Chapter 1050 Ustiluga and the establishment of the river route
Now, what appears in front of Rurik is a small bay.
The weather is good today, and the outline of the bay is particularly clear under the clear air.
For everyone who has been marching for many days, the groping progress in the forest and riverside has finally come to an end. We are indeed facing the sea, and you can feel the faint salty taste just by tasting the water.
It was getting late, so the army immediately set up camp at the bay.
Two groups of cavalry were sent out by Rurik to explore the surrounding situation. He hoped to encounter other Russian fishermen and also hoped that the cavalry would find other good things.
The only long boat was immediately arranged to the bay. This time, Karl Brand's team was ordered to light the torch beside the boat at night in order to attract the herring to gather, so as to take the opportunity to raise the buried desire. Maybe.
Fishing at night can yield big harvests. Even if you catch few fish, you can add extra food to the army tomorrow.
Rurik gave orders in the camp, and the team accepted the orders without any complaints. Such strong decision-making power and execution ability of the army really stunned the five travelers from Pskov.
Since it is in the river mouth area, the camp is completely on the east bank of the river. This is a deliberate move, just to be able to smoothly move along the south bank of the bay to the southern area of Fort New Rose. The cavalry sent out cannot go and explore the other bank.
They rode horses to survey the coastline and ventured along creek runs deep into the woodlands.
A large number of bonfires were lit on the beach. All the dismounted warriors, some watched over the horses, and most brought tools to cut wood on the spot.
It's summer, and almost all Nordic red pine trees are exuding rosin spontaneously. The trees with more rosin are more flammable. Although the smell of such firewood is too choking, they are the only ones who can quickly ignite it now.
Wet firewood was piled together, and after the fire was completed, the iron pot was set up and began to cook oats.
Even now, the army's supplies are still sufficient, and the soldiers sitting on the ground are waiting for meals with their own tableware.
They heard the sound of waves and waves, and faced the breeze from the ocean.
The sun is getting dimmer, and dinner is almost ready.
Rurik held a silver bowl and dug out cooked oats with a wooden spoon to eat. All the generals ate exactly the same food, but the difference was that they mostly used cheap wooden bowls.
He especially sat with his cronies, and even slightly alienated his wives, concubines, and sons.
When men get together to talk, they often talk about big things.
A big hand pointed at the ocean: "We need to build a village here and then build a pier. I have decided! It must be built."
There was no objection from the cronies, but their silence was arousing suspicion.
"How? Is there any of you who is confused? Brody, tell me."
"Me? I don't understand."
"So you support it?"
What can Brody say? As a new cavalry general, he can only say: "I will do whatever the king orders me to do. Since it is appropriate to build a new village, I will support it."
"It's the same as what I didn't say..." Rurik muttered, then thought about it and concluded that there was no need to discuss this matter anymore. "Then we will set up another earldom. I will then confer a noble on a surprise attack."
Upon hearing the canonization, several close friends immediately raised their chests.
"Haha, are you excited now? You are indeed still interested in the canonization." Rurik glanced at them, and saw his raised chin sinking instantly, and then said: "Don't think too much, it has nothing to do with you."
Rurik had already made a decision on what to do. The so-called expedition was led by two people. Karl should not just be given an advantage, but Brand should also be rewarded.
Rurik chatted with his cronies about other things, especially what to do after entering the capital. The so-called cavalry must pass through the city in a swagger, especially through the "valhalla on earth" in the public cemetery. The cemetery is in the south of the capital, from the heroic spirit
Passing by the tomb has great symbolic meaning.
Now that the sun has finally set, the soldiers who have eaten are lying in a mess. Now that it is summer, there is no need to worry about catching cold while sleeping in the open air with clothes on. Some soldiers are already sleeping soundly around the campfire.
After finishing their chat, Rurik finally had time to spend time with his wives and concubines. He had no intention of getting involved in the chatter between women, but teasing his prince Osborne was a good thing.
It is embarrassing to say that Osborne is obviously the prince, but as a father, he seriously lacks the opportunity to get along with him. The little boy longs for his father, so now give him the opportunity to play with him.
As a man with a large number of children, Rurik certainly cannot distribute his father's love equally to everyone.
He naturally has his own priorities. For his first child, the eldest daughter Velika, who is also the only daughter at present, the father's love is naturally deeper. Now he is going to the capital to get along well with the eldest daughter, and then let her cooperate with the prince's younger brother.
Living for a while will be very beneficial to Rose's future.
However, what should have been an absolutely peaceful night turned out to be a little more turbulent.
