Way of Overlord
Chapter 347: What is Humiliation?

Chapter 347: What is Humiliation?

Mayeux suggested an outer spy and inner spy.

Inner spy come from them; outer spy is spy of convenience. If they were caught it is not a loss, and if they are not caught it is an advantage.

As for loyalty, there is not much to change.

There is personal bonds and shared tribal affiliations.

Tribalism is bad in a multicultural empire.

But to unify a and form a nation or an empire, the use of such tribal affiliation could not be dispensed.

In Aeryon own history there is many empires and kingdom that started that way. There is Genghis. Tamerlane. Qing. And that is to name a few. The only difference is when it became an empire, could it reform itself?

But that is too far from Aeryon right now.

As for other method to retain these realties, Aeryon suggested that there should be a reward for rewarding loyalty.

Loyalty mechanism could be used by those emotional bonds. But incentives should also be given.

Land, wealth, status for successful mission.

How could they not be loyal?

In this era, inequality is the highest between noble and common people.

Why does Aeryon army is very interested in waging battle and is very motivated? Because of the rewards, fair and just reward and punishment.

Meritocracy above nepotism.

And Aeryon also believe that the families of these spies should be taken care of to build trust and loyalty but at the same time it also act as a failsafe.

Aeryon did take some of Jayeux advice to heart

Kindness alone could not control unruly people

These spies could turn their knife back to the master if they could not be controlled.

There is surely stories of tragedy if a spy wanted to turns against their master.

Maybe, the master kills their lover, maybe he come from an opposing tribes. But Aeryon does not have time to entertain such stories.

He wanted to unify the Steppe as fast as possible, form a nation for the people of the Steppe, defend the Steppe lands from being raided by those empires.

If they thought that they could bullied the people of the Steppe, they are in for a rude awakening.

As for the conflict between Yan and the Great Steppe, no ass kicking just drop down from the sky.

There is cause and effect.

The Yan people always said that when its ruler is defeated by the steppe people, it a humiliation to the Yan and Huang people

But why do they call it humiliation instead of a normal defeat?

When Xiang Yu was defeated by Jiang Shu the Yan people did not call it the humiliation of Gaixia.

Why?

The answer is simple

It is humiliating to them because ion their eyes, the Steppe people is inferior to them. And because of that, they view it as a humiliation.

Aeryon is reminded of something he saw before.

The superiority of Joseon people against the people they see as inferior to them. Before Qing was formed, the Joseon people kills and plunder the people of Jin.

To them, the Josen is more superior race than them and these steppe dwelling tribes are only target.

They develop superiority against them

So much so, that even when Later Jin envoy Ingguldai visited Joseon to participate in the funeral of Joseon’s late queen they were treated badly.

The envoys it is said included many high ranking official from recently conquered Mongolian tribes.

Their real purpose is probably to examine the opinion of Josen about the upcoming accession of Hong Taiji as the Emperor.

The envoys informed King Injo of Josen about their ever-growing strength and requested celebration of Hong Taiji’s ascension from Joseon.

This greatly shocked Joseon, as the Ming Emperor was the only legitimate emperor from their perspective.

But is that all the reason?

No, it is possibly because of the superiority that they have developed against people of the Steppe who they characterised as ugly and backwards, a barbarian tribe

They could not even believe the news that a barbarian would be able to defeat Ming dynasty

It was followed by extremely hostile opinions growing towards Later Jin in both government and non-government sectors.

Envoys themselves had to go through life-threatening experiences as Sungkyungkwan students called for their execution and fully armed soldiers loitered around the places in the itinerary of the envoys.

Finally, the envoys wore forced to evacuate from Joseon and return to Later Jin territory.

Hong Taiji then became the Emperor and changed the name of his country from Later Jin to Qing.

Envoys from Joseon who were at the ceremony refused to bow to the emperor.

Why?

Once again because of the superiority they developed against people of the Steppe.

Although the emperor spared them, the Joseon envoys had to carry his message home.

The message included denunciation of the past Joseon activities that were against the interest of Later Jin/Qing and also declared the intention of invading Joseon unless Joseon showed willingness to alter its policy by providing one of Joseon’s princes as hostage.

After confirming the message, hardliners against Qing gained voice in Joseon.

They even requested execution of the envoys for failing to immediately destroy the message in front of Hong Taiji himself.

Joseon eventually transmitted their message to Qing, which blamed Qing for the deteriorating relations between the two nations

Even after being defeated and conquered by the Great Qing people Joseon people continued to harbour a defiant attitude towards the Qing dynasty in private while they officially yielded obedience and sentiments of Manchu "barbarity" continued to pervade Joseon discourse.

Joseon scholars secretly used Ming era names even after that dynasty’s collapse and some people thought that Joseon should have been the legitimate successor of the Ming dynasty and Chinese civilization instead of the "barbaric" Manchu’s Qing.

To them, they are being ruled by an inferior race.

And any great invention or great measure that these inferior races managed to do would be wiped out by future historians or diminished

It did not change much even in the future. Korean people inherited some of this Joseon mentality.

They were subdued by the Chinese, conquered by Japan and in the modern world, in a world full of inequality, after managing to stage the most successful comeback in economy, they did the same things that they should not have done

The superiority of most modern Joseon people toward people of Southeast Asia is appalling.

Yes, in Japan the resentment might be understandable to a point, but for some of the other nations, they view it like it is a barbarian nations forgetting that they used to be conquered by barbarians themselves.

This is the same kind of superiority that Yan also held toward the Steppe people.

There is many such cases in history where the so-called nomads and barbarians, uneducated people actually exceed expectations.

There were the Arabs in the desert that changes the world

Arabs are also like that in the beginning.

"They bring down cassia and frankincense on camels to be traded to merchants... the tribes are governed by kings who are arbitrarily chosen."

"Arabia Felix (Happy Arabia) is full of aromatic plants and spices... the people of the region are nomadic and they live in tribes."

"The Saracens, a race who, from childhood, live on horseback, are a wandering people and seldom seen in the cities."

These are some quotes that was about the Arabs

Nomadic tribe of the dessert that is even ignored by Rome.

But then this nomadic tribe rises to defeat two world superpowers of that era and created a golden age of knowledge where they kept the knowledge of the past which eventually later would start the Renaissance in Italy

There is the Aryans.

The Normans.

The Mongolians

The Manchu

There is many more of such example littered all over the history books

And when these high and mighty empires and kingdoms were defeated by these race of people they though was inferior, they did not think that they are being beaten by an equal force but an inferior race hence the title of such battle would be termed as a humiliation.

At least that is how Yan views any defeat if they were defeated by the Steppe people.

This world is not like his world.

But there is many things that are the same.

He needs to prepare for all of these.

There is many things that Aeryon need to prepare.

So, he did not want to waste his time thinking and trying to pacify all of the spies with kindness.

Not only it is not possible, it would take him too much time

Aeryon at least to create the foundation first.

When the foundation is strong, then he could truly rule with benevolence. One thing is true in Jayeux words.

Benevolence sometimes is a powerful force

But it depends on who you are dealing with. Using it to an ungrateful person is like throwing a pearl into a pig.

The pig does not care for pearls.

As for the spies, other than ensuring their families under the hand of the state, there also needs to be a system of checks and balance.

But Mayeux disagreed with this. It is not that he did not think it is a good idea.

In Mayeux own words the idea is good, but the resource is not enough.

Or to be more accurate, the resources is there but to make it perfect like that would take dozens of years.

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