The Great Arcanist Who Traveled Through the World of American Variety Shows.

Chapter 582 God of Agriculture and Hunting

Population is the foundation.

When the Roman Empire and the Franks regarded those exiles as a burden, Richard began to take in a large number of these people.

In order to use these people together, Richard adopted semi-military management for them.

Now the territory is short of various supplies, and even housing is insufficient. In order to accommodate these people, we can only use collective dormitories, which are large bunk beds.

But even this kind of accommodation is much better than where these exiles lived before.

Richard ordered the construction of these dormitories, each room can accommodate twenty people, with separate male and female dormitories, and they are required to maintain hygiene. At the same time, special supervisory inspectors were appointed.

To avoid plague caused by lack of hygiene.

At the same time, Richard also built a large public bathroom here, where these people could bathe every day.

Fortunately, this era is the period of the Roman Empire. The Romans are famous for their love of cleanliness, and bathing culture occupies an important position in Rome. If it were the Middle Ages, these people would not be willing to take a bath unless Richard forced them with a knife.

In the Middle Ages, Europe was so ignorant that people thought bathing would make them sick, "degenerate", etc., and laws were enacted to ban public baths. Coupled with the oppression of local lords, the cost of bathing for ordinary people became extremely high.

Eventually, it gradually evolved into a tradition of not taking a bath, as they believed that if they didn't take a bath they wouldn't get sick.

Because of the large influx of population into the Rhine Province, the arrival of these people will inevitably bring diseases. In order to prevent infectious diseases and even plagues, Richard has extremely high requirements for hygiene.

He specified the locations of water sources, bathing places, toilets, and kitchens.

In particular, the water source, kitchen and toilet, these three areas must be far enough apart to prevent human feces from contaminating the water source and food.

A camp with hundreds of people needs to be planned reasonably. Richard's camps are all planned reasonably. One or two toilets will be dug in each camp, and the toilets will be cleaned and disinfected regularly.

Due to the need for construction, the Rhine Province built a number of lime kilns, so a large amount of lime was used for disinfection. At the same time, the feces were also composted.

Richard has taught the druids how to make manure, and now the druids have begun to promote it in the territory.

With this manure, even newly reclaimed farmland will have some yield.

In order to encourage these exiles to cultivate the land, Richard ordered that the camps that handed over more grain could obtain land in advance.

For these exiles, there are three options in the Rhine Province. The first is to join the army. As long as you become a soldier, you can get land.

Richard will reward them with one hundred acres of land, which they can cultivate themselves or give to their family members to cultivate. If they have no family members, they can also give it to the city hall, and the city hall will find tenants to help them cultivate the land.

Every year, after deducting the share distributed to tenants and taxes, the grain will be distributed to the soldiers. Of course, for the convenience of the soldiers, the grain can also be converted into money.

In the Rhine Province, these soldiers are professional soldiers, with a number of 3,000 and will continue to expand in the future. However, becoming a professional soldier is not that easy.

First, you need to undergo testing and meet the physical standards. Then you will undergo training. After rigorous training and passing all items, you can become a professional soldier.

In addition to professional soldiers, the next group of soldiers are semi-agricultural and semi-farming militiamen who use the slack farming season for training.

The last are self-employed farmers and tenants. Self-employed farmers need to cultivate the land for five years and, after paying a certain amount of grain, the land they cultivate will be directly granted to them for them to cultivate.

The tenants were those who did not want their land to be distributed to remote areas and wanted to stay near the three towns.

Because Richard did not distribute the land around the town to the exiles, part of the land here was distributed to the soldiers, and part of it was used as reserve land for the town hall.

Some exiles who came here late did not want to be assigned to remote areas, so they became tenants here.

With the increase of population in the territory, the land within dozens of miles around the city has now been cultivated, and those exiles who came late can only go to more remote areas.

These remote areas have inconvenient transportation and poor living environment, so some people are unwilling to go there. The city hall also needs tenants, so these people stay here to farm.

It’s just that they don’t have any land allocation. If they regret it later and want land, they can reapply for it after being a tenant for five years.

Richard implemented the "farming and warfare model" in his territory, which was a simplification of the "farming and warfare method" implemented by Shang Yang in the Qin State.

Shang Yang's farming and warfare method made Qin rise rapidly, and eventually it went east to defeat the six kingdoms and unify the world. There is no doubt about its power, but this farming and warfare method also has great disadvantages. After long-term implementation, the Chinese people will get tired of it. Moreover, one problem with Shang Yang's method is that it requires a large number of Legalist disciples to implement it.

