Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 179 The long night has come, let us go to hell together
After days of fighting, the land in front of the holy city was soaked in blood.

The morning light of the rising sun failed to bring renewal to all things, but instead awakened the long-sleeping ghosts of the city.

Jerusalem!
How much blood has been shed because of you.

Jerusalem!
There are more than thousands of heroes who bow down to you.
Jerusalem!
You, the Lady of Zion, are now bleak and dim...

Balian, wearing chain mail and a bloodstained robe, looked at Saladin.

"Eracleius is still in the city. He can do it."

Saladin remained silent for a long time.

"Buy your freedom. I'll give you this chance."

"What's the price?"

"Ten gold dinars for a man, five gold dinars for a woman, and two gold dinars for a child." Saladin offered a price.

"I will let everyone live, everyone..."

"Women, children and the elderly, your knights, warriors and your queen."

"Even if the ransom cannot be paid, no one will die. At most, they will be sold into slavery."

"I am Saladin, I swear in the name of Allah!"

Some people have a bad reputation and are terribly notorious in the world.

There are others who can be respected just by saying their name.

Balian nodded. This was the condition he could accept.

"Thank you, I will go back and inform you of your request."

"Waiting for good news."

"Goodbye."

When the two of them parted, Balian suddenly asked:
“What is Jerusalem worth?”

Saladin walked a few steps away, turned around and answered easily:

"It's worthless."

Just when Balian was feeling a little disappointed, Saladin smiled.

“That value is hard to measure.”

……

When Balian returned to Jerusalem, he announced the news to the Franks.

Just like in Karak, the rich were ecstatic, while the poor were at a loss.

For these poor people, who are mostly refugees, this would be an impossible ransom.

The poor in spirit possess the kingdom of heaven, but will be abandoned in this world.

Walking in this war-torn city, Balian called out to the people beside him:

"Mono."

"exist."

"How much military funds are left in the warehouse?"

"There should be 30,000 gold dinars left."

"Not enough, far from enough."

According to conservative estimates, at least 20,000 people in Jerusalem were unable to redeem themselves, and the 30,000 gold dinars were just a drop in the bucket.

As for Balian’s own belongings?

He had already donated it to military expenses.

"Mono."

"exist."

"We are going to commit more sins. You should not mind going to hell after you die."

"Wherever your sword points, that's where I am, and that's where we will charge."

"Go, gather the soldiers. Jerusalem is destined to be a burnt offering with the blood of sinners to wash away all sins."

In the eyes of many people, the poor are the waste of humanity, but in the eyes of Garys, the poor are people who are crucified by this world.

If the poor resist, they will be suddenly crucified by power.

If they do not resist, they will be slowly crucified by poverty and hunger.

This world is a dark, long tunnel with almost no end.

Poverty and hunger are a slow holocaust.

This is a continent flowing with blood and tears, this is a hopeless world where people can hardly see a glimmer of hope.

Humanity is dead, civility is lost.

Garys told Balian that someone had to die, and as for who died, it depended on which side you stood on...

That night, Balian gathered a team of soldiers who had survived the bloody battle. Beside him, there were a few knights who were willing to struggle together in this hopeless world.

"The night is long, let us go to hell together."

The uncoordinated footsteps made a loud sound on the street.

Balian and the soldiers behind him were all wearing tattered armor, with blood stains still on their faces and determination flashing in their eyes.

The city trembled with their footsteps.

Balian strode into the residence of Patriarch Iraklius of Jerusalem, and the festive atmosphere here was instantly broken.

The soldiers quickly controlled all exits and took control of the honorable Patriarch Iraklius.

Balian drew his sword, the sharp edge was threatening, and an illusory shadow stood beside him.

"Yes, that's it... Let Jerusalem be flooded with blood..."

Balian had already ignored the existence of the shadow and had become accustomed to it. Apart from him, no one could notice it.

"What?! What!"

"You're crazy! Balian! You're all crazy!"

Faced with Iraklio's hysterical accusations, Balian turned a blind eye.

His voice was like a hammer hitting an anvil, powerful and crisp: "Three thousand dinars, at least three thousand dinars! Hand over three thousand dinars and you can live."

