"No, Colonel, we will stick to our arrangement."
"Shall I give Essens the order?"
"If you please, and, Colonel, there may be some officers under you who deserve promotion. Send me in their names, and it shall be seen to, for I have no doubt that there will be vacancies before long in my Guards."
"It shall be done, your Majesty."
CHAPTER IX
The next few weeks were terrible ones for me; days full of anxiety, hard work, and ceremonial. I discovered that a King needs the strength of two men, physically and mentally, in the first few weeks of his reign.
I had dismissed a great number of officials appointed by my predecessor, for they were incompetent men, owing their positions to rank favouritism; and for some time Rudarlia was governed by a provisional Cabinet, composed of the great men of the state.
The hopeless confusion into which Ivan had plunged the finances of the country was appalling.
There had been complete destruction of many valuable assets of wealth, but chiefly the mischief had been done to agriculture, upon which a great part of the population depended. Taxes had been heaped upon the people; first in the shape of a land tax, which had grown into a ridiculous size; secondly the market tax, a peculiar piece of villainy, since it mulcted both the buyer and the seller. Ivan, evidently, could not be just, even in his injustice, for the poor man, with perhaps a goat for sale, had to pay as much as the large farmer selling whole herds of cattle.
One of my first acts was to abolish this iniquitous imposition altogether; and a very small annual payment for market dues was charged instead.