Iron Powder and Spellcasters

   Chapter 126 Politics

"politics!"

   Hearing the friar uttering the word, Winters completely lost interest in the conversation.

   "Bullshit politics." The second lieutenant in the town threw his boots with a bad attitude, and the soles of the boots hit the floor and made two thuds: "It's just such a small place with **** politics!"

"Where there are people, there is politics. Even in this small room, there is politics." Brother Reid stroked his beard and said with a smile: "You represented the authority of the military in Langtun, and I was sent by the Catholic Church. Preachers at the bottom, isn’t this politics? Since there is politics between you and me, then Langtun Town naturally has it.”

   Winters subconsciously wanted to refute, but he felt that what the other party said made some sense.

   "So an old **** gave me a politics class? Ridiculous." Winters dismissed it and started making the bed for bed.

   He didn't notice: Compared to when Brother Rhett first entered the bedroom, his attitude had subconsciously softened a lot.

   "Young man, I want to correct one of your notions." This level of irony obviously couldn't sting the monk's face. The old man said with a smile: "Although I am a magician, I am your magician."

   "When did you become 'my' magician?" Winters asked rhetorically.

   The old friar replied in a natural tone: "Of course you hired me, aren't you paying me a salary?"

"Are you too embarrassed to say that? Have you ever worked as a scribe?" Winters sat down on the bed with his arms folded, and sarcastically used his honorary title: "Mayor Mitchell dares to bother. You are a living saint, isn't the paperwork still done by Pan Weiqie? You eat at the Mitchells' house, live at the Mitchells' house, and pay a salary. To be honest, I want to change seats with you. "

"Someone is a copyist because he can only copy, and the reason I don't copy is just the opposite." The old friar was not ashamed to shirk his work, he said with great sincerity: "If I do copy work, It's like someone is wasting your resources, and of course I can't allow that to happen."

   "You really speak such shameless words!" Winters was shocked.

The old man said unhurriedly: "Mr. Second Lieutenant, power requires the assistance of knowledge to function. Why do imperial officials in the Far East hire scholars as staff? Why do noble lords like you hire priests as advisors? It's all the same. For you In other words, my value is not in chores like copying and reckoning, but in providing knowledge that you don't have."

   "What knowledge?"

   "Political knowledge."

   Winters sighed: "Brother Rhett, it's getting late, please go back and rest."

   "Let me ask you a question, Your Majesty." The old monk didn't mean to leave at all: "Do you know why the plateau people call this new land?"

   Winters thought for a moment, and he speculated literally: "Because it's newly cultivated land?"

   "New reclamation?" The monk smirked, looking directly into the second lieutenant's eyes: "What about the original owner?"

  The eyes of the old man are dark and deep, and I don't know how many secrets are buried.

   "How do I know?" Winters didn't know much about the history of Plato: "The land without owners."

   The old monk burst into laughter, as if he had heard the funniest joke.

"Little guy, let me tell you, as far as the ocean is in the east and the vast sea in the west, there is no land without owners under the sky. There is land without people. There is land without owners, but there is not an inch of it." He wiped away the tears that came out of his laughter: "The newly cultivated land of the plateau people, after 30 years of retrogression, is the pasture of the Hud people. The Heishui River that divides Langtun and the neighboring town is the 'Dashu' in the Hud population. It means nine crooked rivers."

  Winters returned to a sitting position from lying down: "So...what does this have to do with the current Wolf Town?"

"It is related, of course it is related. Everything today can be found in the past. Only by knowing the history of this place can you understand the 'politics' of this place." Brother Reid asked an irrelevant question: "Have you been to Wolf Tunnel? The village under your jurisdiction?"

   "I've been there, I've been to every village."

   "Then have you paid attention to their land?"

   Winters didn't understand what the other party wanted to ask: "Land? What do you mean?"

   "I asked you if you paid attention to the amount of cultivated land in each village." The begging monk smiled: "In other words, the amount of wealth."

   "Nanxin and Beixin villages look a little worse." Winters recalled what he saw in each village, and replied: "Hedong and Hexi villages are better, and Dusa village is the most prosperous."

"Wrong!" The old man took out a cane stick out of nowhere, and tapped Winters' head: "The richest place is where we are sitting, the Mitchells, and the Wilkes. The family, the Bentin family...these estate owners! Next is the village of Dusa. Then there is the east of the river, the west of the river, and the poorest is the village of the Protestants."

