Chapter 14 Household Registration Management
After the footsteps of the soldiers outside the hall faded away, Olivia put down the things in her hands and opened the map again.
This time, the red footprints appeared at the edge of the fiefdom. Perhaps in less than an hour, they would be spotted by Caesar.
She probably didn't think there was anything to worry about. She just thought, don't sleep too deeply tonight so as not to miss anything. However, Olivia wanted to prepare a few other things at this time.
On the side, Adam carried a bundle of firewood into the dining room and filled the fireplace. He then looked at the iron stove hanging on the fireplace and saw that the hot water was about to boil.
"Adam, call the butler. I have a few things to tell him."
Adam nodded: "Yes." Then he ran out.
Not long after, the housekeeper, who had just finished counting all the wood, came in exhausted.
"Madam, what can I do for you?"
The butler went into the warm dining room, and Olivia resumed her work of hemming the lady's belt, and as she did this at a leisurely pace, she said:
"Butler, how many people are there in the village? I remember there seemed to be a wax tablet in the manor recording the number of transfers and population."
"Yes, I'll get it right away."
The housekeeper was a little confused, but he still went back to his room and found the thing among a pile of dusty wax boards that had not been touched for a long time.
Not long after, Olivia put down her needle and thread, took the wooden page, untied the rope, opened it and took a look. The population and number of households in the village were exactly the same as the number she counted on the game map, with no concealment.
"Butler, do you know how many underage children there are in this village?"
The current standard for adulthood is fifteen years old. It is normal to have newborns in this village. Poor families have one or two children, and slightly better-off families have two or three children. The miller's family has a bunch of children because he has enough food.
The housekeeper was stumped by the question. Minors who were too young did not have to pay head tax, and no one had ever counted their number.
"There are about twenty or so, ma'am. Do you want me to count them?"
However, the housekeeper usually pays attention in the village, so he can answer a similar number.
Olivia nodded:
"The farmhouse at the back will be finished in a few days. After it's finished, go check how many children all the residents in the fief have.
It would be best if you could take a complete population count of the entire fiefdom, including age groups, genders, the number of unmarried young people, and the number of elderly people, and make several detailed lists for me."
"Also, roughly write down how much land each household owns, whether they are self-employed farmers or tenant farmers, and where it is located."
Implementing registered population is a key link in building a territory. In fact, population is also the foundation of the lord's existence, and labor is the most important resource in the agricultural era.
Only by knowing the population situation clearly can we better control the macro-control. Now that things inside the manor are in order, it is time to look at the entire village.
The housekeeper suddenly felt sweat on his forehead. This was not an easy task. Besides, there were more than a hundred people in this village, and they were all farmers. What did the lady want to do by knowing so much details?
The housekeeper looked puzzled.
Olivia patiently explained her intentions so that her subordinates would not misunderstand her. She said:
“The village lacks a priest to help people pray, and no one in the village is literate and can understand the meaning of the scriptures.
Therefore, I will conduct a detailed headcount again, and I plan to build a church next year that can accommodate the entire village so that everyone can receive teaching, especially the children.
As for counting the size of each family's land, it's to re-establish tax standards. After all, every family's situation is different. If there are childless tenants with poor land, we can collect less tax next year."
After hearing this, the butler finally understood.
He nodded hurriedly. "Of course, of course. I remember that when Knight Stuart built his manor in the fiefdom two years ago, the Lavossen Church allocated a sum of money for the establishment of a chapel."
Then the butler went back to think about the matter.
In the Alta state religion, the king is not only a secular king, but also the representative of the creator god on earth and the protector of the religion.
Therefore, the archbishop of each county diocese in Alta is nominated by the diocese, then recommended by the Privy Council, and finally appointed by the king.
Under the county archbishop is the diocesan bishop in each barony, and each diocese will have a branch church in each knight's fief.
If the bishop cannot develop priests into every knight's estate, he will not be able to collect the tithe from the knight's estate.
However, the knights on the border were poor and barbaric, and few were willing to appoint priests. The bishop could not use force against them. After all, the church had no military power, so he could only give a policy that if they were willing to build churches and appoint priests in the fiefdom, the bishop would also allocate some money to subsidize them.
Olivia thought that now that the bishop's grant for building the church was in her hands, she would have the final say on how to spend it. After the church was built, the money could also be used to build roads and bridges in the village.
The above high-sounding reasons were just to fool the butler and prevent the news from spreading too early.
In fact, Olivia also has some reform ideas of her own for the fields in the hands of tenant farmers and self-employed farmers.
Nowadays, whether they are self-cultivating farmers or tenant farmers, they have to rely on the weather for their livelihood every year with their own small plots of land. The impact of good years and bad years on their living conditions is really too great, and not all crops are planted scientifically, which affects the output efficiency of the land.
She wanted to take over all the tenant farmers' fields, manage them in a unified way, and let these tenant farmers become professional farmers who received a certain salary every month.
As for the self-employed farmers, Olivia wanted to train all the self-employed farmers in the fiefdom into craftsmen and turn their limited and barren land into factories or workshops.
Take linen for example. Every household makes their own linen, retting, drying, combing and spinning it at home. The quality of the linen is very uneven and cannot be sold at a high price. Now the linen is stored in the warehouse behind the kitchen, and it is difficult to tell the difference between flax and ramie. The only way to get it cheaper is to barter. Even if you take it to town, you may not be able to sell it.
Let them plant in a unified way, and then arrange a few self-cultivating farmers who are good at weaving to set up workshops, formulate standards, and unify processing and production.
Not only linen, but also wool and leather, and it can also support some handicraft self-employed individuals to make pottery, glass, cast iron, wood pulp paper, and so on.
Then assign them some projects to do every year, give them a salary that can support their families, and allow them to trade freely.
In this way, tenant farmers no longer have to rely on the weather for their food, and a group of wealthy self-cultivating farmers can be cultivated. Wouldn't this create a prosperous large village?
As for the healthy young self-employed farmers in the village who were married and had children, Olivia planned to conscript them all into military service.
According to her conservative estimate, there were only five or six young self-cultivating farmers in the fiefdom who met the requirements.
However, adding five or six soldiers will make the border safer. In addition to patrols, they can also set up outposts to improve security.
At this moment, on the map, the red footprints seemed to have sensed the approaching patrol and began to move away from the map in a roundabout way.
Olivia really didn't know whether their target this time was her home or a nearby estate.
After a while, she returned to the bedroom, washed up briefly, changed into her nightgown, and lay down in the quilt, watching with interest the red footprints running around in the forest.
She clicked on Caesar's character icon on the map and saw that his status was "Alert"
Rather than the usual "focus" during patrol
It seemed that Caesar had discovered their traces in the woods, and these thieves probably did not expect that someone would abandon the shortcut by the river and choose to go around in the woods.
Caesar seemed to have figured out the number of the enemy troops and sent his followers on horseback to the Renault Manor next door to ask people to come and share a share of the pie.
The fireplace in the room was burning, and Olivia closed her eyes and rested for a while.
About an hour later, she opened her eyes again and opened the map, and she could see the red footprints. They had now been chased to an open area where the housekeeper had ordered people to cut down wood.
Olivia saw that her cheap father's icon appeared on the map. He also brought some people with him and came from another direction, forcing the thieves to be in a dilemma at the edge of the open logging area.
Oh, you want to capture him alive and send him to the Baron in exchange for a reward?
…
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