Chapter 109
We succeeded in bringing in a relatively healthy information guild.
However, the poor are poor, and it's difficult to trust potential criminals without question.
Of course, people's thoughts and mindsets change according to their environment.
Now that they've become retainers of our family and their livelihoods have stabilized, their habit of turning to crime like before should have largely disappeared.
"This alone is not enough yet."
Once established, ideologies, mindsets, and habits aren't easily uprooted.
It's not for nothing that people say you can't fix people.
"To make them healthy and upright people, I had them all marry without exception as soon as the guild was organized, making them heads of households. I wonder if they're all enjoying happy newlywed lives with their wives now."
It can't be said unconditionally.
However, it's quite common for even a rascal to suddenly become a new person when they get a wife or their wife has a child.
They dye their gold-colored hair back to black and struggle to go out and work at small-medium companies or in technical jobs.
On top of that, we're feeding them properly so they don't starve, and giving them houses even if they're cheap.
Unless they're humans with absolutely no hope for rehabilitation, they should all come to their senses and try to live diligently.
If they can't come to their senses after being given everything, we'll make them into people even if we have to use the rod.
"Their character can be dirty, but we must unconditionally instill loyalty."
While I was lost in thought for a moment, I heard a knock on the door.
"The person Captain Marina introduced has arrived. Shall I send them in?"
"Send them in."
As soon as I gave the order, the office door opened.
The man who entered was wearing a lieutenant's insignia and various military merit medals that could be received as an enlisted soldier or non-commissioned officer on his uniform.
The only difference was that unlike typical lieutenants, he was an old veteran with very white hair and beard.
"Lieutenant Lupo Giorgio. I've come to Baron Rothschild on Captain Marina's introduction."
This would be impossible by Korean military standards.
You might wonder why he's a lieutenant at an age over his mid-50s.
Even in the neighboring Self-Defense Forces, there are cases where they occasionally promote from soldier to 'third-class officer', not warrant officer but lieutenant.
So in that neighborhood, lieutenants can make this joke to master sergeants:
'Ah, are you a master sergeant?'
In our Tuscan Imperial Army too, mere soldiers or non-commissioned officers can achieve brilliant military exploits and be promoted to 'lieutenant', rising in status.
Among non-commissioned officers, he's an incredibly capable person belonging to the top 1%, no, 0.1%.
The evidence is the tremendous number of military merit medals attached to his uniform.
"Sit comfortably."
Hearing my words, Lupo immediately sat down.
Seeing the sharp angles in his movements as a retired person, it must be quite some discipline.
He was on active duty until catching poor people last time, so he must have been a terrifying presence like Marine Hwang Geun-chul to the poor.
"It's an honor to have such an excellent talent like you in charge of my guard."
"There are more talented people than me hoping to become your guard, so I'm just grateful you selected this old man."
I'll keep the fact that I'm creating something like an intelligence agency secret even from the Emperor.
I'll hide it from Duke Visconti too, and even from Erica, the young lady I haven't seen who will be my wife.
So I just asked Captain Marina to introduce good people to use as guards.
'I hit the jackpot beyond what I thought.'
And those so-called talented people don't compare to you in terms of practical experience and such.
"Actually, there's one lie I told, so let me confess that first."
Hearing those words, wrinkles formed between Lupo's eyebrows.
"It's too wasteful to use a talent like you just as my guard. So I want to entrust you with a top secret mission."
Even if it's a top secret mission, it's actually a simple task that anyone who has been a non-commissioned officer above sergeant can do if only 'security' is maintained.
I want you to take charge of mental education, or more precisely, the process of enhancing loyalty.
"What kind of mission is it exactly?"
"Our family needed information guild guys, so we took in an entire guild as retainers."
Hearing those words, Lupo's eyes widened.
What I did is quite an insane, unreasonable thing.
It's no different from gathering high school graduates with 8th grade internal rankings and getting them jobs at large companies.
