At the end of the Tang Dynasty, it was a feudal town, but in Western Europe

Most of the remaining Zhongshu Division is composed of scholars and Kongmu officials from the original Jingnan Army. There are eight people in total, and they are only in their early ten with three attendant monks.

If these people are not counted as archers, there are more than 20 small officials in total. Feng Sen's salary is three buckets of white flour and half a piece of cloth every month.

In fact, this salary is quite low, it can be said that it is just food and clothing. However, in addition to salary, the soldiers of the Jingnan Army and Kongmu officers in these departments also have benefits belonging to the dental soldiers, while the attendant monks are under Feng Sen's proposal. I advocate frugality, so this salary is basically acceptable.

At the beginning, Feng Sen planned to set up a taxation department, but after thinking about it, he decided not to force the local Saxons too hard, and don't run to vote for Widukind.

Therefore, at present, the main task of these three divisions is to work together to ensure that the registered households are well organized.

Feng Sen's registered household, Qimin, only counts the population of two parts. The first is the population of the bannermen and the coats, including the Saxons and Franks who raised the village to throw the flag. The second is the population of the free people, who are the main force in the battle. .

Of course, for a rudimentary department like the Third Division, it is still too difficult to count all the adults and children. Some people can't even tell their own names, let alone their relatives.

Therefore, Feng Sen's request is only to count the information of all adult men, while the other people's statistics are to be counted by each of the hundred households.

After nearly two weeks of statistical work, the preliminary results have been presented by Wang Sima.

"In Hamburg so far, there are more than 510 Frankish free citizens, including about 100 young and middle-aged people. Among the Saxon free people, there are a total of 150 people living near Hamburg, and about 20 young and middle-aged people. It is estimated that those who live in rural areas should be More than [-] households.

There are two hundred households in the Frank Banner, about 90 bannermen, all of whom are young and strong, and more than 420 people, including about 90 young and middle-aged people.

Saxon Banner has a total of five hundred households, about 220 banner people, all of whom are young and strong, including 57 rural soldiers, about 20 people in the coat, and about 300 young and strong. "

"So that means there are still at least 1 Saxon tribes who have not joined the Bannermen or entered the control system of Hamburg?" Feng Sen flipped through the household registration book in his hand and asked, "Where are most of these Saxons?"

"No, among the three thousand families of Saxon tribesmen, apart from the bannermen, there are about a thousand tribesmen who expressed their goodwill and loyalty to us. Most of these tribesmen live on both sides of the Elbe River Fishing for a living, the last time the Vikings did them a bad job."

Wang Sima took out a piece of rough papyrus from under the table. Due to the humid air in Western Europe, the ink on the papyrus had begun to smudge.

"So, most of the people who submit to us are the tribesmen of the Stormarn tribe, but the Dietmarschen tribe and the Schleswig tribe don't obey us?" Feng Sen put his head on the papyrus and carefully read the handwriting on the paper.

Wang Sima reluctantly took the papyrus: "Compared to the Stormarn tribe, the Dietmarschen tribe and the Holstein tribe are both large tribes across the Jutland Peninsula, and these tribes in Hamburg are basically members of these two tribes, and most of the sources of troops for Widukind's uprising also came from the support of these two tribes."

"This is a little troublesome." Feng Sen sat down on the chair, feeling worried, "I originally wanted to mobilize the army to capture them all as coats, but now it's a bit difficult."

Feng Sen was not afraid of what happened to those two tribes, but he was afraid that his actions would disturb Vidukind's sensitive nerves. Now is a good time to take advantage of the opportunity of Vidukind's war with Charlemagne to develop.

Although it doesn't sound very good to make war fortune, it is indeed one of the best ways to grab benefits.

Feng Sen can sell high-quality and cheap rattan armor and rattan brands, conveniently preserved soybean sauce and soy sauce, even bows and arrows and salted fish as dry food. There is no need for war. Feng Sen’s rattan armor and rattan brands may not be sold after five years in the warehouse out.

"Why don't we send people from the Saxon flag or the Frankish flag to catch them alive." After thinking for a long time, Feng Sen's eyes lit up, "Let's send people to their territory and pretend to be slave traders to catch people. I didn't hear that before. Did you go to a few hundred households and say that the amount of coating under your hands is not enough? Is this person coming soon?"

"However, if you just capture someone, can you support them?"

"That's a problem. Let them eat acorn noodles. If they die from constipation, it's bad luck."

Acorn noodles are ground acorns into powder, fried and mixed with flour. Although the risk of death from constipation is greatly reduced, the reduction does not mean no, especially if you eat a lot in a day.

Feng Sen is short of manpower. In the next Hamburg development plan, a very important item is to lay bridges and roads.

