Eagle Byzantium

Gawain greeted the two of them enthusiastically. When he learned that more than 20 tax collectors of the Pronian estate in the entire region (actually equivalent to the Ikta fief knights) and nearly a thousand private soldiers under them were willing to contribute, he could not help but admire them greatly and asked kindly, "You have not participated in the battle of Philomelon?"

"Yes... We were ordered to garrison there and the Alanya Castle on the east coast, and we were unable to participate in the previous fierce battle." The two knights replied.

"That's great, because about one-third of the emperor's thousands of Pronian cavalry who participated in the Battle of Philomelon died in the battle. Now you are safe and sound, which is really great." Gawain repeatedly expressed enthusiastically, making Acropolites and Becus very embarrassed and very afraid.

Next, the Grand Patron set up camp directly on the open field in front of the Atalia Castle, and continued to say to all the surrendered Pronian knights, "You all have obtained the tax collection license documents from His Majesty the Emperor or His Highness Penipasebastos, and each of you owns a piece of land or other income here, which is all recorded in the praktika (Pronian real estate archives) of the imperial capital, right?"

All the knights immediately answered yes, and then Gawain spread his hands and replied in a deep voice, "But now that the emperor has been defeated by me, according to common sense, I don't have to recognize your collection of territory. Just like I didn't recognize the old-fashioned Jinat military nobles in Seleucia before."

The atmosphere of friendship in the entire scarlet tent suddenly became quiet.

In fact, whether it is the Jinat (heavy-armored cavalry soldiers) or the current Plonia territory system, or even the previous peasant soldier system, the essence is unchanged - the emperor of the empire uses land to exchange for the service of soldiers. At first glance, it seems that the emperor is deliberately feudalizing to "make his own death", but the truth is not so. That is, the Byzantine emperor has never rashly taken the power of land into the hands of local soldiers. To a certain extent, no one is unaware of the contradiction between "feudalization" and "centralization", but it is all forced by the situation.

For example, the peasant soldier system. In the era of Constans II, the empire was invaded by the Crescent in the east and the Slavs in the west, and the empire's original border defense force supported by the state finances - the Central Field Corps system had collapsed (in fact, the peasant soldier system was not established by Heraclius, otherwise it would be impossible to explain that some books say that he established the military district peasant soldier system while using a large number of mixed mercenaries in the battles with Sassanid Persia and the Crescent). Needless to say, the threat of the Crescent Church was great. At that time, except for a few isolated cities such as Thessaloniki, the western part of the empire had all become the private land of the Slavic barbarians. The other side did not even believe in Christianity (they only had limited respect for Saint Dimitri), let alone serve and pay taxes for the empire. Therefore, when Heraclius faced the massive invasion of the Crescent Church in his later years, he could not even pay the minimum amount of military pay. This also easily explains why the Crescent Church, whose equipment and tactics were not very advanced at that time, would set off a storm of conquest. No matter how brave the soldiers were, they could not effectively resist the invaders without military pay. Therefore, Heraclius' successor, Constans II, simply exchanged land for military service: allowing soldiers to own land in the military district to offset the burden of the state on military pay. All of a sudden, the military expenditure of the entire empire was reduced by two-thirds, and it was revived from the brink of bankruptcy, and a "peasant army" was organized to counterattack and recover lost territory in the future.

However, were the peasant soldiers and the Jinat loyal to the empire? The answer is of course no. After the establishment of the military district system, the peasant soldiers and jinat were most obsessed with the interests of their own lands rather than the interests of the empire. In this regard, they were even worse than the previous army that simply received military pay. As a result, it was easy for them to gather around ambitious generals of all kinds and launch wars for the throne. In the local area, due to the closed agricultural social model (especially in the environment of Anatolia), they themselves might starve to death in a famine, so the only feasible way was to constantly use various means of power to devour other lands and grow themselves into "land monsters" (this point has been made very clear in Gao Wen's Seleucid social survey in the previous book). This is the land annexation that everyone is very familiar with, both in China and abroad.

Of course, land annexation gave rise to "peasant-soldier aristocrats", who would of course engage in endless coveting and fighting for the imperial throne of the empire, and the reigning emperor would of course be unhappy. Therefore, the emperors of the Macedonian dynasty did not so much protect the "peasant-soldier" (many people mistakenly believe that peasant-soldier are poor farmers or small self-cultivating farmers, but this is actually a misunderstanding. They are all large landowners who can afford a full set of weapons and equipment, or at least the rich peasant class. The ancient "Dios" could not even afford to be soldiers), but rather protected the small farmers and village communities who could still own land, and prevented the manpower and land from being annexed by the peasant-soldier aristocrats.

In addition, the Macedonian emperors adopted more measures to support the "new military aristocracy" to fight against the "old military aristocracy", and the Plonian estate was established under this circumstance. Yes, that's right, the Plonian estate is not the fault of the Komnenos dynasty. In fact, it appeared as early as the tenth century. The emperor promoted some small nobles who were close to him (in fact, Komnenos himself was the leader of the new aristocracy), or sent some trusted tax inspectors to various parts of the empire to supervise farmland, forests, customs and markets, etc. In short, it was to ensure that "taxes can be sent to me in the imperial capital", provide military services when necessary, and weaken the power of the old Jinat nobles. Of course, in return, the emperor would give these "tax inspectors" a small tax commission, and would calculate the output of their supervised territories into a table file, namely praktika, to ensure the other party's commission income, but it could not be inherited. To put it bluntly, the Plonian landlords are not so much a military class as a combination of tax farmers and peasant soldiers. Therefore, when talking about the Pronian estate, it is too simplistic to say that the emperor changed his ways and established feudal fiefdoms or "Byzantine knight system" - in fact, it was just a replacement and development of the ancient peasant-soldier system. Even in the extremely declining Palaiologos dynasty, the Pronian estate also guaranteed that the emperor could recruit 500 heavy cavalry in the remaining territory of Asia Minor.

However, the military struggle situation of the Komnenos dynasty was always tense. The original Romana-style national order was never restored, and customs and trade rights were lost. In order to maintain an army, the Komnenos emperors could only further decentralize power and give the Pronians local taxation and judicial powers, allowing them to occupy manpower, land and privileges. The country changed from "empire form" to "dynasty form", that is, the emperor and the nobles divided the country, public office gradually became private, and blood ties were used to maintain ties.

But this does not mean that the Pronian estate is the culprit. The core problem is still the decline of the monarch's power and the loss of the country's territory and customs.