When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 742: The Phoenix Will Not Land on a Dead Branch

The military judge was right, and the fighting really stopped at night.

As if it was an agreement with the Holy Father, the rain that had been falling all day stopped right after the war.

Not only did it stop, but the moon even came out at night.

The Besser Infantry Regiment was divided into three groups.

A group of wounded soldiers returned to Feldheim, a group of orderly soldiers stayed behind to salvage the Griffin cannon, and the rest followed the convoy into the temporary camp on the east bank of the Rust River.

The war horses in the camp were panting, and their skin and pupils were twitching and reddening unnaturally.

This was the aftereffect of drinking the potion. For this battle, Andre, the commander of the Iron Fist Regiment stationed nearby, used all his might.

The Iron Fist Legion is a new army established in Hotam County by Meliati using mountain knights as the main force and officers and Andre as the legion leader.

As for the other former leader of the Holy Sun Army, Valentyl is now the chief priest of Hotam County.

At this moment, Andre has jumped from a Fran deserter to the commander of the Iron Fist Regiment. The once high and mighty Duke of Redwood is now being escorted into this abandoned village hall in a miserable state.

The Duke of Redwood was wearing a beaver skin robe, with a bruise on his forehead and a lot of dried blood on his nostrils.

When Andre saw Duke Redwood coming in, he smiled and stepped forward to untie the rope for him: "My Lord Duke, it's been three years since we last met. I hope you are doing well."

The Duke of Redwood's knife-like cheeks twitched, and his eyes almost popped out of their sockets: "I should have killed you directly at the beginning."

"We are close friends who went to the technical college together. How can you say such a thing?"

When Andre committed the crime, it was the Duke of Sequoia, who was then the second son of the nobility, who let Andre go.

After that, the Duke of Sequoia's eldest brother died of illness.

He was almost fifty years old and was almost a senior military officer, but he chose to retire and return home to inherit his family business.

It is really ironic that the two of them are meeting here at this moment, one is a prisoner of war with noble status, and the other is a winner with civilian status.

After untying the ropes, Duke Sequoia touched his head and said, "Your soldiers are as rude as you are. I have surrendered, but they still insulted me."

"That's a body search to prevent you from carrying a weapon."

"I surrender."

"There's nothing I can do about it. The exercise code is written the way it is, and I can't change it." Andre folded his hands.

"You have caught me. You took advantage of a small encounter and turned it into a battle of annihilation." Rubbing his wrist, Duke Redwood sighed, "If you could stay in Fran, you might even become the Knight Commander."

"I'm not a noble, how is that possible?" Andrei still had a smug smile on his face, "Here, I'm a senior officer commanding four to five thousand people."

Duke Sequoia did not speak for a long time before continuing: "I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?"

"Where did you get so many spare troops to surround me?" Duke Redwood couldn't figure it out now.

"It's very simple. Just pull out the garrison troops."

"Wouldn't the guard post be empty then?"

"As long as I defeat you, I can return the troops before the other side finds out that we are weak." Andre said lightly.

But only people like Duke Sequoia who have commanded armies know how difficult this is.

He wrote more than a dozen letters asking for help, hoping that nearby troops would come to rescue him.

They were much closer to the battlefield than Andre, but they didn't show up until the battle was over.

After holding it in for a long time, the Duke of Redwood seemed to have lost all his strength and said, "You are a fucking genius, Andre."

Andre smiled slightly but did not explain.

He is not the genius, he is just the user of the tool, not the creator.

"I still do not get it."

"What do you still not understand?"

"You are such a lawless, reckless genius bastard, why don't you go to Norn to become a prince, but stay in this small Thousand River Valley?"

The Duke of Sequoia was Andre's superior when he served in the Frantic army in his early years.

He loved Andre because he could accurately grasp the opportunity of battle and had the ability to command large troops.

They also hated him for not obeying orders, always acting recklessly and ignoring military orders, not to mention the lax military discipline of his soldiers.

This Andre is a slick realist at heart.

In this idealistic country of the Thousand Valley Holy Alliance, he was obviously out of place.

"Have you read "The Holy Way to Save the World"? "

"You don't really believe in that damned 'Sacred Way to Save the World', do you?" Duke Redwood was horrified. Andre half sighed and half laughed: "I have memorized 'Sacred Way to Save the World'. If you want me to act, I can be even more fanatical than the fanatics."

"Then why...? You have to know that Leia can't take care of the Thousand Valleys, and the Franks and Norns will also have to take care of them." Duke Redwood still frowned, "Since you don't believe in the Holy Way, and the Holy Alliance obviously can't give you the status and honor of a lord, why do you still want to fight for them?"

