‘localization.’ He needed to establish a political structure on Heijian Star that recognized his authority and was highly centralized, allowing him to mobilize the power of Heijian Star as effortlessly as he did with Rage Owl Star.
At the same time, some of the economic and production development models that had been proven genuinely effective on Rage Owl Star also had to be replicated quickly.
In due course, he would select several appropriate locations on Heijian Star to establish industrial centers, similar to Weixing City.
Currently, Heijian Star was still a backward planet with agriculture as its primary production. Yet agriculture should never require such a large population.
Despite large expanses of land remaining uncultivated, the serfs on Heijian Star had to be constrained to working laboriously on just a few acres per person, with the majority of their labor’s earnings being exploited away by the lord-nobles.
To Gu Hang, this represented a tremendous waste of productive forces.
Large-scale farms, mechanized mass production, liberating the agricultural populace, and building industrial industries… All these actions had to be implemented on Heijian Star.
And during this process, the class of ‘nobles’ and ‘landlords’ had to be eliminated.
Of course, at present, this so-called ‘elimination’ should not be too harsh, not amounting to physical eradication. After all, they had surrendered.
But the Alliance had some existing experience to draw upon.
When they initially reclaimed the Beiqing Valley Region, they kept the original estate owners; when they took back the Eastern Provinces, they kept the local rulers.
The experience of the Alliance was to incorporate the original rulers into the Alliance’s governmental management structures in similar roles but strip them of property rights, ownership rights. Those who owned lands would convert their land into job ranks and enjoy the benefits policies of the Alliance, but ultimately, the land would become owned by the Alliance officials, who would continue to manage the land and its people as Alliance officers.
However, after such a transition, those former landlords, now officials, couldn’t act unrestrained anymore, they had to follow the rules of the Alliance.
And if they violated the rules…
From now on, the Alliance had to begin establishing an integrity system. Alliance Chief Justice Lambert would soon arrive at Heijian Star as well.
To be blunt, the high echelon of the Alliance wasn’t so naïve as to think those noble lords would make qualified officials.
But first, they needed to fulfill their promises to them, giving them opportunities to change; second, they had to get through the initial stage when no one else was available; and finally… they could fatten them up before slaughtering them.