It is an unchanging truth that if you want to get rich, build roads first. Feng Sen’s future plan for Hamburg is a cargo distribution center. Through the port of Hamburg, goods from the East can go to the North Sea and the Atlantic coast, and wine and handicrafts from the North Sea and Frank can also be transported. Followed by Byzantium, Khazar Khanate and Bulgaria.

In the process of building bridges and paving roads, the most important part is human hard labor. Grabbing people from the two major tribes to work, firstly, it did not harm the local people's strength, secondly, it freed up enough land, and thirdly, it only took care of food. salary.

Just like this, the money earned from selling rattan armor just now will be thrown into it again.

Lack of money, very short of money.

Thinking about it in his mind, Feng Sen pushed open the door of Jiang Fu Er's entrance to the compound. As soon as he entered, Feng Sen smelled a seductive fragrance.

Under the tree in the second courtyard of Feng Mansion, there was a small table. On the table was a small stove. The coke in the stove was emitting heat that distorted the air.

A few wooden sticks were placed above the stove, and barbecued meat was skewered on the wooden sticks. The transparent oil and water fell on the charcoal and made a sizzling sound.

Ador and Lyudmila had flushed faces, each holding a glass of amber ale, with a look of panic at being caught, and Ador even secretly hid the ale behind his back.

"What are you drinking?" Feng Sen quickly snatched the glass from Ador's hand, "Children are not allowed to drink."

"Woo." Ador put his hands high, let out a mournful cry, and tried to reach the cup in Feng Sen's hand.

Feng Sen hadn't finished snatching Ador's glass, he knocked on Lyudmila's head and took away the wine glass in her hand.

Seeing Liudmila's surprised and confused expression with a trace of anger, Feng Sen said seriously: "You are still injured, and you are still drinking. Be careful that your injury gets worse."

"It's okay." Ador leaned on Feng Sen's waist angrily, and stretched out his hand. "This is the water that flows out after the malt has been left for a long time, and it is different from the church's ale. Our wort is filled with hops. After drinking it, there is no hot or urging effect."

"How can you say, say this to a grown man?"

"What's the matter, normally the nanny won't let me talk about it, but now that there is no nanny, I can't say more."

Hops?Feng Sen ignored their quarrel and fell into deep thought while looking at the foam in the wine glass. He seemed to have thought of something, and a vague inspiration in his mind scratched his heart.

"Ah! I thought of it!"

Chapter 91 Hops and Mead

In the era of Charlemagne, two kinds of wine were extremely popular, one was wine from ancient Roman grape plantations, and the other was malt wine.

In the "milk and mead" in the slogan of the Viking warriors, mead is not a wine with honey, but a wine brewed from malt.

So why do Viking savages think ale is mead?The reason is simple. The brewing technology of this era is not good. When using malt to brew malt wine, it contains a lot of unfermented sugar, so that the malt wine is very sweet and greasy, even to the point where it cannot be tasted.

Therefore, in order to suppress this sweet and greasy taste, people began to add various herbs to malt wine to neutralize the sweet taste, thus beer was born.

These herbs include yarrow, rosemary and even star anise, as well as some auxiliary materials, just like drinking tea in the Central Plains at this time, a large amount of auxiliary materials should be added.

The church holds the recipe for brewing beer that can be eaten, and they sell the prepared herbal malt wine, which is the original Groot beer.

Although Groot beer can also remove the sweet and fishy smell in the wine, it also has a side effect, that is, when the priests prepare the beer, they will add bayberry, yarrow and other herbs with hallucinogens and aphrodisiac effects to the beer.

Although the Groot beer prepared in this way is not high, it is very easy to get drunk, and some Groot beer can even be used as an aphrodisiac.

Feng Sen was originally thinking about refining alcohol and other crops to make wine, but he ran on the wrong track. He completely forgot the existence of beer. At this time, beer in the general sense of the future has not yet come out. This is the most profitable wine industry.

And Groot beer has become the general meaning of beer in the modern population, and its key prop is hops, and the title of hops in Chinese herbal medicine is hops.

"How did you know you were going to add hops to the malt wine?" Feng Sen put down the wine glass in his hand, and asked Ador happily, hugging him.

Being held up by Feng Sen, Ador was a little dazed, and replied subconsciously: "Sister Lyudmila told me."

"The malt wine was so sweet that it was bitter, so I randomly picked a few bitter grasses and soaked it in it." Lyudmila was taken aback by Feng Sen's sudden action.

"Then Hamburg Brewery will count as your 5% dry stock." Feng Sen held Ador in his right hand, and patted Lyudmila's head with his left hand, "After all, you've 'invented' hops."

