Chapter 1163: Three Grand Duchies
With the postwar cleanup underway, rewarding meritorious service had also been placed on the agenda. The people below had been waiting so long they were growing impatient. If Franz had not enjoyed such high prestige and a solid reputation, they would have started making a fuss long ago.
It was not that the military was inefficient; the main issue was that there were simply too many people to be ennobled this time, requiring an enormous amount of coordination and communication.
Although the principle was nominally voluntariness and respect for personal wishes, there was no way to truly achieve that in practice.
Everyone rushed to fight over good land, while worthless territory was shunned by all. Many times, several meritorious figures had their eyes on the same piece of land, and that was where the General Staff had to step in and coordinate.
The past few months had been spent mainly in wrangling. To persuade more meritorious figures to go to the Americas and Australia, the General Staff had racked its brains.
After several months of effort, they finally produced a plan that most people could accept.
The broad principles remained unchanged: the better the land, the smaller the fief one could obtain; conversely, the worse the land, the larger the fief.
To encourage more people to reclaim wilderness, Franz had specifically allocated funds to provide direct economic aid to lords in remote inland regions.
The assistance was mainly directed toward infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and waterworks. Those meeting the application requirements merely had to submit their projects.
In addition, there were special policy-based low-interest loans, ensuring that everyone had sufficient funds to develop their fiefs.
Compared with the earliest nobles who had opened up colonies and had to figure everything out for themselves, this