Mercenaries and Adventurers

The beer in the wealthy district was not the same as the beer Zhao Ji drank in other places.

The color of beer in various taverns in the slums is quite yellow, but the beer has a strong flavor and a sense of satiety. At the end of the day, even if you don’t eat, just drinking beer will not make you hungry. And the beer he just drank in Wharton's full belly tavern was normal in color, clear and clear, and the most important thing was that its beer was very rich in foam. A glass of wine could have half a glass of foam, but Zhao Ji felt that it was a loss.

Some people seem to like it very much. Zhao Ji can always hear someone bragging about it. Hey, he listened to it and knew that they were some vain people. People who talk about these things all day must rarely drink them. It's not because the people who can go to that tavern to spend frequently are the rich and powerful people in the city.

However, the beer provided by the tavern in the rich area is not rich in foam, and the taste is not strong, but it is clean. The whole beer must have gone through multiple filtering processes. Zhao Ji can guarantee it, although he has never seen it before. The brewing of beer in the wealthy district, but Zhao Ji felt that he had guessed almost exactly. The color of the beer in the wine glass is very light, but with a slight sniff with the nose, you can still smell the fragrance of the beer. After a sip, the taste is light, but it is quite distinctive, and it is more suitable for women to drink together.

Why is it suitable for women to drink together, because Zhao Ji also saw that there are many women and their families drinking beer and eating small pieces of barbecue at the entrance of the tavern in the rich area.

This is a very interesting phenomenon. In various families in the slums, men and women are generally working. They either go to the fields outside the city to work together, or the women have to do the work of washing people's clothes and cleaning houses. Strong girls are sent to workshops as apprentices, these are some savings at home. After all, if you are an apprentice in a workshop, if you don't have excellent skills, you can help the craftsman. Many apprentices have no income all year round, and they have to rely on family savings to support them. Of course, compared with farming and doing some simple manual labor, working in a workshop can learn a lot of skills. With a technology, you can rely on the technology you have learned to start a new job as a master in other small places, which completes a small identity leap all at once.

Zhao Ji found that many families in slums did this.

Compared with men and women working together in the slums, it seems that they have equal status, but they are not like that in terms of status within the family. Judging from the various information obtained from Zhao Ji’s usual wanderings and listening to people’s chats, in the slums, men and women are the most important. Not equal place anymore. Men in many families often beat and scold their wives and daughters, and families with daughters also try to marry their daughters out early. After the daughter married out of the family, the natal family rarely asked about their daughter's situation.

Zhao Ji estimated that it was because of poverty, not that her natal family didn't love her daughter, but because she didn't have extra time and money to guarantee the life of her married daughter. After all, every family has to work hard for life all day long, so there is no energy to take care of more things.

It's not that pain doesn't exist, but that most of the pain is swallowed bitterly by the people at the bottom.

The opposite is the case in wealthy areas. Although he, Zhao Ji, is not very familiar with rich districts, according to his short-term observation and the news he usually hears, women in wealthy districts generally do not work outside, and they are generally only responsible for various internal affairs of the family. matter. Although there are family conflicts and violence here, they also have mutual conflicts. Men beat women, and women beat men. They have all happened, and Zhao Ji has heard of them all.

In terms of equality between men and women, it can be done, but this is not because of mutual tolerance in the family because of feelings, but some other practical reasons.

First, girls in rich areas do not need to marry early and have children during their youth, but generally receive family education taught by older women at home.

Learn some characters, read some cultural books and so on. This generally requires women in rich areas to have a certain degree of cultural literacy. It is difficult for women of the right age who have not received cultural education to marry in rich areas. People will choose to have more for their long-term inheritance. The educated women of the right age, of course, unless the dowry is particularly large. And powerful families will even hire special tutors to give unified education to the children in the whole family.

Second, the reduction of family conflicts may also be the reason why women in wealthy areas have their own independent dowry after marriage. Because I have the money I can control, I don't have to be like the women in the slums, asking their husbands for living expenses all day long, and bowing their heads and swallowing their anger.

Zhao Ji also heard people say that very few women from poor areas normally marry into rich areas, and most of them are secretly taken care of by rich men in rich areas as lovers. The reason is that in addition to the bad reputation, there are more cultural differences caused by class differences. Different assets will bring great inconsistency in living habits, which naturally divides the population flow of the two classes. Unless you accumulate assets by joining the church, joining the army to participate in wars, or doing business, or become a landlord with a large leasehold land.

Zhao Ji drank beer and ate the packaged sweet and sour fruit pies. He felt that the channels for class exchange in this society were too lacking. Nobles are always nobles. , and the common people raise their class upwards, there are too many paths and risks that can be taken.

It is not easy to increase the class by joining various churches, because most of the churches absorb people from the wealthy class. After all, wealthy families generally give their children simple cultural training. Although it is simple, they will at least be able to read and write. Basically, children from poor families rarely know words, and most of them cannot count to one hundred because they cannot be used in daily life.