Putting down Ador, Feng Sen sat at the table together, pushed back two glasses of beer, took a wooden skewer from the stove, and took a bite: "Today I encountered a happy event , I’ll let you indulge yourself, but only for one cup.”

Lyudmila first took a sip of wine as if in shock, and then quickly asked: "Oh, by the way, Your Excellency the Count, do you know the situation of Eupolite?"

Feng Sen shook his head: "The Veleti and Vidukind's rebels have cut off the road to Oupolit, and now we can't get any news about Oupolit."

Lyudmila's expectant eyes turned dark for a moment.

"Don't be discouraged, I will send messengers to the direction of Eupolit every once in a while, and I will notify you as soon as I find any news."

Feng Sen remembered the existence of hops brewing beer, and immediately arranged for the free craftsmen in the brewing workshop to start making beer the next day.

Of course, Feng Sen doesn't know exactly how later generations applied hops to beer brewing, but he has time and hands to try, and based on his scientific knowledge in his previous life, he can at least give a suitable methodology, such as multiple groups of controlled experiments and control variables.

Through the basic logical ability and scientific thinking brought by later generations, at least the efficiency of exploring beer recipes can be more than doubled.

Feng Sen was busy working in the brewery, and Chen Chongyi's plan to renovate the wooden bridge continued.

Chen Chongyi first spent three full days measuring various parameters and local conditions, and then asked Feng Sen to transfer 100 men and five Viking longships.

After measuring and finding that the water flow was not turbulent and the depth was not deep, Chen Chongyi ordered those coats to carry corrosion-resistant fir trees to stand on the bridge. When they reached a bridge pier, they tied two boats to the original pier and clamped the wooden pile.

A few strong ones stood on the bridge and nailed the wooden stakes into the riverbed about half a zhang. These fir stakes were cut into cuboids with sharpened ends, and inserted into the riverbed to form a barrel shape. The top surface was slightly shorter than The deck of the original wooden bridge.

Then put stones, mud bricks and aquatic plants into the bucket, and then continue to put stones in the periphery to prevent the wooden pile from tilting under the impact of the water flow.

In this way, a bridge pier was made. Thick wooden boards were placed on the bridge pier, which were fastened with mortise and tenon joints, and fish-maw glue was glued on.

Chen Chongyi nailed a pier on the left, right and middle of the original gable pier, then removed the original gable pier and the guardrails on both sides, and widened the bridge deck by more than one meter on both sides on the basis of the original bridge deck.

Since the new piers are more stable and have higher load-bearing capacity, the pressure brought by the widening area is not enough. Most importantly, this method hardly affects the traffic. The three-day traffic period is used to drive piles, and then one day is banned for half a day. Used to resurface bridge decks.

Moreover, because the new bridge piers are stronger, triangular mortise-jointed bucket arches are used, and the original three-meter bridge piers can be directly converted into the current five-meter bridge piers.

A total of nine piers are needed for a length of 20 meters, and Chen Chongyi's construction speed is basically stable at one per day. The only thing that can restrict his speed is the speed of cutting trees and transporting stones.

There are only about 20 people building bridges on the river, and hard labor for logistics cooking, cutting trees and moving stones accounts for [-]% of the total number of people.

But the large rocks near Hamburg suffered a disaster. Every day, people would set fires around them, pour cold water on them, and repeat this several times until cracks appeared on the rocks. Knock down and push the wheelbarrow to the river bank.

At the beginning, these wrappers were not so active. Everyone was lazy, and they looked like they were not smoking or moving. Chen Chongyi was used to it, but Feng Sen was not used to it, so he issued a new order:

This time, those who are judged as the top can accumulate one merit, those who are judged as the middle will accumulate half of the merit, and those who are judged as the low will have no merit. However, those who have accumulated five merits can only raise the flag if they can speak [-] more Chinese.

Only then did the coaters have the enthusiasm they have now.

When they sorted out the bridge-building process and mastered all the steps, the entire bridge-building work seemed to press the fast-forward button.

On the last day of June, a brand new wooden bridge spanned the Alster River, also 20 meters in length and [-] meters in width.

On the day when the new bridge was opened, Feng Sen immediately called two bullock carts, and everyone stood on both sides of the bank, watching the bullock carts loaded with goods pass the wooden bridge steadily, and there was a burst of applause from the crowd immediately.

Feng Sen nodded with satisfaction, and he smiled and looked at Chen Chongyi: "Chen Sicheng, there is a group discussion among the three divisions tonight, so you can come too."

Chapter 92 Group discussion

In the small courtyard of the general's mansion, Si Cheng of the Fourth Division and school officials of all levels in the army entered the arena one after another. Finally, Feng Sen, who was dressed in a crisp cloth robe, walked out of the room and sat on the main seat.