Irakliu fell on his back, his face full of fear.

He held the cross tightly in his hand and prayed with a trembling voice, but when he met Balian's cold gaze, his words stopped in his throat.

Finally, after a long silence, Balian got what he wanted.

But this was just the beginning. Taking advantage of the night, Balian visited various wealthy families and nobles in the city one after another.

At Baron Levi's mansion, the baron knelt down voluntarily when he saw Balian and offered all the property in his house with both hands, for fear of angering this somewhat crazy lord.

Elsewhere, a greasy businessman steadfastly refuses to hand over his wealth and even tries to bribe Balian.

The only response from Balian was the sound of the tip of his sword cutting through the air.

The merchant's head rolled down in an instant, and his blood splattered three feet away, staining the marble floor of the mansion red.

Accompanied by the screams of the wealthy businessman's wife and daughter, Balian personally led people to plunder and loot.

As they walked along, the air in the city became increasingly heavy, and the god of death was following Balian.

Balian, the hero who defended the city during the day, turned into a sinner who committed all kinds of evil, including burning, killing, looting and raping women, in just one night.

But would Balian care? His robes were already stained with blood.

Now, he has to fight to defend the life of the chosen one. This battle means bottomless loneliness, but fortunately, he has people following him.

"The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Life, but poverty is the victory of death..."

"It shouldn't be like this, it shouldn't be like this, it can't be like this..."

Reynard once said that Balian was a lunatic, and facts proved that Reynard was right.

Unlike Reynard, who was obsessed with his posthumous reputation, Balian chose a more difficult path.

In this dark, long and seemingly endless tunnel, Balian trampled his reputation into the mud.

For the sake of Jerusalem, Balian is willing to sacrifice his life!
The next day, when Saladin saw Balian again, he felt a little nervous. At this moment, Balian looked like he had been fished out of a pool of blood.

The sin he carries is so strong that ordinary people dare not approach him.

[God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.]

—5 Corinthians 21:
"I have brought 60,000 dinars with me, and I am taking 10,000 people with me."

The dark circles under his eyes were so thick that they looked like they were painted on. Balian's tone contained indifference and fatigue.

Saladin nodded slightly without going into the details of the accounting issues.

Extorting ransom did not mean much to Saladin. He needed to make a statement to the Islamic world and satisfy the greed of the 25,000 troops behind him.

Compared with the noble character of Saladin, he himself was clear about the character of the troops under his command.

On October 10, the sky over Jerusalem was covered with dark clouds.

Saladin's army took over the holy city, but he did not allow all of his troops to enter the city.

The first to control the gates of the city were the Mamluks under his command. These military slaves who had received cruel training since childhood were the most trusted troops of Saladin and the most well-trained among his troops. Ten thousand of the poorest people in the city, including refugees caused by the war, left the city with their few remaining belongings after being counted.

Many of them were in rags and looked haggard.

And those rich people were also busy packing up their belongings.

But apart from the ten thousand poor people who were redeemed by Balian, and the rich and nobles who redeemed themselves, there were still thousands of people in the city who could not save themselves.

In this situation, Saladin's brother Tughtakin took the initiative to step forward and asked Saladin for a thousand Franks who could not be redeemed as his slaves in the name of obtaining his own reward.

After obtaining Saladin's permission, Tugtagin announced publicly that the slaves were free.

For a time, Tugtakin's fame spread, and those who were saved by him praised the virtues of the pagan Emir.

Following the lead of Saladin's brothers, other generals of Saladin followed suit.

The Blue Wolf Muzaffar released a thousand Jerusalem citizens on the grounds that one thousand of them were his fellow villagers.

Balian also used the reason that he had voluntarily surrendered the city as an excuse to let Saladin release a few hundred more people.

Because so many people followed suit, Saladin announced that the elderly, women and children in the city would be free.

Nobles from foreign countries did not have to pay ransom.

There were several thousand of these people, and a large number of poor people among them joined Balian's team, while the rich and nobles formed a separate team, which was secretly hostile to Balian.

Washed by rose petals and clean water, Saladin and his imams entered this filthy city.

