Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 332 Herd
Solve the soldiers' worries and make them aware of their connection with the sect and the country, then they will fight for themselves.

However, this fight is for oneself, not simply for personal gain.

People follow the crowd, and only when they are connected as part of human society can they recognize the existence of non-natural entities.

In this case, if people want to be truly fearless, they must pursue goals beyond their own interests, such as for their parents, children, and other loved ones.

Build a castle, leave soldiers stationed there for a long time, and follow the previous successful cases to set up a branch here to provide services to the surrounding governments and people, and protect the priests who are preaching nearby...

All of these things need to be completed by Huguet and the Paladins together.

It can be said that Gellis is the pioneer who walks in the front, and the Paladins who embark on the "Road of Destiny" are the ones who consolidate their faith.

Gellis did not just walk away, but left behind a fairly mature organization.

On the other hand, in the city of Erzurum, the first Turkic Parliament was successfully held at the suggestion of Yug.

For nomads, the concept of parliament is actually easier to understand than for farmers.

Farmers rely on the land for their livelihood and find it difficult to migrate, so they are bound to be controlled by landlords, lords, tax farmers, etc.

When they find it difficult to free themselves from the influence of these authorities, the most they can do is to enter into a contract with them and agree on mutual responsibilities and obligations, or simply be exploited by violence.

But for the herders, if they can’t win, can they still run away?
With more options available, it is actually more difficult for nomads to achieve a highly centralized system.

Even though huge nomadic empires appeared from time to time, they often collapsed within a few generations.

Since it is difficult to establish absolute authority between each other, different tribes often need to maintain a relatively equal relationship in order to maintain cooperation.

Of course, Mongolia is a special case. The Mongol Empire, which emerged from the North Asian plateau, was far inferior to the Central Plains dynasties in terms of centralization, but it was enough to make West Asia call it "too much meddling."

An important premise of the parliamentary system is to recognize the cooperative and competitive relationship between the forces represented by the members of parliament, rather than just relying on armed competition.

Since tribes like the Ottomans were relatively easy to accept the concept of parliament, they understood it as another form of alliance.

Then the process of the Turkic Parliament was relatively smooth.

Because of the strong nomadic culture, the representative mechanism of the members of the Turkic Parliament was born, which is also different from that of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

It is not a system with layers of parliaments like the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but is closer to universal suffrage for the Turks.

Compared with agricultural civilization, the social system hierarchy of the vast majority of nomads is quite flat.

In nomadic society, the smallest and most basic structure is the "tent".

"Tent" can be understood as a family, referring to people living in the same tent.

Since the herd is not the land, people living in the same tent often actually own the livestock together and share the food and harvest because they share all the grazing work.

Compared with agricultural settled societies, women's social status is relatively stable, and there are fewer cases of no property inheritance.

When daughters marry and leave their families to form new households with their husbands, they are often given livestock to take with them.

Even the very Islamic Bedouins, although they strictly distinguish between men and women, prohibit many actions of women.

But within the family, Bedouin women have considerable power, so much so that the Bedouins essentially regard the "tent" as the property of the mistress of the house.

Men's power and wealth are reflected in their various external actions.

Above the "tents" are actually pastoral groups. Pastoral groups refer to "tents" with a certain degree of kinship that are more likely to gather together than other "tents" for various reasons during the year.

Some herdsmen have dozens of tents, while others have only a few. When they are on the summer pasture, they tend to concentrate their grazing and are accustomed to taking care of each other during the period of migration.

Above the pastoral group are the tribes.

Although a pastoral group can have a leader, strictly speaking, the leader is not the leader of other people in the group.

Even if the Khan of the tribe appoints a leader, he may still be betrayed by the people in the herdsmen's group.

Many times, the chief was just a person who passed messages between tents and tribes.

Even the transmission of messages is not absolute, because the head of each account, or family members, actually have the right to communicate directly with the Khan.

In this case, whether it is the chief or the khan, they are not born through violence as many agricultural peoples imagine.

Many times, it’s just because of good “popularity” relationships.

It is perfectly normal to elect a person to be the "headman" or "Khan" because of his good interpersonal relationships.

If we replace this relationship, it will become that each account will elect multiple representatives within the scope of its tribe, and under the leadership of the tribal leader, they will form a group to participate in the convening of the Turkic Parliament.

Ordinary herdsmen basically have direct contact with members of the highest authority of the Bey State, and they often live together and have blood relations.

A tribe, with a population of at least a few hundred and at most two thousand, was allocated representative seats according to the number of their respective accounts, and participated in the Turkic Parliament with different voices.

At the same time, because the number of representatives is fixed, it also determines that different tribes need to bear military obligations that match their number of accounts.

This prompted the tribes of the Bey State to take a step forward in terms of centralization.

As for the Bayi National Grand Council established between Gairis and David Soslan, which is a pan-national council that agrees on the country's taxation policy and determines the direction of financial use, it has been progressing extremely slowly for various reasons.

However, these have little to do with Garys now, and he can't take care of so many things for the time being.

Because in November of the year 0 AD, Gellis was struggling with a camel in the mountains.

The cold wind whistled across the dry grass, rolling up yellow-brown dust. Looking into the distance, one could see many mountaintops covered with snow, like the curtain opening for winter.

Herds of camels and horses moved slowly across the frost-covered land, and the air was filled with the smell of livestock and the lingering scent of cooking smoke.

