Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 290

Faced with this somewhat explicit joke, Orville simply rolled his eyes and said, "You also know that I have no interest in this kind of thing. If you really want to satisfy my desire, go and handle your government affairs and don't let me worry too much. It would be better if you can give me a little surprise and find me some delicious food and drinks occasionally. I am a little interested in this."

Cleopatra smiled brightly: "Of course, I will try my best to meet your requirements. Whatever you want, as long as it can be found in the world, I will help you find it. In return, you should also meet some of my requirements. I heard that you have created a new kind of paper that is as smooth and fluent as parchment when writing, and the price is still a fraction of parchment. Is this correct?"

"Have you heard about this?" Orville was quite surprised. He didn't expect his stuff to be so widely spread.

"I heard Claudius (Ptolemy) tell me about this. He spoke highly of the paper you made. What do you think? I want to buy some of this paper to rebuild the Library of Alexandria."

The Ptolemaic royal family was indeed very wealthy, so wealthy that at certain times the Roman emperor was not necessarily richer than the Egyptian king. They owned a large amount of land and monopolized important industries such as trade, finance, and food. They were the richest people in the Mediterranean world.

But even so, if the Ptolemaic royal family were to pay to buy the books in the Library of Alexandria, it would not be painful for them, but they simply could not afford it.

Thanks to the generosity of successive kings and the higher productivity of this world, the Library of Alexandria in the last world has more books than the last world. The original world is estimated to have 500,000 volumes of books, while this world has about 650,000 volumes of books.

Books of this era were extremely expensive. The most basic unit of measurement was not the as (a copper coin), but the dinar (silver coin) that ordinary people rarely encountered in their daily lives. Even for those large or valuable books, the unit of measurement would be the talent used in the national treasury.

Occasionally, there would be stories of Ptolemy kings of all generations paying huge sums of money for knowledge, spending twenty or thirty talents to buy a book from someone. One should know that the treasury revenue of Egypt was only a few thousand talents, and an ordinary person might not see this amount of money all at once in their lifetime. The knowledge of this era was literally priceless.

There are hundreds of thousands of books. Even if many of them are not that valuable, let's just assume that one book is one hundred dinars. Four hundred thousand books would cost forty million dinars, not to mention the cost of rebuilding the library itself, plus some miscellaneous expenses. If everything is included, it would cost at least fifty million dinars.

It was not known whether the Ptolemaic royal family could come up with this money, not to mention that they could not possibly throw all the money away here, so if Cleopatra wanted to rebuild the library now, she had to think of some unconventional ways to get around it.

After thinking for a while, Orville explained to the other party: "The cost is actually lower than you think. What will limit your thinking is the output of paper. But this is not a big problem. The manufacturing method is not very complicated. It's just that my current output is not very high."

Orville's paper factory is located in the British province, with a scale of about four to five hundred people. After Orville found the sales channel for paper, the supply of paper has been in short supply, so the factory has been operating at high load. Orville sent a letter to Belisarius asking him to expand the paper mill. The specific situation is still unclear, but it can be imagined that the scale will not be particularly large.

That's why he is planning to build a new paper mill in Egypt. He is now transporting materials and tools over, which will take some time.

"It seems that your new factory has already found an order in advance. Remember to give me an internal price." Cleopatra winked at him. "Maybe." Orville did not comment.

It now seems that the orders from the Library of Alexandria alone are enough to keep Orville busy for several years. This is not a bad thing. It is a win-win situation for both parties - one party can make money and the other party can save some money.
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A month and a half later, some big events happened in Egypt.

According to the plan, Orville recruited many native Egyptians as soldiers, and he also raised a very attractive banner - liberating Egypt's tenant farmers and ensuring fairness and justice.

This was not just empty talk. Orville ignored everyone's opposition and, after he persuaded Cleopatra to agree, he took the initiative to announce a series of related policies.

The treatment of the Egyptian poor was similar to that of Roman legionnaires. After they had served the country for a certain period of time, the country would distribute a piece of land to them. The size of the land was determined by the fertility of the land and its specific location, but it was enough to support a family and was no less than the land of the Greek immigrant soldiers.

This was actually an almost exact copy of the Roman legionary recruitment policy. At the same time, he also announced the disbandment of some redundant garrison soldiers and asked Cleopatra to issue a decree in the name of the Queen of Egypt to deprive the temple priests of large tracts of land and re-nationalize the land.

This tenant farming system was obviously not very desirable. Orwell was not against nationalization of land, but this brutal method, which was close to slavery, really damaged the labor enthusiasm of producers. In his opinion, at least leasing the land would be better, and he was really prepared to make such a change.

This slogan and policy caused a stir in Egypt. Many poor people enthusiastically joined the army, but it also aroused dissatisfaction and fear among many Greek immigrants.

After secret communication, a massive protest movement broke out almost simultaneously across Egypt, and the intensity of the protests was escalating at an alarming rate, soon reaching the point where the army had to be sent in to control it.

Orville responded calmly to this. On the one hand, he ordered the legion soldiers to prepare for war, and on the other hand, he began to arm the Egyptian tenants who had been exploited for hundreds of years. Orville promised them freedom and land as a reward, which had a fatal attraction for the Egyptian tenants.

Without much effort, Orville recruited an army of more than 20,000 "liberated serfs" in Egypt. They helped the Romans and began to engage in high-intensity small-scale confrontations with local landlords and temples.

The situation was in favor of the Romans from the very beginning. After all, the military levels of the two sides were not on the same level. However, the Romans were also overwhelmed by the successive protests, and various violent incidents that were almost out of control occurred from time to time.

(End of this chapter)