The moment    was hit by the rattan stick, Winters seemed to be back in the military academy class. He covered his head and asked, "So? Isn't it normal to be rich and poor?"

   Brother Reid asked indifferently: "Didn't you find anything wrong?"

   "What's wrong?"

   "Pa" the old monk gave Winters another rattan stick on his head: "Think about it, what is planted in the manor's land? What is planted in Dusa Village? What is planted in other villages?"

   "How do I know? I can't even tell the difference between wheat seedlings and weeds!" If the other party was not an old man over ninety years old, Winters really wanted to grab the rattan stick and beat him back.

"[Selika language] The four bodies are not diligent, and the five grains are not divided." The altar monk recited a sentence in a language that Winters could not understand, no longer trying to guide Winters to think, but directly instilled: "Great The landlord's family grows crops such as tobacco and sugar beet that can be sold for money, and there is only a small amount of arable land to grow grain. Why? Because they are not short of grain, how much can they eat with an open mouth? The most land has the least population, so most of their arable land is used to grow cash crops.”

The old man took a sigh of relief and continued: "And Dusa Village, Dusa Village has fewer people than other villages, but their land is second only to the manor owners, more than the other four villages combined, or even more To be able to use the three-pu system. Do you know what the three-pu system is?"

   Winters, with his upper body leaning forward and his elbows on his knees, shook his head.

"The three-plant system is rotation farming, dividing the arable land into three equal parts, one for the main grain, one for the supplementary grain, and one for the fallow as the pasture, which is rotated every year." The old monk thought for a while and asked, "Have you ever seen one before? The public ranch in Dusa Village?"

   "Have seen."

   "That is the land that has been fallow this year and is used as a common pasture in the village. That's why Dussac can afford to raise horses and feed pigs with oats, because they have no shortage of arable land."

   "What about the other four villages?"

The altar monk sneered and said, "The other four villages? Those four villages have to go to Dusa Village to rent horse-drawn plough carts every year, because their arable land is used for growing food, and they cannot support large animals. Hedong and Hexi There is barely enough arable land in the two villages.

   Those two Protestant villages had the largest population and the least arable land. Even if every inch of land was planted with grain, it would not be enough to eat. Aren't the long-term workers of the Mitchells all Protestants? If he could be a self-cultivator, which farmer would be willing to be a hired laborer? "

   "The more people there are, the less land is cultivated?" Winters frowned: "How could this be? Why don't you go to cultivate the wasteland? I clearly saw a lot of wasteland!"

"Do you think that the wasteland here can be reclaimed if you want to reclaim it?" The old monk's smile became more and more cold: "I have already told you, every inch of land, every tree, every river...even in the forest. Rabbits, fish in the river, and birds flying in the sky all have masters!"

"who?"

   The begging friar pointed the tip of Winters' nose with a cane stick: "Yours."

  Winters was at first dazed, then surprised, and finally displeased: "Do you think this is funny?"

   "Or I put it another way." The old monk put his hand on the rattan stick: "You are part of the true master of this land."

  Winters was finally woken up: "You mean... Army? Paratus Army?"

"You're not too stupid." The old cultivator patted the second lieutenant's shoulder with a rattan stick: "Of course it's the military, otherwise why would you, a small hundred households, hold the power of life and death in Langtun? Do you think you are To keep the law and order? No! You represent the authority of the true owner of the land."

"You wait... the power of life and death?" The young Veneta was confused: "I'm not sitting on a fat vacancy, I was sent here! Wasn't the town officer in Wolf Town before me? Has it been vacant for ten years?"

   "The vacancy is because the wolf colony is not rich, not because the post of the town official is not fat. In the system you are in, you are sent here to be assigned. But to the people here, you are a master who fell from the sky.

The status of the   Plateau army in the new reclamation area is almost equivalent to that of a feudal lord, where you are half a lord. So the landlords and Dussack welcome you, the Hedong and Hexi villages fear you, and the Protestants simply don't trust you. "

   "Why don't you trust me?"

   The pilgrim monk's face was half-smiling: "There are some Protestants, and there is wasteland in the wolf colony. What is preventing them from opening up the wasteland?"

   "Er... me?" The answer was obvious, but Winters didn't understand: "Why?"

Brother Rhett said with a sneer: "Because even if they take up a little more land, you will take the Dusa people over and chop off their heads—don't worry, the Dusa people will be happy to do this. If you are caught by them If they are defeated, another team of soldiers will come from the county seat. If one team is not enough, another ten or one hundred teams will be added until they are all killed.