There are no such conditions in the Rhine Province, so Richard implemented a simplified version of Shang Yang's Law.

An important point in the theory of farming and warfare is to formulate strict laws. Qin was not the only kingdom to implement the system of conferring titles based on military merit. In fact, many countries did so.

However, this kind of military merit-granting system is difficult to maintain for a long time, because the longer the military merit-granting system is implemented, the more people will be awarded titles.

This will bring serious financial problems to the country, and at the same time the enterprising spirit of those who receive the title will become lower and lower.

In the end, this system of conferring titles based on military merit could not be implemented. Shang Yang's law adopted severe punishments and used titles to atone for crimes to reduce titles.

This has a consequence that the title you received in the morning may be revoked because you have a hangover, because of a crime, or because your neighbors are responsible for it.

Therefore, the Qin people could only keep fighting hard to obtain the title, and then use the title to atone for their crimes, and then obtain the title again, in this vicious circle.
This ensured that Qin's system of conferring titles based on military merit would not collapse like it did in other countries, and it could continue to function.

This system seems perfect, but in fact, the biggest loophole of this system is people. People get tired, and they are not stupid. When you use this system to play tricks on them, don't blame the monkeys for not playing.

This is also why Liu Bang was able to win the hearts of the Qin people by just three articles of law when he entered Guanzhong. From this, we can see the serious flaws caused by Shang Yang's approach.

The farming and warfare method promoted by Richard did not use harsh laws. In this era, there were few people and a lot of land, which was enough for enfeoffment. If the merits were great, they could be directly enfeoffed to remote places to establish a country.

In today's Europe, the system of conferring knighthood based on military merit is more than enough to maintain for a few hundred years. As for a few hundred years later, what does it have to do with him?
Richard also conducted examinations on these exiles in order to understand the religious issues among them.

He needs to be on guard against the spies from the Roman Catholic Church. Who knows if the Roman Monotheistic Church will go crazy and start a war of faith with him right now.

Among the exiles there were those who believed in monotheism, the vast majority of whom were Arians, after all, this sect was widely spread in the barbarian areas. There were also some who believed in Germanic and Nordic gods, a small number who believed in Roman gods, and some who believed in Celtic mythology.

There used to be a large number of Celts living in Gaul, but later the Celts were beaten up by the Romans, some of them converted to Roman gods, and some went to the British Isles. Later, the Franks and Germanic barbarians arrived and beat them up again.

There are very few Celtic beliefs nowadays.

But now the situation is a little different. Richard has gathered a lot of druids. These druid priests have learned a lot of planting techniques from Richard. While promoting agricultural technology, the druid faith began to flourish here.

In fact, the most widely spread faith in the Rhine Province today is Druidism.

The current Druid High Priest is Dranos, who was first conquered by Richard. Dranos also knows part of Richard's plan.

Promote polytheism and suppress monotheism.

Therefore, he joined forces with other druid priests and began to modify Celtic mythology. Celtic beliefs began to include more areas such as agriculture, harvest, and farming.

Harvest, agriculture, and farming are areas that are closely related to human survival. As long as we are still in an agricultural society, the importance of these three areas will be at the first level.

A large part of the reason why Arianism and Roman Catholicism were able to develop so rapidly was because those priests really gave benefits to those who believed in them.

Otherwise, how could monotheism possibly defeat polytheism which has been developing for thousands of years?
Monotheism successfully attracted a group of believers by giving benefits to the lower classes, and then cooperated with the Roman Empire's decrees to suppress polytheism, eventually overthrowing it.

Now druids are starting to preach in the same way, and what these druids are offering is better.

How can a little bit of food be compared with an agricultural harvest?

As long as the druids can really make the farmland produce a good harvest, these farmers will immediately become loyal believers of the druidic faith.

If this situation continues for only another 10 to 20 years, monotheism will be completely swept into the trash.

Faith is not that important to ordinary people. Originally, people would believe in whoever gives them more benefits. Only when faith is widely spread and lasts for decades will it become the norm.

But for the exiles in Richard's territory now, they will believe in whoever can bring them benefits.

So after this point, monotheism is no match for Druidism.

Dranos personally led these druid priests to learn various farming techniques, and all druid priests can now become agricultural technicians.

(End of this chapter)