Chapter 79 Initial City Construction
The next day after the design drawings were sent back, Olivia received a letter from Caesar.
The letter reported the current population of Einweiden, the amount of arable land, livestock land, forest land, and the number of soldiers he had currently recruited.
The arable land mainly came from some remaining manor lands from previous dynasties, and they counted them one by one.
There were originally twelve manors in Einweiton, each with about one hundred acres of arable land, ten hectares of pasture, and ten hectares of forest.
If we list and add up the data, we will find that there are less than 2,000 acres of arable land.
These two thousand acres of arable land are almost all close to the sea and the river. The town is surrounded by steep mountains and has been an uninhabited area all year round.
As of now, these places have not been divided out, and they are all considered direct territories. They are deserted and barren. No one is doing spring farming, and the pastures are even more deserted.
Just two days ago, Sheriff Lavosen's nephew paid the money and rented an hectare of arable land from one of the estates, bringing over a dozen tenant farmers.
In the entire area, the most lively place now is the port.
The population counted by Caesar was the same as that on Olivia's system, and the number of soldiers he recruited was also about the same as the number of soldiers available on the system.
More than fifty soldiers were recruited and more than three hundred local people were hired to cut down trees and level the land where the city wall was planned.
Caesar sent the other half of the more than 300 people to the manor on the river bank to cultivate the land and restore agricultural and animal husbandry production.
During the war last year, most of the arable land was left fallow for a year or two, and could not be used for planting without deep plowing. However, these 300-odd people had no more labor than those who were building the city.
Together they could only manage half of the estate and cultivate more than a thousand acres of land.
It's only April now, which is a perfect time to plant crops. We'll be able to harvest them in a few months and become self-sufficient.
The letter said that when the construction of the port started, more than one hundred workers came from the north and the south, and these people were also hired to work.
As soon as the city building design was drawn up, the designer calculated the materials, personnel and construction period required.
The letter also included the building materials, manpower, craftsmen, seeds, lambs, cattle and horses that needed to be purchased in Lavosen.
The letter said that if the general location of the city was to be built within a year, another five hundred workers or craftsmen would be needed.
There are about five hundred people working on the project now, and if another five hundred are added, the total number will be one thousand.
The city wall, port, fortress, and four avenues were all to be built at the same time.
The construction trio and the workshop owners finished demolishing the house ahead of time. They received the plan yesterday and set out one after another today.
You don’t have to worry about buying ironware, firewood, or bricks. Just send them some raw materials for processing.
After reading the request in the letter, Olivia immediately called the housekeeper from the river.
The butler was busy building a private dock next to the manor barracks a few days ago.
He then went to the shipyard outside the city of Lavossen and bought four transport ships with a carrying capacity of over 100,000 pounds.
These ships are more than 20 meters long, 5 meters wide, have a draft of 2 meters and a square sail height of 22 meters.
It wasn't cheap either, costing more than 180 gold coins in total. This was considered a mainstream river transport ship, much larger than a ferry.
With your own ship, you can use the river to transport food, supplies, and some equipment to and from the port.
The butler received the letter sent back from the port from Olivia and immediately arranged for his men to take charge of the matter.
He sent his men to find intermediaries and recruited laborers and craftsmen from the towns or villages of the seven surrounding towns, totaling more than 500 people, and sent them over by boat.
He also sent ships to deliver 50,000 pounds of grain, several thousand pounds of seeds, and crude iron ore worth two hundred gold coins. He also sawed off several thousand large logs from the estate's forest, floated them on the river, tied them with ropes, and towed them across by ship.
Although Eindhoven has no shortage of wood, it is very convenient to transport it by water. It can be tied together and sent directly to the port without weighing down the boat. It would be a waste not to bring it.
As for the 50,000 pounds of food, it is enough for the people building the port to eat for about a month.
There were also fifty lambs, thirty adult cattle and horses, which cost two hundred gold coins.
She spent money like water, and 1,700 gold coins wouldn't last her two months.
As far as Olivia knew, her family was the only one that built a city with such a grand scale.
In fact, this is also a strategy. She mobilized a lot of people to do this. As long as the merchants outside went to the port, they would want to invest, which would naturally make money for her.
With the money, they invested it in production and construction, attracting more merchants and people to come.
Therefore, even if you don’t have much money in your pocket, you must not lose your composure.
She quickly handed over the logistical work to the housekeeper, and she still had time to inspect the spring plowing in the manor this year.
During this year's spring plowing, a total of 140 acres of arable land were planted. The potatoes in the cellar were also taken out and planted while the weather was warm and they had sprouted.
As for soybeans, we planted fifty acres this year, and eighty to ninety acres of wheat.
After the seeds and cattle and sheep were sent to the farm, soldiers watched over the people as they farmed and raised livestock.
After a few months of autumn harvest, the food produced by Einweiden itself will be enough to meet everyone's needs and become prosperous.
