customs clearance base

Chapter 1629 The First Battle (5)

Seeing that all the recalcitrant knights had put down their weapons, Zhao Hu began to command his soldiers to clean up the battlefield. The dozen or so valuable tents made of sheepskin were all collected by Zhao Hu. I don't know what the harvest is, but the dozen or so tents and the full body armor of the knights alone are not a small income.

Although the Marquis Cato was not captured alive this time, he was not allowed to run away. The corpse is a lot of money. If the successor of the Cato family wants to inherit the position of Patriarch in a legitimate way, he must spend a lot of money to redeem the body of the old Marquis. go back.

While Zhao Hu was happily directing the soldiers to clean the battlefield, his cheap father-in-law, Lord Liu Ming, dressed in a tattered mail, ran out of the castle with a dozen servants, his face full of grievances. Holding Zhao Hu in his arms, weeping and howling, this made Zhao Hu, who was still cleaning up the battlefield, cursed angrily: "I was fighting bloody battles in front, but you are negotiating with the enemy here. If you can't give me a reasonable explanation, I will send someone to Take back your territory!"

"Take back the territory? Okay, okay, I don't want to stay in this ruined place for a long time, you can take back my territory, I will be a knight under your command, it is better than staying here to bear the revenge of the Kestor family !"

Contrary to Zhao Hu's expectations, Lord Liu Ming not only did not have the slightest fear when he heard that the territory would be taken back, but showed joy on his face.

"My lord, to take back the territory of an independent lord, you must give title and land compensation!" Seeing his lord's inexplicable dull face, the adjutant Starn came over with an embarrassed expression, and explained in a low voice in Zhao Hu's ear .

"According to the imperial decree, to annex the territory of an independent lord, the lord must be given certain property and land compensation in order to continue the blood of the lord." Instead of rebelling against the emperor, the blood of nobles can always last for a long time, and many knights themselves are descendants of previous lords.

This time Lord Liu Ming not only pretended to be a robber to rob the caravan of the Cato family, but also colluded with the Falcon family to ambush the Marquis Cato, resulting in the death of the Marquis Cato. It is a dead end.

The vengeance and anger of a Marquis family is not something that a small lord like himself can bear. Now that his caring son-in-law is willing to take back his territory, of course, Lord Liu Ming is ecstatic.

Take it back, take it back, fortunately, my cheap father-in-law only has three villages, Zhao Hu secretly sighed, the original owner of this body seems to be really autistic, and he doesn't even know a lot of popular knowledge.

"If possible, I would like to meet my two fiancées!"

Zhao Hu sat down in the hall of Lord Liu Ming's castle. The two sides had just negotiated the related matters of taking back the territory. Zhao Hu assigned two villages to Lord Liu Ming from a dozen villages near his castle in exchange for Lord Liu Ming's three villages.

"Of course, but my two daughters are still learning aristocratic etiquette from Mrs. Wei Na in the Dream Castle. I'm afraid they won't be able to come back until the fall of next year. At that time, I will definitely bring them to meet the adults. They will be 13 years old next year. Then the wedding can be held." Lord Liu Ming picked up the village title deed from the table and handed it to Adjutant Starn with a pleased face.

"13 years old!" The age Lord Liu Ming uttered shocked Zhao Hu who was sitting on the main seat in the hall. After a long time, his fiancée and sisters were still two 13-year-old girls.

"No rush! No rush! Now that we've settled the deal, I'll lead the army back first." Zhao Hu stood up from the chief seat in embarrassment. Regardless of whether the pair of sisters are beautiful or not, Zhao Hu is not evil enough to destroy them. The point of the little girl.

"My lord, a total of 130 ordinary soldiers were killed in this battle, 17 knights were captured, a total of 780 gold coins were received as ransom, and [-] villages were allocated, with a population of [-]..."

Starn respectfully handed Zhao Hu a stack of thick data sheets and the village head forms. Starn knew that the battle in Lord Liu Ming's territory not long ago made his lord a small fortune.

In order to redeem the body of the unlucky Marquis Cato and the captured squadron of family knights, the Cato family paid another [-] gold coins and had to carve off [-] neighboring villages to redeem all the captives.