When Feng Sen sat down, the courtyard immediately fell silent, and the whispering stopped immediately.

Feng Sen took out a few pieces of wood, which were tied together with ropes: "This is the front-line battle report sent by the nearby Frankish priest, but it's all in Latin. I translated it into Chinese. Listen to it."

Feng Sen convened this group meeting, in addition to being a once-a-month practice, it also meant to inform them of the latest news.

"The great army of Widukind parted ways with the Frisians near Dannenberg, and an army of nearly five thousand Frisians returned home to defend against the levies raised by Astolfos.

The chief of the Frisians was named Elard, who had already claimed king around East Frisia.

However, Vidukind's troops snowballed from the original 5000 to 1. The nearby Saxon tribes rarely let go of their past grievances and united to support Vidukind's army.

With the help of the Veleti, the Sorbs have already begun to plunder around Magdeburg. The Sorbs have not yet found a group of Borian clans from where they have come to attack the horses. Goldberg.

The Saxon tribes near Dessau also responded to Widukind's call, and they rose up in late June and marched from Dessau to Magdeburg..."

Feng Sen flipped the piece of wood and reported the information above one by one, and finally he sighed: "The situation here is not optimistic for Frank."

"At this moment, what is King Charles doing?" Wang Sima asked with his head on the side.

"King Charles tried to attack Detmold five days ago, but he was short of troops at that time. After cutting down part of the forest and clearing a flat area that can be walked, he was driven away by Vidukind's reinforcements. The two sides are currently facing each other near Detmold."

Feng Sen cleared his throat: "Detmold is the most important and prosperous city of the Saxons, its status is like that of Chang'an to Guanzhong, and Guanzhong is to the world.

This is the situation today, when do you think we should send troops to help Charlemagne? "

Zhenhui shook his head and said: "Don't worry, the land of Charlemagne is five times that of Saxony, and the people of Charlemagne are ten times that of Saxony. Victory for Charlemagne."

"But what I want is not the victory of Vidukind or Charlemagne. What I want is that Charlemagne temporarily withdraw from Saxony, but Vidukind cannot fully unify all the Saxon tribes. This is the most important thing." Feng Sen touched his chin and said.

"How many soldiers are there in Vidukind? What banners? How to organize the team?" Wang Sima asked suddenly.

"I don't know." Feng Sen was silent for a while, "But I heard some news from those merchants. The current hardcore crowd of Vidukind is a few tribes in Anglia and northern East Faria, such as Hor Stein, such as Dietmarschen.

You reminded me that it is not a good momentum to just focus on the inside. In this way, Vice Minister Zhenhui, you go to pick twenty loyal and smart people from the bannermen or the coats, and find a hundred households and a few young soldiers to lead them. A caravan, pretending to be a caravan, went to Vidukind and secretly delivered news to us.

Well, it's best to train first. After you have selected the manpower, please come and let me know, and I will train myself. "

"Here."

"Since we don't know the internal situation of Vidukind at present, at least we know that Vidukind is not monolithic." Zhenhui flipped through the stack of wood chips, "Whether it is the tribes of Dessau or Göttingen, they did not obey the Vidukind. What Dukind means, I think this may be an opportunity."

In Saxon society, there is no such title as duke or supreme ruler. The whole of Saxony is determined by a kind of primitive democratic Maklo conference.

Only in times of war, they will elect several highly respected lords, and these highly respected lords will draw lots to determine the leadership, and Vidukind's father Theodoric (the same name as Count Theoderic) is just The last war chief who was drawn by lottery.

Therefore, the tribes and subjects in Vidukind's original territory are still willing to follow his call, while the Saxons who are far away may only be inspired by his heroic deeds, but this does not mean that they can obey the command of Vidukind alone. , a command from one person.

"You mean, we want to support a tribe that can fight Vidukind?"

"Yes, but this tribe must be obedient. I'll look for it before we decide." Feng Sen stood up and paced back and forth in front of the table a few steps, "Let's strengthen those weak tribes first, for example, when selling beer, rattan armor, bows and arrows to the Saxons, we can charge high prices for strong tribes and low prices for weak tribes, or even try them out for free.

I suggest that it is best to form a few caravans and go to territories other than Hamburg to trade with the locals. We will slowly control their economy first, and then we will slowly map it. "

"Who will do this?"

"Well, Wang Sima, I'll trouble you to handle it."

After arranging these tasks, Feng Sen started the second part of the group discussion, coordinating the construction of the territory.

"First, first, the construction of the stone mill is in charge of Orion. He didn't come today, but he has already reported it before, so let me relay it.