Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 11: Surrounding Villages

It is true that information exchange was slow in the Middle Ages, but there was still some communication between villages.

After all, some villages can produce pottery, others can produce wood, and with the interactions between neighbors and fellow villagers, the flow of information, although slow, will still exist.

In the past few days, a series of outrageous rumors, some true and some false, have spread around the valley.

Farmers talked about these novel things after dinner. They didn't care whether the news was true or not. They just used these interesting stories to fill their gray and monotonous boring lives, just like the group of fun people in the 21st century.

First, the village of Skarr was attacked by Saracens, but some say that the entire village of Skarr was killed without a single survivor.

Others said that the village was actually attacked by a slave-catching team, so the entire village was captured as slaves and taken to the slave market in Damascus.

Then there was news that the people in the Skar village were not completely wiped out. A group of knights who came to make pilgrimages passed by the village and chopped up all the Muslim pagans like cutting melons and vegetables.

Moreover, the group of knights did not plan to leave, saying that they wanted to recuperate.

As a result, while he was recovering from his injuries, a mill suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and it was rumored that the milling fee here was only 1 in 20! It was at least half less than the mill over there at Lord Reynard's place!
Even if you are willing to help the Skarl village harvest wheat, you can use the village mill for free!
For a time, people in several nearby villages could not sit still. Of course, perhaps they were worried that in a few days, the mill in Skar Village would be discovered by nearby tax farmers and then demolished.

It is precisely because of such concerns that they consider things more realistically: of course, they have to quickly grind the wheat they have just harvested into flour before the lord sends people to demolish their house!

Not to mention grinding them all down, at least if you can get more advantage, then take more advantage.

At one time, almost all the villages within a ten-mile radius sent out strong men to find out the truth of the news.

When these guys with good legs returned to their village, the first thing they did was to find their wives and ask them to quickly take out some wheat they had harvested from the fields and prepare to send it to Skar Village to be ground into flour.

The second thing was to announce to the villagers that a blacksmith had appeared in the village of Skarl, and that any broken ironware at home could be taken there to be repaired.

And you don’t have to pay, just help the people over there work for one more day!

You can even help harvest wheat there and earn a lot in a day!

Anyway, it has been a while since the harvest season started, and everyone has harvested most of their wheat. However, because there are few people in the Scarl village, if they don't hurry up to harvest, it will be difficult to find the wheat ears once they fall into the soil. They are in urgent need of manpower.

……

"Grind the scissors, repair the kitchen knife! It's time to forge the axe!"

The shouts that made Gérice feel nostalgic continued to spread in the square of Skar Village in the form of Old French.

Gailis had not expected that among his group, John and Simon actually had some knowledge of blacksmithing skills, although they were certainly not as good as the master craftsmen in the castle, nor as good as the masters in the city guild.

But compared to the blacksmiths in the countryside, they are still somewhat competitive. In addition, Garys took the time to fix some stone mills and built several mills, and provided services to the outside world at a low price.

As if they had made an agreement, residents from the five nearby villages flocked to the valley together this weekend. For a moment, the village of Skarr became a place as joyful as a market. Not to mention, it really was like a market. Many people even brought hens, eggs, and lambs, apparently intending to set up stalls on the spot and barter.

Then, for the sake of confidentiality, in order to avoid being discovered by Leonard in advance due to some accidents, Garys forbade everyone to reveal their true identities.

After hiding their respective flags and emblems, they only told the surrounding farmers that they were knights who came to make pilgrimages from afar. They had been robbed by Bedouins some time ago and had ended up here.

Such a statement is of course problematic. Anyone with real geographical knowledge can tell that Gillis is lying in just two sentences.

After all, their valley is on the east bank of the Dead Sea, and any Christian who wants to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem will not pass through here. Instead, there are endless Muslim pilgrims.

But the farmers had very little knowledge of geography, and they didn't really care whether what Garys said was true or not. What they really cared about was the word "free" and the wages they could earn every day as wheat pickers in Skar Village.

Even Garys himself had to act as a broker and bargain with farmers who wanted to come and work as wheat pickers for a few days.

"How about two and a half pounds a day?"

"You are treating me like a beast of burden, aren't you?!"

"How about those three pounds a day?"

"Four pounds! At least four pounds!"

To be honest, Garys had no idea about the market price here, and there were few wheat harvesters around here, so it was very troublesome not having anyone to refer to.

Fortunately, Garys doesn't need to be so meticulous, as long as it is generally fair.

What Gailis needs to do most is to establish relationships with people in the surrounding villages, understand the distribution of nearby villages, and know the specific details of those villages.

For example, Gellis learned that there were about six villages within 10 miles of the village of Skar, and he knew the approximate distribution of those villages, their religious beliefs, their relationships with each other, and their population sizes.

These gains have given Garys a clearer understanding of the future development direction.

Of course, Gellis feels that this alone is not enough, because it is obviously not deep enough into the countryside and obviously not close enough to the farmers.

Garys needs to conduct a real rural survey before he can be sure that he understands this era and the needs of the people.

Only then could he determine who were his friends and who were his enemies in the rural areas of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Perhaps because of the time travel, Gaillis discovered that he had particularly deep memories of many of the books he had read in his previous life.

One of the books contains content related to rural investigation.

(End of this chapter)