Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 134: Yeoman Farmers and Farmland
After careful consideration, Orville chose not to collect taxes for the time being so as not to add too much burden to the locals who were already struggling.

The finances during this period were mainly maintained by the property of the nobles whose property had been confiscated. Orville was sending special personnel to measure and count the land of these nobles.

The officers of each legion would certainly confiscate property as they fought, and most of the wealth accumulated by those nobles either went into the national treasury or into the wallets of generals and soldiers. In short, not much was left in Orville's hands, so Vesper gave Orville a subsidy of 4 million dinars.

However, no matter how fierce and tragic the war was, there were still some things that could not be taken away, such as the lands of various nobles. These lands were nationalized, and now the control was in the hands of Orville, who decided the fate of these lands.

Part of it will be kept for other purposes, but part of it will be sold at auction, and the money will become the working capital of the provincial governor. The current goal is to find a suitable seller. Orville does not want the Senate to extend its hand to his territory, so he will try not to sell it to the upper class nobles in Rome.

After a little thought, he decided to use these lands to stimulate the Roman citizens of the Apennine Peninsula and attract them to immigrate here. This would kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, it could alleviate the financial problem, and on the other hand, it could speed up the Latinization process here and assimilate the locals as soon as possible.

He offered very favorable conditions to Roman citizens who were willing to immigrate to the province of Lugden in Gaul, selling fertile, ready-made farmland to civilians willing to immigrate at relatively low prices. If the buyers were short of money, they could just pay a down payment and then slowly repay the loan by increasing annual taxes. Moreover, the interest rate was quite touching in ancient society, at only 20%.

Priority is given to retired soldiers, former civil servants, and useful professions such as doctors and teachers, and there are some additional subsidies and preferential policies for veterans, continuing the traditional Roman virtues.

There are still many tenant farmers on the Apennine Peninsula. The Romans are an agricultural nation, and their obsession with farmland is ingrained in their bones. This kind of clause is very attractive to them. Orville only has a few thousand places, and these people can be easily gathered on the Apennine Peninsula.

He planned to sell so much arable land to test the waters first. On the one hand, the land was useful, and on the other hand, it would be difficult to calculate when there were too many people. Banks in the Roman era were temples that also had banking functions. Without those professional staff, their efficiency and ability to process information were limited.

Orville was able to arrange loans and individual tax changes for every small farmer because the land he confiscated was private land of the nobility.

Suppose there was a large manor, he would cut the land of the manor into one hundred squares according to certain rules and data, and then sell them to one hundred different Roman farmers. Farmers of the same type would be allocated land from the same manor. It would be much easier for the tax officer to collect taxes, as he only needed to require each household to pay about the same amount of grain.

There is another key point, so he would not mind the trouble to do this - this way there will be one less big landlord and one hundred more self-cultivating farmers. The difference will immediately appear when recruiting soldiers. The combat effectiveness of tenant farmers and self-cultivating farmers can be said to be completely different.

In the ancient world, self-employed farmers were generally recognized as the best soldiers. Even in modern times, the situation is still similar. If you want to compare the differences between the two in detail, just look at Egypt.

Compared with Rome at that time, Egypt was quite centralized, and the land naturally belonged to the king and the hereditary temples, so the Egyptian farmers were all landless tenants. The fighting power of these people was reflected when Caesar conquered Egypt. The more than 20,000 Egyptian troops were unable to do anything to Caesar's 4,000 people, and were instead made to panic by Caesar.

Although a single mistake cannot represent the overall level of the army, the gap in combat effectiveness between Rome and Egypt does not only come from the quality of the soldiers, and the Egyptian army does not only have tenants, but it is true that Egypt's military ethics have been in a state of arrears for thousands of years, and sometimes it has become a representative of decadence.

This is somewhat related to the fact that the other side does not have the level of self-employed farmers. Orville never expects an army that is not well fed and clothed to win a tough battle. Therefore, he will expand the number of self-employed farmers rather than tenant farmers and landlords within the scope. This is also a relatively fair and good way of land distribution, which is better than serfs and slaves. As for whether there will be land transactions and land annexation between them, this is unavoidable. Orville can only "manually reset" it occasionally like calibrating a clock, worrying that things hundreds of years later will be beyond his ability.

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In addition to preparing to invest in real estate, Orville also opened branches of his own hotel in several major cities in Gaul.

The starting point is the southern port city of Marseille, then Toulouse, Tours, Orleans, Paris, Caen, and extends to the city where Auvers is now.

Several hostels are connected in a line, and combined with the previous network, it is almost possible to go directly from Rome to Caen or any major city in Gaul.

Gaul was not as wealthy as Italy to begin with, and not many people went out. Moreover, the people's livelihood was in decline after the war. Orville estimated that he would be lucky if he did not lose money in the next few years, but even if he did, he had to do this because it was necessary.

In addition to simple hotels, he will also prepare a matching transport fleet. In the future, he will need to frequently send people back and forth between Rome and Gaul to transport large amounts of supplies. If this kind of work is handed over to a contractor, not only will the loss be high, but it is also unstable and he doesn't know if there will be any accidents along the way.

It is still very important to keep the necessary industries in one's own hands, and Orville will not leave loopholes for others to exploit.

Therefore, after the Roman army arrived in Caen and set up camp, the first thing they did was not to build a port, but to help Orville make carriages.

The craftsmen in the army had a relatively good manufacturing level. They knew everything they needed to know and it was very easy for them to make things if there were sufficient materials. They managed to produce hundreds of carriages in a short period of time. Orville also made some modifications to these things to make them more humane.

As mentioned earlier, according to the normal course of historical development, the horse harnesses in Europe during this period were quite simple and crude. They used reins to fix the horse's neck, which made it easy for the horse to suffocate when pulling a cart or plowing the land, thus strangling the horse to death.

During this time and space, they discovered in advance the way of tying reins that would only appear in Europe in the 3rd or 4th century. The reins were tied to the horse's shoulder blades, which at least would not compress its breathing.

Orville made some modifications on this basis, so that the driving method that should have appeared in a later period appeared in the present day.

(End of this chapter)