Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 325 Agriculture!

In 1200, when the Renaissance of European towns had not yet officially begun, many fairs were held annually.

Even if they are held more frequently, they are only held on a quarterly basis, and rarely on a monthly basis.

But Baglasburg, a small frontier town on the border of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, held a gathering once a month.

Farmers from surrounding villages come here to sell their agricultural products and buy handicrafts from merchants.

Its level of liveliness has already surpassed that of most of the nearby small towns.

Of course, this kind of bustle will not last long, and when the people who come to the market disperse, the market will return to its deserted state.

In Mohammed's opinion, this "small town" under Baglas Fort will only be a market for a long time to come, and will not be able to accommodate too many people.

After all, although it's lively here, there's no real need to gather here for the time being.

After completing a brief investigation of the town, the delegation set out for Antioch under the escort of a team of "militia".

In Mohammed's opinion, the word "militia" is really inappropriate.

As for the company that is traveling with them now, there may be less than 120 soldiers, but the sharp temperament they show and the excellent equipment make people question the original meaning of the word "militia".

Of course, this is indeed the case.

Because the Antioch region borders directly on Anatolia, it has long faced the danger of being attacked by northern Turks from the south.

It would be extremely inappropriate and costly to prepare a large standing army.

Therefore, the militia, which trained regularly and were ready to assemble at any time to contain the attacks of nomads, was the main body of Antiochus' army.

Similarly, because the frontier regions needed to deal with nomads, the governance system of the Antioch Governorate was somewhat different from that of the kingdom itself.

Under the Governor's Office are counties, under counties are townships, and below those are villages.

However, whether it is a county or a township, each must have its own militia to facilitate immediate mobilization.

By the standards of later generations, these militias were naturally not comparable to active-duty troops.

But at this juncture at the end of the 11th century, even the so-called standing army, how long could it train throughout the year? Calculated at a frequency of one training day every seven days, at most it could only train days a year.

Antiochus' rotation training time is definitely more than 52 days each year.

In addition, since the Governorate of Antioch took control of the Antioch region, it only levied 30% tax, and the popularization of various agricultural technologies brought about an increase in agricultural production. The nutritional level of the people in the Antioch region has been directly raised to a higher level.

At least in Mohammed's opinion, these so-called militiamen were not fat and strong, but at least they had good figures, and wearing chain mail gave them an aura of murderousness.

Just one glance and you can feel that they are real soldiers, not just civilians posing as soldiers.

It is naturally a different experience to move forward with such a team.

In addition to their delegation, these militias actually had another responsibility, which was to escort the merchants who came from Antioch to hold a meeting back to Antioch to avoid possible dangers along the way.

The merchants were not surprised by the presence of militia. It was not the first time they met or traveled together.

But at the same time, they are not particularly familiar with it. It is more like fulfilling a certain obligation or responsibility, which is the result of the operation of the system.

It can be seen that this was not a spur of the moment decision, nor was it an arrangement made specifically to accommodate their delegation.

There were not many incidents along the way, but as they moved southwest, the number of surrounding rural areas began to increase at some point, which also meant that their large team had entered the core area of ​​Antioch.

When night fell, the militia, the caravan and the delegation arrived at a township government seat, where they were warmly received by the local government.

It was in this village that Mohammed met Lance, the governor of the Antioch Presidency.

In September, the scorching sun hangs in the sky, the golden sunlight shines on the earth, and the vast fields are dyed a brilliant golden color.

Lance, however, led his men and, together with many farmers, wielded sickles and harvested the famous Syrian wheat.

When Lance noticed Mohammed and the others, he didn't act pretentiously. Instead, he chose to put down the farm work in his hands and come over to greet them.

When he first met Lance, Mohammed found it hard to imagine that a man who was no different in status from the powerful Emir could be so amiable.

Lance, who used to be quite plump, has lost some weight after so many years in Antioch, but not much, and always has a warm smile on her face.

It is hard to imagine that such a person issued the most exile or death warrants in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Yes, Reims's rule over the Antioch region over the past decade was so prestigious that it was enough to impress the Assassins.

Various nobles who tried to defy his policies, or nomads who tried to plunder, were either exiled or executed.

The number of people sentenced to death by him may have exceeded a thousand.

Although this person acted so cruelly, in actual contact with him, Mohammed found that the other person was easy to talk to and could patiently answer all kinds of questions.

For example, Mohammed noticed that the "fallow land" in Antioch was different from the others, and Lance, the governor, answered his questions in a very easy, understandable and professional manner.

Before the large-scale use of fertilizers, most of the time and in most areas, we inevitably faced the problem of excessive consumption of soil nutrients.

After all, the ancients didn’t understand what nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium were. If the soil was not fertile enough, agricultural production would decrease.

In order to restore the fertility of the land, crops must not be planted on the land for a period of time. This is called fallow.

Leaving land fallow allows the land to recover and store organic matter while conserving moisture, while temporarily removing hosts can disrupt the life cycle of pests and pathogens in the soil.

This kind of fallow was usually practiced in a two-field rotation in the early years of Europe's Mediterranean region. That is, a serf would only plant 20 acres of his 120 acres (10 mu) of land each year, and the other acres would be left there to grow weeds.

This is actually very inefficient.

Therefore, between the 9th and 11th centuries, people began to shift to the three-field system.

In triple seed production, the arable land of an estate or village was divided into three large fields, one of which was planted with winter wheat or rye in the autumn; the second field was planted with other crops such as peas, lentils or beans; and the third field was left fallow (unplanted). Cereal crops consumed nitrogen from the ground, while legumes fixed nitrogen and thus fertilized the soil.