The herdsman group that Arsalan belongs to has four households, with hundreds of cattle, sheep, camels and horses in total, which is truly a huge group.

Sheep follow goats, children follow their mothers, cattle follow horses, but horses don't like cattle...

Everything should have been fine, but it made Garys feel particularly irritated.

In a sense, Gaillis once again confirmed one thing: his lifelong enemy is actually the camel.

Humans are not worthy of being Garys's lifelong enemies. There is no one in the world that Garys cannot defeat, and there are very few people that Garys cannot convince. But camels can be.

It’s not that Garys can’t beat a camel, but camels are indeed difficult to communicate with.

During migration, many camels that have never had ropes tied through their nostrils cannot help but take a bite of any grass roots they see.

It is extremely difficult for others to drive them away, so the only way to be efficient is to have Garys deal with it personally from time to time.

However, the camels were like criminals who refused to change their ways and never repented. As soon as they saw green grass, they would lower their heads, slowing down the team's progress.

Even those camels with ropes through their noses are not easy to deal with.

Even Gailis himself had lost his camel caravan twice in a row...

The wind in Anatolia was bitingly cold in November, and even Garys, who was wearing several layers of cotton clothes, felt his hands frozen.

So one time, while walking, Gailis turned around and found that there was only a piece of straw rope left in his hand.

The abandoned camel was standing not far away, chewing something in its mouth. After being discovered by Garys, it did not think there was anything wrong with it, but glared back at it.

As for the other time, the straw ropes between the camels came loose, and when Garys was discovered and reminded by Alexandros nearby.

I just noticed that half of the camels were lost half a mile away...

The camels did nothing but stand there and watch the herds pass by them.

These stubborn beings never seem to know what it means to go with the crowd.

In his previous life, Garys had only farmed and had never herded cattle, but in his life in different places, he had made friends with herders.

In the eyes of those herdsmen brothers, camels are also extremely hateful creatures.

Be it sheep or cattle, they are actually very difficult to lose. Even if they get lost, they will actively find their way back.

After all, they are used to living in groups, even if the shepherds eat their milk, cut their wool, and slaughter them...

They are also unable to overcome their fear of the unfamiliar environment and need to huddle together for warmth. The terrifying nature and the wilderness are the herdsmen's best helpers.

But camels are different. Eight out of ten herders who look for their lost livestock are looking for camels.

Of all the livestock, camels are the only ones that have their owners' contact numbers, names and villages sprayed on them with paint, so that passersby can help call their owners when they see them.

It can be seen that camels not only like to wander around, but they can also wander very far.

In the past, Garys found it funny to think of a camel with a phone number hanging on it roaming freely in the Gobi Desert.

But now, it is his turn to herd camels...

These free lives can actually live freely without humans, so naturally they look down on humans.

Including Garys, all of them were looked down upon by the camels...

However, when ropes are put through their nostrils and they carry heavy objects on their backs, they have no choice but to follow in people's footsteps and survive day after day without food or water.

After a few days of traveling like this, we passed through a mountainous area with overlapping peaks, entered another grassland, and arrived at a leeward location.

The difficult transition along the way has actually just come to an end.

Nearby is the winter pasture of Arsalan and his four families.

Because the grass in winter is drier and lacks nutritional value, we must rely on larger areas of grassland to provide matching nutrition.

Therefore, the winter pasture is much larger than the summer pasture, and the distance between pastoral groups will also become larger.

When the wind and snow come, the world will become small with only these few families left, without any troubles or news from the outside world.

The life of a herder is a hard struggle to survive between heaven and earth.

This is not a lie. In fact, many times, since there are no wooden stakes or any place to tie the reins, people can only be used as stakes.

Even Gairis, with several Paladins and Mohammed as his followers, had to listen to Arsalan's command and stand still with more than a dozen reins hanging on his body.

As for the others, they were busy making fire, cooking, digging snow, cleaning the dugout...

Even though this pastoral group had gained a lot of manpower because of Garys, it still seemed to be short of labor.

There is endless work waiting for these people.

Paladins like Alexandros who were born in the Turks were actually quite used to it, but many of the new Paladins from Antioch seemed to have a hard time speaking out after experiencing so many days of torture.

As for Mohammed, when he dug a basin of snow from the hillside nearby, he couldn't help but wonder if his trip north this time was a bit too rash.

He came here to verify with Garys and to know the future of this world.

However, he became a "herder" with endless work to do every day, and the biting cold wind and snow blocked his mouth, making it difficult for him to have time to communicate with Garys.

Even if he had the chance to talk to Gailis, he would occasionally reveal a look of embarrassment and say something difficult to understand.

However, even so, when he came back from the hillside and saw Garys still in the desolate wilderness, surrounded by livestock, Mohammed still felt that the trip was worth it.

At least, he already knew that Garys was not a person seeking fame for nothing, but was truly like the prophets recorded in the scriptures, living among believers and not feeling ashamed of hard work.

They are people who truly implement their own teachings and put them into practice, and such people are undoubtedly worthy of admiration.

Of course, there were many times when Garys would inadvertently show his magic, especially when competing with those camels.

The prophet always has to show his amazing strength to win against the camel.

……

Back in June of this year, with the support of the Genoese and the advice of Alexius, the Crusaders from Western Europe decided to go to Constantinople before going to Egypt for support.

When the Fourth Crusade arrived in Constantinople, the city had a population of about half a million, a garrison of fifteen thousand, and a fleet of twenty galleys, and was poorly defended.

(End of this chapter)