The cross on the dome of the Royal Palace of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was torn down and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was closed for three days.

Although many religious scholars have suggested destroying the church to end Christian interest in Jerusalem.

However, most of his advisors advised him not to destroy the church, saying that due to the sanctity of the place, Christian pilgrimages would continue anyway.

Those advisers also reminded him that Caliph Umar had allowed the church to remain in Christian hands after conquering the city.

Saladin ultimately decided not to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, saying he had no intention of preventing Christians from making pilgrimages there.

The church was reopened three days later on his orders and Catholic pilgrims will be allowed to enter the church after paying a fee.

Orthodox Christians and Syrians were allowed to stay and worship as they wished, and other beliefs or nationalities considered heretics, pagans, or atheists by Catholicism were allowed by Saladin to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for free.

Saladin then appointed two Muslim families to manage the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Judah Al-Qaudiya family as the "Keepers of the Keys" and the Nusseibeh family as the "Guardians and Gatekeepers of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre."

These two positions have also been passed down to the 21st century, and since they do not belong to any Christian denomination, they have often served as neutral witnesses of various ceremonies in history.

……

The transformation of Karak City Manor has been ongoing.

Just as Gérice and Antoine had talked about in the bathroom before, Gérice did not really give the ownership of the land to anyone.

The production model of the manor system itself is actually not backward in this era.

In terms of land ownership, a typical fiefdom would divide the land into three major categories.

Although all the land of the manor belongs to the manor owner, about one-fifth of the arable land will be donated to the church.

One third of the land was the lord's private plot, which, in addition to farmland, also included ponds, rivers, woodlands...all the output from them belonged to the lord.

The remaining nearly half of the land was leased to free people and serfs for cultivation.

The most obvious difference between freemen and serfs is that serfs have more feudal obligations, while freemen, as their name suggests, can move freely and are not bound by feudal obligations.

In addition to cultivating the small pieces of land they rented, serfs had to go to the church and the lord's private plots on fixed days each week to perform unpaid labor.

During this process, some of the free people would serve as overseers to urge the serfs to work hard.

Among the free people, there are actually different levels. The richest free people can rent large tracts of land at extremely low rents.

Some of these freemen could not even cultivate all of their own land, and could even transfer part of the land to serfs to earn a certain amount of difference.

However, free men like these were often required to serve as cavalrymen in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and were an important backbone of the army.

The next level of freemen had wealth accumulated by their ancestors. In addition to renting land, they also had their own private means of production, such as cattle and horses, as well as carriages, plows, and iron farm tools.

While paying land rent and performing infantry service, they were also obliged to contribute their own means of production to help the entire estate with sowing or harvesting, and even the transportation of grain.

As for the next level of free people and the serf group.

Often, apart from their own labor and the house they live in, they may not even have a hoe.

In this case, if all the land in the manor was really divided, how would the farm tools and livestock, cattle and horses, be divided?
You have to know that for the upper class of freemen, this kind of land distribution has great advantages, because they really have cows and real plows.

As for the serfs? If Gelis could distribute the land, could he also distribute the private means of production of the Frankish freemen to the Muslim serfs?
If this was done, it would be seen as naked robbery and plunder in the eyes of the Frankish freemen.

After all, the land was divided among the manors, while the livestock were divided among the freemen's private property.

In this case, the collective economy of the manor system is still necessary, and farming, harvesting, and fruit tree planting all require more reasonable distribution of labor.

It's just that these manors, which originally belonged to individual lords, have become more like collective ownership of the village community in terms of ownership.

As a result, they were exempted from high land rents and instead only had to pay lower agricultural taxes. This also enabled the lower-class farmers to improve their farming production models more quickly and to bring iron farm tools and large livestock into the villages and households more quickly.

When the time comes that the means of production of the farmers in the manors in Palestine can reach the level of the heyday of the Eastern Roman military district system, the disintegration of the manor system will be a natural outcome.

Unlike in the past, Garys had the full support of Karak City and Russell's group of holy knights had already set out, so Garys went to various manors to preach.

But they are no longer responsible for specific matters, but only for correcting problems that arise during the work process.