Except for the knight with the red feather fluttering on his head, because he is Marquis Cato's guard captain Stu Iron Shield Knight. As a retinue guard without territory.

Zhao Hu admired the loyalty and commanding ability of the knight captain Stu. If this Stu hadn't organized the panicked knights to resist tenaciously, perhaps these knights would have been defeated long ago.

Zhao Hu forced him to stay in the castle on the grounds that there was no ransom.

Because Marquis Cato met the Falcon family invited by Lord Liu Ming to help fight bandits when he invaded Lord Liu Ming's territory, and died in a heroic duel.

According to the tradition of imperial knights, this is a battle between two noble and heroic knights. It is a fair and sacred battle, and it is a story worth mentioning. Therefore, the Cato family attacked the Falcon family. It is impossible to pursue the incident, unless the Cato family is willing to admit that their lord was thrown from the horse and fell to death by himself when he was suddenly attacked. This will make the disgraced Cato family completely become a noble laughing stock.

"I only earned [-] gold coins after doing so many things. It seems that if you want to make a fortune, you still have to find a way from your own territory!" Zhao Hu briefly looked at the report submitted by Starn. Although the battle was rewarding, it was also very expensive.

Due to the bounty marked before the battle, these two battles consumed nearly [-] gold coins of his bounty, and these peasants who participated in the battle kept running away after returning to the territory. With a lot of money, Who would want to stay in the castle and work their lives foolishly, and they all tried their best to run to their homes. In the end, the [-] peasant soldiers ran away and only [-] people remained.

The hunters also retreated to the mountains for the winter under the leadership of the leader. Although the leader of the hunters promised that the hunters would come back as soon as he received his call-up order, these circumstances, which he had never considered before, made Zhao Hu feel bad about his "government with money". The idea of ​​"army" has been questioned. Is it necessary to have knights to truly form a standing army?
After thinking hard with his head covered for three days, Zhao Hu promulgated his own new policy "land reward system" in his territory.

"All the soldiers who participated in ten battles with the lord will be automatically promoted to elite soldiers and transferred to the castle to serve as the lord's guard. The lord will allocate a piece of the richest land near his castle as a reward for him.

All the soldiers who have hunted the enemy's head and accumulated more than three in the battle will automatically become the leader and will serve as the three commanders in the army. The head of the people will have the right to share one percent of the spoils after the war,,,,, "

"Money is the driving force of people's desires, and land is the foundation of retaining talents!"

This is the conclusion Zhao Hu came to after thinking hard for a few days.

In this world with underdeveloped productivity, most of the farmers gather in villages, while in other places there are often large tracts of wasteland left over, especially for this "bare commander" who doesn't even have a single entrusted knight under his command. "The poor are left with land.

Zhao Hu deliberately allocated a piece of land beside the river outside his castle as the garrison and production of his castle's garrison.

I am not rich, and it is impossible to always keep a large number of soldiers in the castle. It is better to set aside land for them to cultivate by themselves. They only need to hand over a very small amount of food. They serve as soldiers in wartime and civilians in peacetime. Military training after dinner.

This system of cultivating in the morning and training in the afternoon can not only allow the soldiers to support themselves, but also maintain a well-trained army for themselves, and can also drive business in the surrounding area. Afterwards, the knights led them back to their own territory.

The new policy promulgated by the lord shocked the farmers in the farms in the territory. Accepting the land rewarded by the lord has always been the privilege of the knight lord. spoils of battle,
Farming in the garrison camp outside the castle requires only a small amount of food, which makes many poor farmers feel that they have seen heaven. It is the lifelong dream of these extremely poor farmers to have enough food.

With the free publicity of the peasant soldiers who fled back, the peasants in the territory know that their lord is the most generous person in the empire, and now this good reputation is even more resounding. Everyone knows that their lord is a generous and talkative man. A man of words.

However, only ten days after the announcement was posted, more than 300 peasant households gathered outside the castle to ask to join the army.

This startled Zhao Hu, who was not yet mentally prepared. Even in the heyday of the Falcon family, a thousand soldiers could only make do with an army of 100, including more than [-] knights.

(End of this chapter)