  So they are afraid of you, they are afraid of you to death, they are afraid that you will find the marginal land they have stolen, and they are afraid that you will find the bones of fish and rabbits in their house. You are the knight master of Wolf Village, they are despicable peasants who poach and cultivate on your land, how could they not be afraid of you? "

   "I still don't understand." In some places, Winters still couldn't figure it out: "Does the law of Plato even prohibit hunting and fishing? It also prohibits private land reclamation?"

   "The law of Plato does not forbid it, but the law of the new land does not."

"why?"

   "No reason." The old sage monk had found that the second lieutenant's political talent was lacking: "This land is the spoils of the Palatine Army, and the Palatine Army has all rights from the sky to the ground."

"and then?"

"Then the best land was sold to the rich to repay the loan, and so there were these estate owners. As compensation for the wars and for generations of service, Dussac also got the land, and so there was the village of Dussac. There are also some poor people and tenant farmers who dream of becoming self-employed farmers. They only have enough money to buy a small piece of land. Hedong and Hexi villages are these people."

   "What about Nanxin and Beixin villages?"

"Those Protestants were originally from the Empire, and they have fled from the north one after another in the past ten years." The old monk smiled: "The Empire does not like the Protestants, and the country of galloping horses is short of people. Therefore, the Catholic Church Every time there is a conflict in the north, there are more Protestants in the newly cultivated land. However, the Protestants here are late, and the land price in Langtun is not as cheap as in the early years, not to mention there are other buyers. "

"Who?"

"What do you think?" The eyes of the old begging friar were bright: "The Dusa people are based on the land grant system, and they don't worry about the land. The small peasants also support their own families, and they have no money to buy land. So who could it be? So who has the money?"

   Winters was silent, he thought for a while and said: "Suppressing land reclamation in order to sell land for money, no matter how you think it will do more harm than good. How could the people of Paratus come up with such a system?"

"The harm outweighs the benefit?" Brother Reid laughed dumbly: "Boy, you really don't understand the power of this system at all. Among your republics, the country of galloping horses has the smallest population, but the territory of the country of galloping horses is the smallest. But the most, and more and more. What do you think it is based on?"

   "Is it possible to make money by selling land?"

   "Of course it's not that simple." The old monk tapped Winters on the head again with a rattan stick, and said with hatred: "I ask you, what do you think is the most murderous weapon in the world?"

   "Uh." Winters replied tentatively: "Sword?"

"Wrong! The weapon that kills the most people in the world is called 'mobilization'. The sword is a human weapon, and it can only be used to kill one person once again. The monk sighed: "Well, you don't understand what I said. Let me tell you something you can understand."

   "Speak, please." Winters sat respectfully with his knees together.

   "Searching mountains requires manpower. Your dozens of Dussacs alone are not enough. Dussacs are your most reliable personnel, but they are too few. You have to mobilize the other four villages."

   Winters said bitterly: "Nanxincun and Beixincun are reluctant to send militias. The Protestants are particularly hostile to me, and I don't know why."

"You hang out with the Dussacks every day. It's strange that they can give you a good face. Who do you think the emperor's Dussacs are dealing with? Who do you think drove them out of their homeland?" The smile on his face is very subtle: "But I will help you solve the problem over there."

   Winters was rather surprised: "Aren't you a Catholic? Carman thinks it's dangerous for you to go to the Protestants."

"Politics! Boy! Politics!" The begging monk slapped the second lieutenant on the head twice with a stick: "The point of politics is not to turn the other party into yours, but to make the other party think you are his, understand? Go to Protestant Village with me tomorrow."

After   , the old friar left Winters' room without looking back, leaning on a cane stick.

   "Please walk slowly." Winters got up and watched.

  The old man went out for a while, and Winters closed the door before he could react: "[Vineta's swear words]! When did I really take this old magician as a teacher?"

   The word mobilization did not appear in the main universe until the French Revolution, and the universe in the book let this word be born in advance.

   PS: Oh, I lost consciousness, which caused me to misunderstand the number of chapters again. This chapter is the twelfth chapter.

Thanks to the book friends who have voted for the recommendation before, thanks to the book friends Social Justice Pharaoh's monthly ticket, thanks to the book friends 20180309221323285, Tianjian, Jiang Xue Diaoweng, the most in your life, book friends 161120205936216, Ami, overlooking the abyss, social justice king,

   The yellow rabbit from the flower family, the book friend 20200822165222737, the calm gray one, the ideal uncle in the 30s, thank you all.

   (end of this chapter)