The Weight of Debt

“Father,” Allen’s voice hardened, “what exactly is the truth behind our family’s debt crisis? As a tax farmer, why are you unable to collect taxes? How did our family’s financial abyss come to be?”

This question struck at the heart of the family’s deepest wound, a truth Bernard had desperately tried to conceal from his son.

Bernard gazed at his son, whose composure and discerning eyes far surpassed his age. He knew further concealment was futile, and might even mean missing a crucial turning point. With a heavy sigh, he decided to lay bare the full truth.

He recounted the saga of the Laval family’s rise: their ancestors had earned their first fortune as adventurers, procuring rare treasures for noble lords. The family then transitioned into generations of merchants, specializing in building materials, eventually becoming a renowned construction contractor within the royal capital’s noble circles.

It was precisely through the connections and wealth accumulated from constructing residences and gardens for the nobility that Bernard had ultimately ascended to the ranks of the robe nobility.

Logically, having monopolized the lucrative noble construction contracts in the royal capital, the Laval family should never have fallen to such a state.

However, the kingdom’s consecutive years of natural disasters and man-made calamities eventually impacted even the indolent nobility, lost in their revelries.

The construction model typically involved a general contractor, such as Bernard, undertaking projects at a fixed total price, bearing the risk of cost overruns themselves.

Noble patrons would disburse funds in installments according to the project’s progress.

In practice, Bernard often had to advance substantial sums for materials and artisans’ wages out of his own pocket. The disasters caused prices to skyrocket, construction costs to surge wildly, and the advanced funds snowballed into an ever-increasing burden, already posing an immense risk of overspending.

To compound their woes, many nobles saw their incomes drastically cut, forcing projects to be abandoned halfway, and all of Bernard’s advanced capital was lost.

The final straw that broke the camel’s back was the Royal Central Plaza project commissioned by the City Hall.

This should have been a profitable and reliable government contract. Yet, after its completion, the City Hall mayor, citing various excuses like “the Minister of Finance won’t approve the payment” and “the royal treasury is empty,” indefinitely withheld an enormous final payment of over two hundred thousand livres!

Under these circumstances, Prince Charles then coerced the Laval family into spending a fortune to purchase a tax farmer’s license that was utterly worthless—it was impossible to meet its collection quota. This move effectively extorted Bernard’s last bit of liquid capital, leaving him only with the infamous reputation of “exploiting the common people” and an unfillable abyss of debt.

This was the stark truth behind the Laval family’s predicament.

The dust of the age, settling upon the shoulders of the nobility, became a crushing mountain.

Upon hearing this, Allen could not help but let out a heavy sigh. He resented himself even more for not having read more “Medieval Wealth Guides” before his transmigration.

“How much money do we actually owe?” Allen posed the most crucial question.

When Bernard painstakingly uttered the heart-stopping figure, even Allen, who had mentally prepared himself, couldn’t help but gasp, exclaiming:

“Three hundred thousand livres?!”

This figure must be understood within the current economic context:

The Kingdom of Lorraine operated on a silver standard, with the main currency being the livre silver coin. One livre originally contained 373 grams of silver, but due to debasement, its actual value had fallen below the silver price.

Within the kingdom’s monetary system, there were two subsidiary coins: the sol and the denier. Their exchange rate was: 1 livre = 20 sols = 240 deniers.

Currently, an average household in the royal capital earned approximately 100-200 livres annually. Three hundred thousand livres was equivalent to the combined annual income of several thousand ordinary households!

Even the kingdom’s most prominent hereditary grand nobles, such as the Duke of Bourbon, Marshal of the Kingdom, had an annual income from their vast territories (including land rent, mining, trade, etc.) of only about 50,000 livres. Three hundred thousand livres was equivalent to their entire income for six years!

And the royal treasury’s annual fiscal revenue, painstakingly raised through layers of exploitation by tax farmers, amounted to roughly 5 to 6 million livres.

A debt of three hundred thousand livres accounted for 5-6% of the kingdom’s annual fiscal revenue! This sum was enough to cover the kingdom’s regular military expenditures for an entire year!

It was a terrifying figure, enough to instantly suffocate any minor noble and cause even grand nobles immense pain!

‘No wonder I could only live a hard life in countless cycles; my dad truly did his best!’

‘The fact that our family held on for three years in the last cycle before being liquidated speaks volumes about Bernard’s exceptional capabilities!’

‘Dad, you really… should have told me sooner.’

‘I thought you were truly a spendthrift!’

Allen smiled bitterly to himself.

‘Those