After the church accepts these children, it has to carry out long-term cultural training, which has disadvantages and advantages for them. The disadvantage is that it will cost more manpower and material resources for long-term and time-consuming training. The advantage is that these poor children are not more religiously influenced by their families, which makes it easier for various churches to selectively train the church personnel they need.

As for joining the army and participating in wars, it is also very difficult to raise the class. Zhao Ji only heard some news about this aspect. After all, from Zhao Ji’s point of view, the army here is still the kind of low-training and low-organization army organized by the nobles themselves. There is no professional army anywhere, except for the imperial army. Outside the Knights. In Zhao Ji's opinion, Kendall's town guards can only be regarded as half of the army. After all, the guards also serve as half of the police in the city, and the other half is served by the clerk and the city militia respectively.

The army serves politics, and the kingdom where Zhao Ji is located is ruled by feudal aristocrats, so naturally the military is controlled by nobles at all levels. The rule of the kingdom is ruled step by step by the nobles, and the construction of the army naturally exists step by step. Each noble has its own small army, and each noble is the highest leader of their own army, which brings more hip-pulls. question.

First of all, the size of the army is completely constrained by the land size and economic strength of each noble. This size is not only quantitative, but also qualitative. War is not just a matter of picking up a long sword and stabbing people. It is a very complicated operation organization. Different weapons and equipment are divided into different arms and occupations. The development and preparation of large military equipment is also very complicated. , Combat and logistics are also different management mechanisms, and these talents should be specially trained.

And there are command organizations at all levels in the battle. After all, in war, you can't command the army with just a shout. The generals command the lower-level commanding officers through the messengers, and the lower-level officers have to directly command the soldiers to fight. In the soldiers' battles, they also have the actual positions of the captains. These small captains have to fight The front line directly controls the soldiers under his hand against the opposing army. These all require special training, but Zhao Ji has never heard of them. Maybe the empire has them, but this small place definitely doesn't have them.

The feudal and aristocratic army did not have a proper management and command system. After all, one of the characteristics of the feudal era is the private nature of power. If I give you power, you have to serve me exclusively.

According to the stories that Zhao Ji heard about this different world war, the commanders of each army were nobles, and the generals they appointed were also other nobles with friendly relations. In the noble army, the arrangement of each position is not based on the command skill level of each general, but depends on the status and relationship of each noble. This is true of the command above, and it is even more so at all levels of the army below. The noble army does not rely on promotion and salary to control the army, but relies on the children of the noble family to be placed as officers in the command of the army at all levels. army.

Secondly, the purpose of the army is also a problem. Judging from the stories Zhao Ji heard, the army of this different world completely serves the noble class. Fighting to conquer cities is not to liberate human beings or to break oppression, but to act for the benefit of the nobles. The people who form the army have no loyalty to the country. Whichever "noble" nobles give them money and food, they will follow the nobles. Fighting wars, and for the benefit of the nobles, they always compile various laws and regulations to force the people to perform military service. Use the wealth plundered in the war to pay the people who were coerced by force.

Even for the legendary heroes in the legends, their army carried out a carpet-like search after attacking the enemy's city. The funny thing is that the more successful the hero, the more prominent the stories they obtained in the search for loot success. Of course, these heroes still have to face, so they always show the justice of their actions by compiling their own legends, and criticize the evil appearance and behavior of the enemy. The winner naturally has the so-called 'justice' Halo, it's inevitable, after all.

The dead never speak for themselves unless they become undead.

But the undead are also evil beings that are heavily promoted by all those in power.

Zhao Ji, who drank too much beer, was a little drunk. Seeing that the sun was still early, he staggered away from the rich area, returned to the Foxtail Chamber of Commerce, and took a nap in his room at noon.

When he felt that the time was almost up, Zhao Ji fetched water to wash his face in the backyard of the chamber of commerce, and sobered up his head with the cold Kendall River water. Set off to the artisan area to visit the celebration organized by the Church of the God of Artisan.

The artisan area is overcrowded, but according to Zhao Ji's observation, most of the people who come here are relatives of artisans and apprentices in the family. It seems that the Church of the God of Craftsman still can't attract more people to come to participate in the celebration.

This may be the case in other towns, but Kendall City is different. I heard from the old Foxtail President that Kendall City’s handicraft products are very good, and the scale is the strongest in the nearby counties, even larger than that of the province. The scale of the artisan district in the capital is much larger, and the products can even be sold to the capital of the kingdom through caravans.

In other places, one blacksmith workshop in a town is enough, but Kendall City has carefully differentiated craftsmen of all categories, and each category has its own independent workshop. It is said that this is because when Baron Kendall's family was in the empire, their family was responsible for the engineering supervision of the empire. Although they were defeated in the political struggle and could only escape from the empire and start from scratch in the newly established kingdom, the Kendall family must have not forgotten their special skills.