In the second half of April, Olivia continued to do some business with merchants.
There are still more than a thousand acres of land in the planned city, so money can be spent like water and made quickly.
Gradually, by renting or selling, he earned another four or five hundred gold coins.
The largest amount was the annual rent of 200 gold coins for the residential area.
This is a real estate businessman from the south named Punier.
He rented ten acres of residential land at the price of two hundred gold coins per year.
He planned to develop it into three-story wooden townhouses, each covering an area of 80 square meters.
Excluding the alleys, six houses can be developed per acre of land. Each house is planned to have three floors, a loft on one floor, and a suite on one floor. Each suite has four rooms, and the loft is designed as a storage room for residents.
That’s sixty townhouses, a total of one hundred and eighty houses.
As long as the rent for each house exceeds two gold coins per year, he can make back his investment and make a profit.
In Lavossen, there are also such terraced houses for rent. However, many times workers can only rent a bedroom on the first floor of a house, and three or four families live in one house.
The monthly rent is only a few li, which is most suitable for workers.
The land chosen by the businessman was near the city warehouse in the northeast of the city.
There are hundreds of acres of land like this in this area, and most of the cash flow in the future will come from this.
Although also a baronial town, the current land rental income in Lavosen is not much.
Olivia inquired and found out that the place where Lavossen was built only enclosed ten hectares of land. Excluding the fortress, barracks, various public facilities and roads, the remaining area was only more than 800 acres.
However, Baron Lavosen half-sold and half-gave away these 800-plus acres of land to a large group of his relatives.
There were only more than 400 acres of land left. He was short of money at that time, so he sold most of it at a single price.
In total, he collected tens of thousands of gold coins, which he initially used to organize the army, build cities and direct territories, construct roads, train knights, buy cattle and sheep, and support his family. He spent thousands here and there, and now he only had a few thousand gold coins left.
When they spent money, they did not invest in any economic industries.
Over the years, most of Lavosen's land is now used to collect property taxes. Relatives are all there to help, so how can they ask for money? It's good enough to collect a few hundred gold coins in taxes a year from the remaining land.
Every baron is like this. When they build a city, they make money quickly and don't take it seriously. But after being in charge for many years, they regret not making good use of the money.
Olivia shook her head. Fortunately, Caesar was the only son in three generations without a father or a mother, and she didn't have many relatives, so she didn't need to help so much.
Through this experience and lesson, she also felt that real estate must be planned reasonably, sold at a good price, and then the money can be used to develop workshops to make money.
Today, the number of workshops has been reduced from ten to zero. They have been moved to the vicinity of the port and rebuilt. Some have expanded from one to three.
There are still more than a dozen new businessmen coming to buy land or rent land to open workshops. In two months, when they start operations, it is estimated that half of the task number will be completed.
Late April.
Hundreds of giant trees and shiploads of supplies flowed along the water to the seaport.
In the past few days, most of the businessmen who came to buy land were turned away. I learned from the housekeeper that now the model is that the highest bidder gets to choose the land first.
Olivia only met one person a day and sold only one or two acres of land a day.
The later the merchants come, the more worried they are about not being able to choose a good location, and the more anxious they are, the higher the bids they offer.
By early May, Olivia had rented out another 20 acres of land in the workshop area, 10 acres of land in the market area, and 20 acres of land in the residential area.
Ten acres of land in the workshop area, ten acres of land in the market area, and twenty acres of land in the residential area were sold.
Including the Corinna family she invited, they also rented an acre of land in the workshop area to build a salt workshop and a warehouse.
The surprising income came from the port. The land had been leveled, but the dike had not been repaired yet, and it was only maintained by soldiers.
George, who was in charge of supervising the construction of the port, had already begun to receive docking fees from ship merchants.
There are small inland boats, each with a carrying capacity of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds. There are about fifteen of them. Each boat has a different owner, and most of them are here to pick up goods.
There are also large ships coming from the sea.
There were three or four of these large ships, all of which were huge ships with a load capacity of hundreds of thousands of pounds. They were the most advanced and largest ships of the era, and they all came from the south of the kingdom.
The capture of Constantia brought defeat to the northern pirates, and the whole country knew about it.
Merchants all knew that water transportation was faster and carried more goods, so land transportation was no longer attractive.
The big ship docked at the port, unloaded the cargo, and loaded the cargo onto small boats according to type, and then it could sail all the way to the northern hinterland along the Dela Ulun River.
The docking fee for a small boat at the dock is five silver coins per day, and for a large ship it is three gold coins. To deliver cargo once, both large and small boats have to stay at the dock for about a week.
The weekly income is one hundred and forty gold coins.
George carefully asked someone to make a detailed invoice for the money and sent it back, and the money he earned was also returned to the public account.
Thus, in early May, the public account had received a total of eight thousand gold coins.
She didn't dare to think how long it would take to spend the eight thousand gold coins. Less than a month later, the supervisor Caesar sent back another list.
