In early October, the royal touring party once again followed the familiar Danube River road, returning from Linz all the way to Vienna.
Along the way, Laszlo took the opportunity to inspect the production status of several castles and royal estates.
The autumn harvest had basically concluded, but the peasants were granted no leisure; they had to immediately throw themselves into sowing, planting wheat before winter arrived to await the next harvest season in June of the following year.
However, compared to their previous lives of hardship, most peasants were actually satisfied with their current existence.
Thanks to the Emperor's lenient policies, more and more serfs had redeemed their personal freedom through formal means, and the burdens upon them were greatly lightened as a result.
Of course, freedom did not mean they would leave the land where their families had lived for generations; on the contrary, most chose to stay in the villages and estates of their ancestors.
They no longer secured the right to use the land by selling themselves into slavery, but instead produced by renting the lord's land.
In a legal sense, they were now similar to freemen; in terms of receiving the Emperor's protection, they even held an advantage over communal villages composed of freemen.
Within the royal domains, circuit courts established by the Emperor visited frequently; if one suffered any oppression in daily life, they could appeal to the judge sent by the Emperor.
Though occasional accidents occurred, the judges representing the royal majesty generally maintained fairness, which prevented bailiffs and local officials from acting with impunity.
Not only in royal domains, but even in the lands of some nobles, the Emperor would dispatch bailiffs to inspect, ensuring that bottomless oppression did not occur everywhere.
The Emperor not only promulgated decrees protecting peasants in Hungary but also implemented the same policies in Austria; the new laws provided a basis for tenant farmers to defend their interests and strictly limited and regulated the oppression and exploitation of serfs.
Consequently, the Emperor received widespread support among the common people, while drawing considerable criticism among the nobility.
However, Laszlo compensated the nobles for their losses in other ways, thus largely maintaining the stability of the noble class.
As for the Church, its lands were controlled by a different system; Laszlo did not yet have the intention of making a move against Church properties, though the idea was very tempting.
Having completed this journey, Laszlo felt greatly gratified.
For years, he had exhausted his efforts to maintain peace within Austria proper, eliminating both external war disasters and completely ending internal noble feuds, ensuring an absolutely stable production environment for agriculture, handicrafts, mining, and commerce.
He could even say with pride that there was no country on the entire European continent more stable than Austria.
A stable environment promoted regional prosperity, and Laszlo provided even more momentum for Austria's development.
Under his vigorous promotion and with the support of Austria's rich mineral resources, iron farming tools and heavy plows were widely promoted in Austria; with the extensive use of oxen and plow horses, the production efficiency of the peasants increased significantly.
The three-field system, composting, and the planting of fodder legumes significantly increased farmland output, which incidentally drove the development of animal husbandry.
As Austrian scholars described it, the peasants were farming and harvesting like Romans—and this was meant seriously, as the Emperor's officials cited numerous ancient Roman works when explaining the origins of these farming techniques.
Similar methods were recorded in Cato's 'De Agri Cultura', the great poet Virgil's 'Eclogues', and the naturalist Pliny's 'Natural History'.
They did not know the principle of how the nitrogen-fixing properties of legumes added fertility to the soil, but ancient Roman farmers indeed understood how to utilize this very early on, whereas in the Middle Ages, similar methods had been almost forgotten.
These innovative technologies, cloaked in ancient Roman guise, were widely applied in royal estates and areas near markets, causing farmland output to generally rise by about thirty percent.
As for those remote regions, the peasants remained stuck in their old ways; getting them to accept new farming methods would still require a great deal of time.
Increased efficiency meant peasants could free up more time; after personal dependency was dissolved, peasants could be recruited or requisitioned by government officials during their spare time to participate in public works such as repairing roads and bridges, developing water conservancy, and building irrigation networks.
For peasants who were not serfs, this was a means of obtaining extra income; most of the time, the Emperor would also order large quantities of wine to be provided as a reward.
The benefits brought by the implementation of these public welfare projects would manifest in other aspects as well.