Everyone knows that it is easy to dig amber in the coastal areas of the Baltic Sea. Even the young soldiers of the Second Cavalry have heard what their parents said. Now it is difficult to get to the beach. Some of them are gearing up and carrying small shovels to dig into the sand and gravel.
beach trying to dig.
Not to mention, there were indeed large particles dug out.
The man who dug up something excitedly ran to the campfire and saw through the dim light what he had dug up.
Some of the dug stones look like ordinary pebbles, some are quite turbid despite being obviously reflective, and some are very crystal clear.
Only high-smooth mineralized resin is amber, and turbid ones are beeswax. Unpolished amber raw stones are rough, and polishing them is not a problem now.
Because the paper is brushed with rosin and then sifted with some iron sand powder or stone powder, the sandpaper is completed. Such a useful thing is produced in conjunction with papermaking. At the state-owned blacksmith shop located in the capital, craftsmen decisively used this cheap equipment to make steel.
The sword is given a final polish.
Polishing gemstones with sandpaper completely gave way to the techniques used to process gemstones in the past.
Amber can always be dug out at the seaside. This is also a traditional skill that Ross has had in the tribal era. However, they dig extensively on the beaches of their hometown and basically dig out all the shallow areas. In this way, they can only go deep inland.
Trying your luck to dig up the humus layer of the forest is not as efficient as before. The only way to try digging is to go to the newly explored beaches. Now is the opportunity.
However, as the technology for processing colored glass balls became more and more perfect, and more crystal-clear decorations became available, the huge profits of natural amber in the past dropped sharply. As a result, in the market of the Kingdom of Rus, the prices of amber and beeswax products dropped a lot, and they were as long as glass.
The products are made together into mixed jewelry. Because it takes a lot of time to carve amber, and to make glass into a god pendant, you only have to consider whether the mold is suitable.
After all, amber and beeswax are both precious stones, and the warriors who dug them kept them in their pockets for fun.
The night passed quickly, and in the early morning, the two fishing boats returned after completing a night of fishing.
As Rurik estimated, their harvest was neither huge nor mediocre. The catch was quite satisfactory, but in order to supply the army fairly, they could only cut one fish in half and divide it between two people.
As a ruler, Rurik can certainly choose a few more big ones to enjoy. It is better to let his wives and concubines enjoy the privileges, and just choose one and bake it himself.
New firewood was added to the slow-burning bonfire, and thin branches and fish pieces were inserted around the fire to surround the city.
Especially since the matter was so important, Rurik gathered together five men from Karl Brand's team, who was in a slightly depressed state, and announced his new decision to them.
He sat cross-legged on the beach, his golden ponytail fluttering in the sea breeze.
"I am fair. Carl, Brand, the expedition was organized by you two, and the longship is also your property. Carl, you were first made an earl for your meritorious service. And you, Brand, you should also be made an earl.
As an earl."
With this decision, Brand, who had spent the whole night fishing in disgrace, was excited on the spot and looked left and right in excitement.
After all, Carl's first earl status made Brand, who was also the organizer of the expedition, speechless. He was really jealous and it was hard to tell the king directly. To be fair, Carl was an excellent explorer along the way.
The leader of the team, especially, deserves most of the credit. But he can't get nothing if he sets out both men and boats.
He was as excited as a pug and uttered his words of thanks incoherently.
"Shut up first." Rurik raised his hand to indicate, and then said: "I will make you a count (war chief), and your fiefdom will be here."
"Here?" Brand, who was still so excited that he couldn't control his trembling limbs, calmed down and said, "There is nothing here except our temporary camp."
"No. There will be in the future! This is the mouth of the river. You want to build a town here. I think you should understand the significance of a town at the mouth of the river for the second route!"
Without any further explanation, Brand could realize its prospects. If he thought about it carefully, maybe his family's development would be better than that of his counterpart Karl.
Rurik's move was only to announce the birth of a new county, which required supporting villages and docks.
But what is extremely embarrassing is, who is willing to really immigrate here and become a subject of the Brand family? Counting that the Brand family are old Russians, most of the people in Russia also have their own industries. Unless they are migrating.
Allowing slaves to come over allowed Brand to actually exercise his power of rule. The key was that he couldn't do it. The original settlers were naturally only Brand's family, and the so-called earl had no title.
Even so, he is still an earl. Even if a earl canonized by the king only has one or two personal soldiers and retinues, he is really poor if he is poor, and his noble status cannot be doubted. "At worst, I will get some slaves from other places to be my subjects in the future.
