Good looked at the cheering residents of Merlo Town around him, feeling a little dazed.
This lord is really completely different from the previous lords.
Although there are more than 500 people in the whole town of Merlo, there are actually less than 60 households. Before there was no land to divide, many families stayed together for warmth. In this way, family power was created over time. Now that there is land to divide,
Many families began to become independent just to get an extra acre of land.
In the end, a total of eighty households were divided. Except for a few bachelors, widows or lonely old people, Aslan unified them on a farm and worked collectively as tenants. After deducting the field tax and head tax, each person could still get one year.
Thousands of pounds of grain.
With this set of measures, in the small town of Mero, as long as you are not hopelessly lazy, you will never starve to death.
Although Aslan reduced the land tax to a minimum, it stimulated people's enthusiasm for farming.
The entire Merlot town has more than 15 acres of registered fields. A rough calculation shows that during the next grain harvest, it will receive at least 1.72 million kilograms of grain in a year. Plus the head tax, the entire Merlot town will receive at least 1.72 million kilograms of grain.
The town can receive two million kilograms of grain a year.
In the past, the annual land tax revenue of Merlo Town had never exceeded 200,000 catties.
In just half a month after Aslan took over the town of Merlo, it increased tenfold.
Wilson and Essien also looked at Aslan respectfully.
After all, those lords are serious nobles, and they don't touch the spring water. They only know how to let farmers farm the land and collect taxes, but they don't know how to adapt to local conditions and grow food according to the kingdom's long-standing tradition, so the output will naturally not increase.
The next day, Aslan also asked someone to post a notice.
If you really can't live in the Mero area, you can come to Mero town and work on the lord's private farm, with food and accommodation included. You can also receive a thousand kilograms of grain at the end of the year, as long as you stay in Mero town for a full period.
For one year, if you have a Merlo Town resident as a guarantor, you can become a glorious member of Merlo Town.
As soon as this notice came out, many families hiding in the mountains and forests tentatively sent representatives to enter Aslan's lord farm.
Many civilians hiding in the mountains and old forests cannot survive in the city and cannot afford the poll tax, so they can only hide and work as gangsters. If possible, who would want to be a gangster and live a savage life in the mountains.
The entire town of Merlot has entered a stage of rapid development.
Time flies, half a year has passed.
The small town of Merlo has grown to a population of more than 2,000, and has become a veritable big town in the Merlo area. Among them, Wood Village invested the entire village, and the original site of Wood Village was used as a refugee resettlement site.
The reason why Aslan arranged this is because soon after the beginning of summer next year, the nine great lords of the kingdom united in rebellion and dragged the entire kingdom into the flames of war. The Mero region, a remote mountainous area in a peaceful area, became a refuge during the war.
The last paradise of war.
In his previous life, Aslan relied on this flame of war to develop the town of Mero. However, this time, Aslan not only wanted to develop it, but also integrated the entire Mero region in one go.
At the site of the original Wood Village, Aslan led a small group of swordsmen into it and started pointing.
"Arrow towers must be installed here and there..." Aslan is planning to transform the entire Wood Village into a military fortress, connecting the towns of Mero into a horn.
As the future head of Wood Fortress, Gut accepted Aslan's orders very respectfully and humbly.
Half a year has been enough for Aslan to establish absolute authority in the small town of Mero.
Merlo Town, a town with a population of more than 2,000, has a town guard of more than 320 people, making it the veritable number one force within dozens of miles of Merlo Town.
According to his memory, the military training in this world is still very old. It is just some simple weapon battles. Once a war breaks out, both sides rely on the number of people in the formation to attack and kill each other.
There were no tactics at all. During the war, except for the regular army of the kingdom, which looked decent, most of the other lords recruited some farmers at random, trained them and then sent them to the battlefield.
What Aslan wants to train is a powerful army. He knows very well that an army with clear disciplines and an army with laws and prohibitions is what he really wants, so he plans to first use the military training techniques from his previous life.
Use it.
"One more thing, you will issue a recruitment order tomorrow. All young men between the ages of eighteen and forty can sign up to join our newly formed Merlot Army. They can get five silver coins in one month and also
Provide three meals a day! The number of troops should be set at around a hundred for the time being!" Aslan said.
Wilson exclaimed: "Lord, five silver coins a month is too much. Generally, two or three silver coins are enough to recruit soldiers, and they also provide three meals a day!"
Aslan said: "The soldiers I want to train are real warriors, not militiamen like the town guards. They are not required to be able to fight one against ten, but they must obey military orders and have absolute loyalty. And these
We must at least provide them with a remuneration that is reassuring enough so that they will fight for us."
Wilson said: "It's all up to you."
Next to him, Gut's blood boiled with excitement.
Now the entire army in Merlo Town is divided into three echelons. The direct troops are Aslan's Lord Guards. They are not many in number, only twenty people. However, these twenty people are at worst junior knights, three intermediate knights, and one
A senior knight.
After stabilizing, Aslan taught everyone in the Lord's Guard a set of top-notch fighting spirit training methods obtained in his previous life. Arthur also used this to break through to the senior knights, Lancelot also reached the intermediate knight level, and the other two intermediate knights were also originally
The knights who came with Aslan. The remaining junior knights were promoted by Arthur himself and were absolutely loyal to Aslan.
The second echelon of the army is the Mero Army to be established, professional soldiers who will have no other tasks except training and warfare on a daily basis, and will be the main force in the future war in Mero Town.
The third echelon is the town guard. Most of them are less talented or older. Most of them are equivalent to engineers in the army. They have less training, but they still have to work.
The only thing that gave Aslan a headache was that there was a serious shortage of iron ore in the warehouse. He could only reluctantly change the uniforms of the entire Knight Guard. As for the Town Guard, the weapons in their hands were uneven and in an ugly mess, not to mention the armor.
The environment and land in the Merlot area are barren. The main reason is that there are rich mineral deposits underground, but Aslan does not dare to mine them now. The reason is very simple: his wealth is not revealed.
The Kingdom of Cleveland controls the entire country's salt and iron trade. The salt and iron business is nationalized. No matter how old a noble lord is, once he is discovered to be mining salt and iron privately, it will be a death penalty.