The cross-shaped trade routes connecting Austria's north, south, east, and west and converging in Vienna made Austrian commerce increasingly prosperous and turned Vienna into a true Central European hub.
The development of commerce made the circulation of agricultural and handicraft goods more frequent, and currency circulation and the commodity economy grew stronger; nobles, including the Emperor, began to shift toward collecting monetary land rents.
Over the years, Laszlo had continuously established more than thirty new markets in Austria through charters; combined with those that already existed, the number of markets reached over a hundred.
These markets flourished with commerce and developed into regional commodity trading networks; peasants and local nobles alike obtained the goods they needed here and exchanged their accumulated agricultural products for currency.
Those nobles who followed the trend chose to emulate the Emperor, renting out their land and investing the collected rents into fields like workshops, trade, and mining, even forming the prototype of 'capitalized nobility'.
Of course, more conservatives still chose to cling to their land; currently, the market and climate were stable, so no problems were apparent, but with the further development of cities and commerce, their economic strength was destined to decline gradually, eventually losing their current wealth and status due to poor circulation.
This trend had appeared in England decades ago and later spread to the Netherlands and Northern France, bringing with it the decline of the manorial system and the collapse of serfdom.
This was the direction of development in Western Europe, but in Eastern Europe, the situation had undergone a fundamental reversal.
Due to traditional, economic, and political factors, a trend of 're-intensification of serfdom' appeared in countries like Poland, Lithuania, and Saxony.
Just recently, the Polish Sejm forced the King to sign a decree stipulating that serfs, if requested by the lord, must perform six days of labor service a week, directly surpassing medieval serfdom to reach a new peak in human history.
The generous treatment enjoyed by the Polish nobility directly made the neighboring Hungarian nobility weep with envy.
If not for the tyrannical Emperor Laszlo pressing down on them, they would have done the same to the serfs in their own territories long ago, perhaps even more ruthlessly than the Polish nobles.
Recently, petitions from within Hungary had suddenly surged; many hoped the Emperor could further expand the eastern slave trade or slightly relax the restrictions of the Decree for the Protection of Peasants, causing Laszlo a massive headache.
He was completely suffering an undeserved disaster.
While the trend of strengthening serfdom began across all of Eastern Europe, the countries he ruled—Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary—instead followed the path of Western European nations, developing commerce and basic industries in an attempt to dismantle the serf system at its root, which caused him to suffer much questioning.
However, Laszlo no longer cared about the attacks and slanders of those opponents.
With the rise of cities and the prosperity of commerce, the total wealth of the country increased; although the income brought by trade did not currently seem as exaggerated as the rapidly developing mining, agriculture, and handicraft production, it still made a significant contribution to the growth of national fiscal revenue.
In Austria, the foundation of the feudal lords was being gradually dismantled, which was exactly what Laszlo hoped to see.
Although these policies could not yet be implemented in Bohemia and Hungary for the time being, Laszlo would not give up on his goal.
If anyone wanted to reverse course within the territories he ruled like those Polish nobles, re-strengthening the privileges and power of local nobility to form de facto fragmentation, he would absolutely strike with a heavy fist.
Now, Austria's base was quite solid; the estates in various regions had established friendly cooperative relations with the Emperor, and unfriendly elements had basically been cleared away during past developments.
For the people, in this chaotic and dangerous era, maintaining the long-term peace and stability of the country had already earned Laszlo the support of most people.
The improvement in living conditions made many grassroots peasants firm supporters of the Emperor.
Even if this improvement only changed their situation from struggling on the brink of death to barely being able to support their families, that was already very satisfying.
Although Austria's light taxes and low levies were achieved by sucking blood from other vassal states and the Empire, the common people were unaware of this; in their perception, the Emperor was undoubtedly benevolent and just, which in fact was the goal Laszlo had always been pursuing.
Austria's stability filled Laszlo with confidence for the upcoming imperial reforms and made him determined to start the next step of integration.
Laszlo's ultimate goal was indeed to integrate the massive Holy Roman Empire, making the unruly princes obedient and at his beck and call, but the foundation for achieving this goal still depended on Austria.
