Countering The Nobles

Year 1562

As the door to the throne room opens, in walks King Mahendra Deva with the prince Viraja Deva along with Royal guards the ministers and nobles are already present in the royal court as a proclamation has been made that certain reforms and other matters will be announced today.As the king sits in his throne signals to the prime minister, he starts reading from the official document .

1) The zamindari system will be completely abolished as it has become too oppressive to the people of the kingdom

2) A Public Tax Department will be created whose officers will be on the payroll of the crown and will be responsible for collecting tax which was previously done by the zamindars. The crown have already started setting up department and recruiting people across the kingdom for the same

3) The tax rate of the kingdom will be decreased from 75% to 50%.

4) Net Tax collection will be divided in the form of 40% going to nobles and 60% to the crown this will significantly increase the amount of tax received by both nobles and the crown .

5) Prince Viraja Deva will be declared as crown prince and a coronation will be held within few months.

As Viraja listened to the points read out by the prime minister a subtle smile appeared on his face as right on queue the nobles start to protest that he is too young to be declared as crown prince but first let the prince prove his worth. This took him back to the day few months back when he talked to his father about how to deal with this traitorous nobles. The first step was to take the tax collecting system completely under the authority of the king by establishing a department which will report to the crown only. To make sure the noble go along with this changes the tax amount received by the noble is increased by cutting out the zaminder their by letting their greed do the job for us. Next will be to infiltrate the rank of the noble with people loyal to the crown to gather enough evidence so that they can be prosecuted for the treason. Since gathering proof will take time so the crown will use the increased tax share to increase the size of the military showcasing the continuous skirmishes with bigger kingdom like Bengal sultanate and a hostile empire like the Mughals this will provide as a opportunity to send the royal army to key location in the kingdom in guise of training drills.

Back to the present hearing the protest of the nobles about Viraja coronation as crown prince his father seems to be considering the decision with troubled face which actually was an act to dis-alarm the nobles. Finally his father seems to have reach a decision so he suggested that he will take the nobles protest under consideration and will give him a small territory to rule with an army of 5000 basic recruits from the lower caste men under his command. He must prove himself by making the region prosperous through commerce or any other means he thinks appropriate. He will have 5 years to prove himself then only he will be considered of being declared a crown prince. This resulted in widened smiles on the faces of the nobles that they have succeeded in thwarting the kings plan to declare the prince as crown prince and also the army given to the prince is made out of lower caste people who are basically useless in the eyes of the nobles. What they didn't know that this was all according to the plans he have discussed with his father and by using the nobles own ill intention his father has just granted him the land and army as per one of his request. 

As all this thoughts were crossing his mind his father ordered the prisoners to be brought before the court hearing this again brought a smile to his face as he thought that the carrot part is over now is time for the stick part so that that the nobles do not think that the crown is weak. The prisoners in this case were one of the smaller nobles name Sindudev who has been scheming tax from the crown and also providing internal information to Bengal Sultanate as his father's prime minister let his crime known to the court after which his father declared that the noble and his entire lineage to be executed and all his land and valuable to be confiscated by crown this ,made sure that the rest of the nobles do not think the crown is weak and act more cautiously fearing discovery which will ultimately delay their plan of rebellion there by giving crown the time to enact its plan of complete extermination of this traitors. 

Finally it was declared the territory promised to the prince Viraja will be one of the barony named Badrak (facing the sea and bordering another territory of khurda kingdom close to the Bengal border) previously ruled over by the convicted noble Sindhudev. With this the royal court ended and everyone retired for the day.

==========================================================

Please note i have made few changes in the first 3 chapters so anyone following the novel should give a re-read of the same. Thanks