'Even Chris asked what on earth I was thinking.'
"Honestly, those guys' actions are rotten, but they're good at gathering information. So I bought them because I needed them."
When I was almost swindled out of 7,000 gold coins by Albert, spreading false rumors using the information guild immediately made the cash come out.
"But they still can't get rid of their old habits."
Well, I don't intend to say anything about drinking so much they get crooked noses on big celebratory days and suffering from hangovers the next day.
I don't do that, but anyone can do that much.
But can we say it's healthy to live a life of eating and sleeping during the day and only having sex with their newly married wives at night because I pay them well?
Even if they don't do anything, they shouldn't live in that state for days on end.
"There's a need to guide their lives in the right direction, and a need to instill absolute loyalty towards our Rothschild family. And isn't the military best at doing such things?"
Of course, unless it's non-commissioned officers above sergeant who belong to the bottom of our empire's vested interests.
Soldiers who are just dragged in don't actually develop strong loyalty to throw away their lives like straw for the empire just through 'training'.
Rather, like ordinary soldiers, they even lose what little patriotism they had.
'It's strange to develop boiling patriotism after being forced to roll around for 3 years because the country told you to.'
"That's right."
But those who became retainers of our family didn't enlist forcibly, they chose this path voluntarily hoping for a better life.
So over a week, I let them enjoy stability beyond what they've enjoyed in their lives, if not the best.
I made them wives, gave them houses, fed them full, gave them pocket money.
It would be easier to find what I didn't do for them than what I did.
Based on these facts, instilling loyalty can only have excellent effects.
Because I gave hope to those living at the bottom of hell.
"How should we go about reforming their ideology?"
Actually, non-commissioned officers in this era are practically tools of officers.
So they probably haven't been properly educated in how to think actively...
But if they're talents in the top 0.1%, they must be clearly different?
They wouldn't have risen to that position through effort alone.
"I think it would be good to give them very intense physical training in the morning and afternoon. And before dinner, it would be good to educate them on loyalty towards the Rothschild baron family."
"What's the reason you think that?"
Hearing my words, Lieutenant Lupo answered without hesitation:
"Harsh physical training, weapons handling training, etc. for soldiers isn't simply to develop strength and skills to fight as soldiers. It's to make them somehow overcome their limits and develop tenacity. And have those thief guild guys ever tried hard in their lives, gritting their teeth and shedding blood?"
"They probably just went around committing crimes comfortably. They wouldn't have."
"So we need to change the humans themselves by training them to pour out all the effort they can make, not to train their physical strength, but to develop 'tenacity'."
Certainly, looking at athletes, it seems there wasn't a single person without tenacity.
Some figure skating queens practiced spin moves so much her internal organs twisted, and they say basketball players want to run without even feeling pain when their legs are destroyed during important games.
In that sense, exercise seems like it could be a good means of developing good tenacity.
"Also, when people are completely exhausted, they don't have any stray thoughts. So if we tell them stories about their trashy lives as poor people and lives where they can expect a future under Baron Rothschild's grace at this time, it will be more deeply moving."
For soldiers dragged in forcibly, that would sound like nonsense.
But if those who chose this themselves, receive money, and have comfortable lives hear such education...
Their loyalty should visibly increase rapidly.
"Lastly, I think it would be good to have them write one letter to their wives every night and receive one. Like all soldiers, I endured thinking of my wife and children when things were hard. They will deepen their loyalty to the Baron thinking of their families living well thanks to them."
...... Is this the top 0.1% of non-commissioned officers?
Huh, I should send Captain Marina a huge introduction fee to thank her for introducing him.
Hearing those words, I handed him the hat hanging on my coat rack.
That bright red octagonal hat reminiscent of Marine Corps instructors.
"Do as you think. If you just make those guys into people, I'll give you a big reward."
And in a town quite far from Florence, the screams of those who belonged to the information guild rang out.
Not the death throes of someone being murdered, but the sound of growth along with training.