Fields that were left fallow quickly became overgrown with weeds and were used to graze farm animals, whose excrement fertilized the soil and restored its nutrients.

Crops are rotated annually, so each field is planted for two years out of every three years.

This somewhat complicated model undoubtedly requires a certain degree of large-scale agricultural coordination capabilities, as well as mutual relief and assistance. If each household farms on its own, the risk is relatively high.

Therefore, the manor economy was actually strengthened during this period.

The unexpected appearance of Garys further promoted this process.

The four-field system, which originally appeared in the early 16th century, was introduced three hundred years earlier and was piloted in the Transjordan region ten years ago.

Now that there is sufficient talent reserve, it has begun to promote it to various regions under the rule of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Whether it was the two-field system or the three-field system, Muhammad had some understanding and was clear about the situation of fallow land.

But there was something wrong with the "fallow" land in Antioch. The land was not covered with weeds randomly, but with a kind of "weed" that Mehmed had not noticed before.

"What is this?" Mohammed asked curiously.

"Clover."

"Grass?"

"Yes, we planted the grass specially."

Lance answered Mohammed in this way, and the merchants who were traveling with him showed through their actions what the grass was used for.

The merchants in the caravan, each leading their own horses, came to this "fallow" land.

Then the beautiful and majestic horses lowered their heads meekly and began to chew the grass on the fallow land.

Although it was difficult to read the horses' expressions, Mohammed instinctively felt that the horses really liked the smell of this grass.

"I have negotiated a price with the farm here. They will provide the fodder for the next two days, and we have to pay a certain amount of silver coins."

A merchant nearby added that of course the amount of money he had to pay was not actually that much, because in addition to silver coins, their caravan also paid another kind of compensation for the farmland, which was animal dung.

Mohammed did not know that the change in land management methods from the original extensive model to an increasingly efficient one was itself one of the characteristics of the agricultural revolution.

This pursuit of efficiency is not similar to the intensive farming in China, and in fact does not rely on manpower investment to increase production.

Instead, it is the result of a more "scientific" differentiation of work content.

Take Britain as an example. In the early 16th century, people still adopted extensive management methods for pastures in villages or manors and relied on the weather for their livelihood.

But starting from the 17th century, the English gradually transplanted crops such as clover onto fallow land and combined it with the three-field rotation system.

In addition, Britain at that time had already begun to breed high-quality livestock. With a stable supply of forage, the land that had been fallow and unable to generate economic benefits could now produce mutton.

At that time, Bakewell even called the "Inuit sheep" he bred "a machine that turns grass into mutton."

The farm they are on, as a four-field system, goes a step further.

First, he divided the thousands of acres of land on the farm into four parts: Plot 1: planting wheat or rye, Plot 2: planting radishes or beets, Plot 3: planting barley or oats, and Plot 4: planting clover or alfalfa.

The crop of clover was deliberately introduced by Gairis from Spain with the help of Arab merchants.

Therefore, it is normal that Mohammed did not recognize this "weed" before.

After all, it has only been two hundred years since the Spanish domesticated clover, and for people in other regions, it is still a novel crop.

In this four-field system, wheat or rye is the main food crop to provide food for people; radishes and beets are mainly used to feed livestock, and some of them can be eaten by people; barley or oats can be used to brew beer or feed livestock; as for legumes such as clover, they fix nitrogen and provide feed for livestock.

It can be said that nearly half of the land on this farm is used to produce crops that are not related to staple food.

This farming method may not seem to provide much staple food, but it can convert a large amount of soil nutrients into protein, providing the militia with sufficient meat.

Clover, as a legume, has the function of fixing nitrogen. While livestock eat radishes, clover and even the stems and leaves of various crops, they can also produce a large amount of manure to supplement soil nutrients, thereby improving soil fertility and increasing grain production.

The four-field system is based on the three-field system, which takes advantage of the opportunity of fallow land to plant crops such as clover, alfalfa, radish, and hemp.

Although crops such as radishes, alfalfa, and clover cannot be directly used as staple food for humans, they can quickly restore soil fertility and provide additional protein output when the land is left fallow.

It took Mohammed some time to gradually understand how the farm was worked.

When he heard about the yield of wheat grown on this land, he couldn't help but open his mouth and grin, quite surprised.

After all, the wheat yield per unit area on this land is almost 1.5 times that of the arable land near their Masyaf Castle.

And this is only one aspect of Antioch's superiority. The other side is that simply changing the land cultivation method to a four-crop rotation system will not actually increase the output of staple food, but will reduce it.

The real advantage of four-crop rotation is that it can produce more output with fewer farmers, and that in addition to the output of staple food, it can also provide a large supply of meat.

These meat supplies not only meet the physical needs of farm workers, but can also be used to make the militia group stronger.

However, this model of uniformly changing the crop planting on a large area of ​​land makes it difficult for independent farming families to accomplish.

The characteristics of different crops and the coordination of production tools require the existence of a more systematic management team with certain professional skills.

This is also the reason why both Gérice and Reims are trying to transform the manors that originally had certain collective production characteristics into collective farms with more systematic management.

As far as Gellis knows, many people have certain misunderstandings about the production model of collective agriculture.

The so-called collectivized agriculture is in fact incompatible with the intensive farming model, and is contrary to and not necessarily compatible with it.

(End of this chapter)