"Because there is no way out for the lord."

Looking at the puzzled look of the Duke of Redwood, Andre dragged a chair and sat opposite the Duke.

"In order to build a new army, I went to the Saint Danji War School for three months." Andre looked up slightly, as if recalling, "Once, the saintly grandson came to give us a lesson in person, called 'Why do we expel the devil?'"

"I thought he was going to say some old cliché about lords oppressing peasants, but what he said is still fresh in my memory."

Sitting in front of the Duke of Sequoia, Andre seemed to be back in that class.

“…Lords or landlords do not work themselves. They are not engaged in agriculture, but in rent collection, or even in finance.

For the landlords, they don’t care about the harvest. Their only goal is to make the farmers pay rent on time. They have no desire or need to improve.

For example, the Kushites, because their land had been largely usurped, had a desire to invest in and improve the land in order to make a living and to have family ties.

Count Enrico is a typical example.

Generally speaking, whether they are earls, knights or even larger landowners, they do not care about grain production and agricultural conditions.

Perhaps for them personally, this path is the safest and most suitable.

But for everyone, it's always been the same, you know why? "

Duke of Sequoia asked the same question as Andre did: "Why?"

"Do you know how many years it takes for a knight to recover the cost of occupying an acre of land through war?"

"Uh..." The Duke of Sequoia, who had left all household affairs to the butler and only knew how to attend banquets and socialize everywhere, was naturally dumbfounded.

Andre shook his head helplessly: "It only takes three years to recover the cost of an acre of good land, but it takes five to ten years for an acre of bad land.

Calculated at the current tax rate, the annualized rate for an acre of good farmland is more than 30%. "

"Annualized rate? 30%?" One after another, never-before-heard Elish words popped out of Andre's mouth, causing the Duke of Redwood's brain to overclock.

"You can simply understand the annualized rate as how much the income grows each year. Thirty percent is 30%." Andre picked up a branch and drew a few lines of incomprehensible formulas on the sand table.

"In other words, the daily life of the lord has become annexing land, collecting rent and saving money, launching wars, annexing land..."

The more the Duke of Redwood listened, the more he felt something was wrong: "Is there anything wrong with this? Hasn't it been like this for thousands of years?"

"That's the problem." Andre threw away the branch and wiped his hands. "The population is growing, but the farmland is limited. The precious metals and cheap grains from the royal court have overwhelmed the grain market.

The knights and the people became more hungry for land and money.

The empire was filled with refugees, and they had to be suppressed from time to time.

The idle lords hid their gold and silver underground or lent them out at high interest rates at the Vatican Bank.

The granaries are full of food, but hundreds of millions of Messiah's followers are wandering and starving. How is this different from Hell?"

From the perspective of the butt, Andre's words were extremely harsh to the high-ranking noble Duke of Sequoia.

This blatant division of interests made it difficult for him, as a noble, to cope with it.

But as the second son of a noble family and a highly educated French university student, the Duke of Sequoia had to admit that Andre was right.

No matter where in the empire, even in the wealthy Kingdom of Frank, knights are still needed to continue to suppress refugees in a bloody manner to reduce the population.

Just like the lemmings killing each other in the Roaring Corridor, if they don't kill each other, no one will survive.

"Only 5% of the empire's population took 95% of the empire's wealth. What could they consume? How much could they consume?
The Holy League reduced agricultural taxes and suppressed usury, distributing the money in the hands of the lords and the church equally to most people.

With money in hand, the majority of the people spend more than a hundred times more than that small group of people.

Only when the majority of people consume will sufficient demand be created, and when there is demand, sufficient jobs will be created.

With jobs, workers and citizens have something to do.

If you have work to do, you will have money, and if you have money, you can buy food, and then the money goes back to the farmers.

Everyone got what they wanted.

Therefore, the Holy Alliance wants to suppress all industries whose annualized returns are higher than those of industries other than industry. The two thorns are land rent collection and usury.

This is entirely a result of reality and rationality, not his personal preference. "

Seeing the Duke of Redwood unable to speak, Andre patted him on the shoulder and said, "I don't know if you believe it or not, but I do."

Straightening up, Andre looked directly into the eyes of Duke Redwood: "The lord will inevitably be eliminated, and I have a hunch that Qianhe Valley will grow into a monster that will make the empire tremble in the future.

A phoenix will not land on a dead branch. Although this is a new seedling, I believe it will grow into a towering tree."

(End of this chapter)