” he thought.
Even the old Russians, as the top class of Russian society, enjoy a lot of social resources. After all, there are less than 80 small families from the old Russians, and all families know each other. In the new era, every family is having a large number of children.
The children and heads of households were almost all men, and they all followed the pattern of a main wife with multiple concubines. The children of slaves were also recognized as Russians, and the population of the old Russian family in Russia expanded rapidly.
The bastards all have a lot of social resources. Except for the top nobles, other old Russians need to achieve social promotion through meritorious service. Joining the army and serving in wars is a good choice, and joining the standing army is the best opportunity for this group of bastards.
There are many ways to achieve meritorious service, such as discovering a new waterway and greatly improving Ross's inland waterway transportation problem in one fell swoop.
Karl and Brand, these two families are absolutely qualified to become earls.
Anyway, their fiefdoms are in the border areas and unexplored areas controlled by Ross, so the canonization will not encounter any protest from the old Ross group. The two families have to work together for some years. They are opening up territory for Ross, and their contribution is indeed no less than that of the battlefield.
Killing enemies like hemp.
The two people have the same arrangement. The settlements they own are obliged to provide supply services to passing merchant ships. They can collect port berth taxes, but not tolls. Because the Reed River is a natural river, the Russians charge tolls to their own people.
This is outrageous, after all, the traditional Neva River-Volkhov River route is completely free.
Only the canal, after all, was built with official funding, so it is reasonable to charge tolls.
The new county was designated as arosareids, and in Slavic the prefix was changed to ustireids.
As a result, the Bland family owned this estuary area and a bay, and the current temporary camp of the cavalry could naturally be developed into a settlement.
History has entered a coincidence here, or it is a historical necessity.
The estuary of a river, and the estuary faces a nearly circular bay that overflows. This is really a natural haven and an exchange node for inland river trade and ocean trade. It would be a waste of geographical resources not to build a town.
At the mouth of the Luga River, immigrants first spontaneously established settlements. First, Danish immigrants took the lead in building villages here, and then captured Slavs and Finns from nearby areas as slaves. The population of village residents has always been very small, entirely because of the Luga River Basin.
It has never been well developed. After all, during the long historical period, the Neva River region was a place where Denmark, Sweden and Novgorod were at war with each other. As the hinterland of the Gulf of Finland, which was the front line of the war, there were far more military facilities than commercial facilities.
The town of Ust-Luga arose in the Luga Bay at the mouth of the Luga River.
A new era brings new possibilities. Since a large trading city was built in the Neva River Basin a thousand years in advance, it is also the capital of the Rus' country. The economic radiation brought by its prosperity is enough to significantly change the course of history.
Ust-Luga was replaced by Arosareze in Norse, which simply means the mouth of the Reed River.
"The mouth of the sea" or "the mouth of the river" is called "Ust" in the Slavic language.
Boyarwski of Calf Manor, his mother suddenly gave birth to him while she was washing clothes at the mouth of the Valonda River with a full belly, so she casually called the boy "Kou", that is, Uski.
At this point, as the army began to move toward the capital along the coastline, Rurik's layout for the inland waterways had been completed.
By personally leading a team to explore, he determined that the route was not only common, but also a very precious water with soothing water flow.
Since the overall inland river trade volume in this era is too small, it is completely unnecessary to sail large ships. Long ships with shallow draft and strong maneuverability are most suitable. The riverbed in most sections of the Reed River is too shallow, and only long ships can sail smoothly.
.It has an upper limit on economic development. Once the trade volume increases and large ships with deep drafts have to be used, this inland river route will no longer be usable. Obviously that is not something to be considered in that era.
Reedy River Mouth Town (Ust-Luga) - Reedy River Town (Luga) - Canal Checkpoint - Balotavo - Calf Estate - Novgorod.
After an inland river route was discovered, the great scribe Ella accompanied him all the way, using a paintbrush to outline the route as much as possible, and writing a diary along the way. All records will be sorted and summarized and made public as public documents.
Rurik intended to personally promote the inland route.
Now, the cavalry headed east, walking their final journey in the salty sea breeze. They set out early in the morning, and by the evening of the next day, the cavalry had reached the southern part of the capital.
They were soon approaching the capital, and they could already see a large number of bright fishing fires in the Kronshtadt moorings.
The army camped in the woods, and the woods covered their tracks.
This was Rurik's deliberate move. He tried his best to hide his identity, and then suddenly showed off his flag tomorrow, swaggering towards the cemetery, and then straight to the south gate of the capital...