If Austria were strong enough, those opponents within the Empire would not be able to stir up much trouble in the future, and ruling the eastern territories would become easier as a result.
Therefore, before establishing a Greater Germany, Laszlo first resolved to build a Greater Austria.
Specifically, he intended to take advantage of the period after establishing his authority in the Empire to quickly integrate the resources currently within his grasp—namely the State of Bohemia and the Duchy of Milan.
This was not a plan Laszlo decided on a whim, but the result of careful consideration.
Laszlo's ambition for Bohemia had existed ever since the annexation of Moravia, and his desire for Milan went without saying.
These were two wealthy and prosperous treasure troves; one was known as 'Central Europe's Little France', and the other was the heart of Northern Italy, their greatest commonality being their affluence.
The Bohemian region had been under the influence of Vienna since the Second Hussite War, practicing autonomy through local diets.
Previously, the three provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia were nominally under the jurisdiction of the Bohemian Royal Court Chancellery, an institution the Emperor had forcibly moved to Vienna and placed under the management of the Vienna Court Chancellery.
Later, Moravia was annexed by Austria, and Silesia established a border region to defend against Poland and manage the Piast dukes and the Poznań territory; the Bohemian Royal Court Chancellery was then abolished, and the Bohemian local diet became directly responsible to the central government in Vienna.
However, this was still not enough for Laszlo; the partitioning of Bohemia had been successful, and the next step was complete control.
The local diet, composed of nobles and clergy, controlled most of Bohemia's political and economic resources; they could freely negotiate and allocate local fiscal revenue and handle political affairs.
It was like a giant estate assembly, except that unlike the estate assemblies of the Austrian provinces, they held actual local power.
Pulling them into the Austrian system was not actually that difficult, but it would inevitably meet with fierce opposition from local power brokers.
In the Duchy of Milan, the situation was very similar; the Governor relied on cooperation with the local council to rule, and most revenue actually remained in Milan, with Vienna only receiving some tribute.
Although Milan and Bohemia always kept pace with Austria in diplomacy and military matters—unlike the naturally treacherous Hungary, which didn't care about conflicts in the west—this largely prevented the Emperor and the Vienna government from fully utilizing the enormous advantages brought by the economic strength of the two regions.
Thus, not long after returning to Vienna, Laszlo began discussing with the ministers of the Austrian Privy Council about pushing government reforms in Bohemia and Milan to incorporate them into the Austrian ruling system.
Meanwhile, the imperial documents Laszlo issued in Regensburg began to spread inside and outside the Empire; the Emperor's protection of Dithmarschen won the favor of many imperial estates.
Even the Hanseatic League cities, which had once been angry with the Emperor for openly shielding Cologne, now held a different view of him.
King Christian I of Denmark was furious upon hearing the Emperor's decision; he even wrote a letter questioning the Emperor on why he was so stingy.
Back then, he had spent a full fifty thousand florins to buy the title of Holstein, yet now the Emperor was unwilling to give him even a piece of rotten land.
Laszlo's reply was also concise: if one wants to encroach upon the Empire's land, one must be prepared to face the Emperor's wrath.
Faced with this blatant threat, Christian did not directly back down or yield.
He did not believe the Emperor would lead a grand army to find trouble with him over a tiny piece of rotten land in the remote northern border.
Just as Christian was preparing his troops for war, an encyclical from the Emperor and the Pope was delivered to the Danish court.
The Emperor declared Dithmarschen to be a fief of the Archbishop of Bremen; anyone who dared to launch an attack on the territory would be regarded as an enemy of the Empire and the Church, subjected to the punishment of the Imperial Ban, and placed under excommunication.
Considering that the Kalmar Union was inherently unstable, if he suffered a double ban, a wave of rebellion would surely break out in Sweden; Christian ultimately chose to dejectedly disband his army, pretending as if none of this had ever happened.
An international crisis, which could have been large or small, was thus quietly resolved, and for a time, the Emperor's prestige was widely praised inside and outside the Empire.