Today, the situation in Transjordan is set, and there is no need for Garys to go to the front line and run around everywhere anymore.

Therefore, in mid-September, he returned to the school in Alhadi Town to teach and write books.

Apart from ideological construction, Gary has invested more energy into more technical aspects compared to the first half of the year.

Although Garys didn't remember the details of most of the technologies, due to his experiences in his previous life, he actually understood the principles of many basic technologies at a glance.

There are three majors in Al-Hadi School: theology and philosophy, medicine, and natural sciences.

In the field of theology and philosophy, Gellis left behind a large number of programmatic texts, which are currently mainly under the charge of Archos.

The medical field is taught by Dr. Abdullah, his assistants, and the medical staff provided by Garys. This is actually the field with the most teachers.

Only in the area of ​​natural science, except for Gérice, everyone else actually has only a superficial understanding of it. They merely follow Gérice to learn methodology and understand the world in a nearly crammed mode.

Due to the limitations of the times, Gillis still quoted words from the Bible on the cover of his natural science textbook.

[The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim His handiwork. They proclaim knowledge day and night; they utter words day and night.]

—Psalm 19:1-2
[The Lord established the earth by wisdom, and established the heavens by understanding; by his knowledge he split the deep and made the skies drop dew.]

—Proverbs 3:19-20
In Gillis' teaching materials, one point is always emphasized: the world created by God is almost perfect.

This perfection has nothing to do with human society, but refers to the fact that the physical rules governing the objective world are nearly perfect.

It is so perfect that even humans can rationally understand the connection between heaven, earth and all things.

Those natural science students who took Gillis's class could clearly remember what Gillis did in the classroom until their death.

"Now, I will demonstrate the framework of the world system."

In an ordinary classroom, Garys brought two relatively light-transmitting glass containers, two candles, a few mice and some other props.

"God has given food to all living things, but this food is not the same."

He said softly, his eyes scanning every student in the classroom, finally stopping on Isabella's face.

"But oxygen is vital for all animals."

Garys lit a candle and carefully placed it under the glass, then used another candle to seal the gap on the table, his movements precise and calm.

Afterwards, the students in the class, including Isabella, saw the candlelight in the glass gradually dim and finally go out.

From this, the students in the class realized that in this world created by God, air can actually be divided into two types: one is needed for combustion, and the other is not needed for combustion.

And then Garys's experiment was even more horrifying.

He first set up a nailed vertical wooden board on the table, lit a candle on one side of the board, covered it with a larger glass container, and threw a mouse into the other side of the board.

Many students with associative logical abilities have already begun to anticipate what is going to happen.

A corner of the world's truth was revealed to mortals like them through the hands of the prophet.

The moment the glass fell, the whole classroom fell into a long silence, as if time had been frozen.

The mice were running around in the enclosed space, scratching the wooden boards with their sharp claws, making a harsh sound.

The students stared at it, some trembled slightly, some took a step back involuntarily, but no one looked away.

Even Isabella's breathing became rapid, and she could feel her heart beating violently in her chest.

The mouse was full of energy at first, but as time went on, its movements gradually became slower, as if it was oppressed by some invisible force and became increasingly tired.

Finally, the candle flame began to weaken again in the glass container, and the weak flame looked like a dying star.

The mouse's steps became heavier and heavier, and the sound of its claws scratching on the wooden boards became lower and lower. Finally, it fell to the ground, its limbs twitching, and it struggled desperately, but it was in vain.

As the last ray of candlelight went out, the mouse's body became completely stiff and motionless.

"That's what air is, one kind burns, one kind sustains life, but it's also consumed, other kinds can't do that."

“We come to know everything and God through the world, through its operation, evolution, impermanence, order and beauty.”

“We have the ability to know that there is a personal God who has been given revelation to us and placed everywhere in the world, waiting for us to discover.”

Having said this, Gailis paused again.

“Indeed, the Bible is the word of God, for it was written by the prophets and apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”

"But humans have their limits. Prophets and apostles are still human. As long as they are human, their understanding and cognition of the world will be limited."

　Large chapters of 6000 words, and additional chapters will be released at 12 midnight.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)