There are various building materials that cost one thousand gold coins, including gypsum powder, quicklime, clay, copper, tin, iron, thatch, and hemp rope.
At present, the workers have completed most of the foundation. The stones needed for the city wall have also been brought from the nearby mountains. They dig up thousands of pounds a day like ants moving house.
After a few more days of saving, you can start building the city walls and the central fortress.
The soil and sand needed to build a stone wall can be obtained locally, but the above building materials must also be made into building accessories.
There is also two hundred gold coins of food and salt every month.
In order to ensure balanced nutrition and improve the food for the soldiers, the steward was ordered to purchase two shiploads of fruits, vegetables, chickens, ducks, fish and meat every month.
After the money was spent, in late May, the construction team handed her another note requesting funding.
The note first mentioned the results.
After more than a month, the workshop was basically completed.
Gao Sili started with the most important steel industry, and built two new brick kilns, three coal-smelting coke oven workshops, three smelting workshops, and two forging workshops.
That’s ten workshops.
Gaosili intuitively knew that the steel industry was the cornerstone of all industries. If the quality of steel was not up to standard, any fancy things he created would be castles in the air.
So, there are two pottery workshops, one glass workshop, two weaving workshops, three fish drying yards, two charcoal kilns, three carpentry workshops, two meat jerky workshops, two leather workshops, one dyeing workshop, and one dairy workshop, making a total of nineteen.
The workshop owners hired migrant workers or laborers from other places to do the work.
The framework of the workshop was built very slowly, and three people polished it bit by bit. The quality of the production line is many times higher than before, and they were able to expand the scale without restraint.
However, unlike private workshops that can trade freely, the first thing these workshops do after they are built is to send notes to request orders.
Olivia asked the housekeeper to purchase raw materials again.
Wool, cashmere, unprocessed sheepskin, ramie, flax, various dye media, as well as ore, quartzite, clay, and alfalfa were all sent to the workshop in shiploads, and the raw materials cost two to three thousand gold coins.
However, once these workshops start operations, raw materials of two to three thousand gold coins can produce things worth tens of thousands of gold coins in a month or two.
Excluding processing fees and dividends, the profit can be 5,000, which is a considerable income.
Moreover, the raw materials for making ceramics only needed to be transported from the manor in the next few months, and when Gaussley was a little freer, he planned to go exploring in the Einwetton Mountains.
Because of this, after delivering the raw materials, Olivia wrote a letter to Corinna, inviting her family to join in the geological survey to see if there were any salt mines in the mountains.
Corinna has three stars in exploration talent and is good at prospecting for minerals.
Soon, Corinna wrote back to Olivia in Einweiden and agreed to the mineral exploration.
Now that we're there, we're not just looking for salt mines, we're also looking for iron mines and copper mines.
You also need to find suitable kaolin and clay to burn porcelain, and rocks rich in various metal elements can also be ground into powder to make glaze.
After these goods are produced, they will be sold through three channels. Letilen plans to sell part of them at his grocery stores in Lavossen and Caron.
Part of it was sent to two stores in the new city for distribution.
The bulk of the goods have been booked by cargo ship merchants who do not want to return to the south with empty ships.
After docking their ships, these merchants did not unload their goods, but instead found out who was in charge in the city.
The first person these people got to know was not Caesar, whom they had never met.
Instead, it was George, the port garrison, Gao Sili and the other two who were in charge of the direct-operated workshops, and Letilen, who was in charge of the direct-operated commodity trade, who asked him to order local specialty goods.
In early June, the dungeon quest "Manufacturing. Primary" was halfway completed.
As the number of workshops and shops increased, the avenue took shape, regaining the prosperity lost due to industrial relocation.
Although the city's infrastructure has not yet been completed, the current prosperity value has exceeded 10.
After breaking through level ten, Olivia could see the growth of various values.
The current population of Eindhoven is over 1,500.
The refresh rate of talents is 1/5000
The taxable amount increased by 5% from the original amount, with a few gold coins added based on the property tax collected last month.
The number of conscripts increased by 5%, which means an increase of 75 people based on the current population base.
The happiness index also increased from 70 to 80, reaching a "stable" level.
In late June, the letter came back with a report saying that one-sixth of the city wall had been built, the foundation of the fortress had been repaired, several wells had been dug, the city's avenues and drainage channels had been repaired, and the foundation of the church had also been dug.
At the port, a new breakwater has been completed, the cargo pier, pier and bollards have been expanded, and the yard, customs office, navigation mark and garrison camp are currently being expanded.
Then, there was a long list of expenses to be paid.
For example, workers' wages, rations in various places, soldiers' equipment, daily necessities, building materials, and various raw materials.
To this end, Olivia brought all the servants in the manor who had business interests to do the accounting.
The study, which used to have no books in it, is now filled with account books. She doesn't know when this will end.
…
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