Rise of Rurik

From the ruins of the old Pine Needle estate, the Rus' settlement of Mstisk has sprung up. The vast majority of Rosborne immigrants will settle here, and she will surely become the largest Rus settlement in the Principality.

The returning Rurik first listened to the reports of the locals in Novgorod.

There are urban construction reports and production reports, and the most important thing is everyone's description of the crops.

The old guy Rigus has lived a long time, and he can't stop laughing. It is said that the weather is good this year, and the wheat is rising very well. All the wheat has started the heading process, and a wonderful harvest is not far away.

The descriptions of the residents of Novgorod are very consistent. They have never seen the agricultural scene this year. Everyone compared this year with previous years and made a good harvest judgment.

A bumper harvest is almost inevitable, because technological innovations in ploughing and sowing have reduced the input of planting grains and increased the harvest. The wheat has been in an orderly manner since sowing, and the roots absorb the earth's resources in an unprecedented order. The technical advantages of the "drill seeding" model have achieved initial success, but the people are more willing to attribute it to this year's climate.

Rurik deliberately scouted the fields near the city, especially to observe the ears of oats up close.

Oat ears are very different in shape from wheat ears and are lower than the latter in terms of yield. Although European oats have the advantage of being hardy, Novgorod is indeed warmer. Rurik was satisfied with the rise in oats here, and he was more concerned about the wheat "experimental fields" in Mstisk.

As long as you continue to go retrograde along the Volkhov River and enter the huge Ilmen Lake, the first settlement you see is Mstistisk. 's journey.

Taking this opportunity, Rurik's ten maids hurriedly submitted the data on the fields they had surveyed and mapped on other farms. In an instant, a thick stack of cardboards recording the dense data was piled up in front of him.

It was deep in the night, and the flames of the bronze lamp sockets danced.

In the warm house, Svetlana was just dozing, squinting at her husband's back.

Rurik continued to keep his spirits, and continued to review these documents by relying on the flames, and couldn't help yawning.

Lana frowned, and she couldn't help but ask coldly, "Do you want to continue watching?"

"You... haven't slept yet."

"I just want to be with you.

"

"You rest first."

Husband seems very cold? Lanna sat up slowly, and yawned hurriedly after being infected by Rurik. "It's really necessary to watch it again, and you will have enough time to watch it when it is dawn tomorrow."

"Time? All I need is time. What do you think I'm doing here?"

Lana was stunned for a moment, and said casually, "Just look at what those sisters wrote. There are also written by me, but it's about other farms."

"Looks like you know it all, but you just haven't figured out what it means."

"I don't care what I do." After saying that, she laughed out loud, then lay down and twisted her body like a coquettish cat, and then asked Rurik to sleep.

"I have to keep working..."

Rurik didn't care about his wife's pouting expression. In his right hand, he still held a sharpened piece of charcoal wrapped in a paper roll, which he used as a pencil to perform statistical and mathematical calculations on yellow-white paper. His time was indeed very tight, because the wives and concubines all worked as clerks in the past, and the fields they counted were the tax base of the agricultural tax, the principal tax source.

These land areas are the basis for how much grain tax the Principality can collect in Novgorod this year. Rurik planned to set a standard based on the average oat yield of the people of the White Tree Manor in Novgorod, in order to collect 11 taxes on all the farms. In theory, this huge amount of tax can provide immigrants from Rosbourne without working and live comfortably for a whole year, because their wives and concubines scribes are very pragmatic and conduct preliminary censuses of each farm, allowing Rurik to further Find out exactly how many men, women and children there are on each farm.

As soon as the data was aggregated, Rurik learned not only the number of acres, but also the rough distribution of the locations of the farms, as well as an estimate of how much land each man in each farm could be responsible for cultivating.

To be able to raise taxes in an orderly manner is a real test of a regime's organizational ability.

The Principality is in the transition period. A tribe mainly engaged in fishing, hunting, robbery, and trade will enter the era of farming. Many things must be done by the monarch himself. If there is a group of technocrats, Rurik really doesn't have to go there himself. The current major contradiction lies in the existence of these technocrats.

Civil servants will be given priority to be promoted among the group of cubs that they have cultivated by themselves. Regardless of gender, those with outstanding mathematical ability and language ability will be selected and appointed. Of course, in all fairness Rurik would have preferred a group of male scribes to stand out.

Rurik decided to take his subordinates to collect taxes himself, and he would make a field trip to the entire lakeside of Lake Ilmen, and even to see how the life of the Ostara people who immigrated to the southernmost tip of the Great Lake was like.

He took the time to put together a list, first made a draft with charcoal, and then wrote the official list with a pen made of Yan Feiyu dipped in ink, and he collected taxes according to this.

Through these statistics, he has learned that the total population of the Slavic farms under his control has reached nearly 30,000 people, including a batch of newborns. When the boyars of the various farms held conferences in the past, each of them described that their farms had a small population. According to past knowledge, the farms that clearly surrendered to the rule of Rus seemed to have a population of just over 20,000 people, but the results of the current investigation are: All exposed.

They don't want to expose their economic strength and become a big fat sheep that is frequently cut for wool, and they even dare not expose their potential military strength in front of the Rus army. They were all trying to pretend to be weak, and Rurik understood why.

Because the agricultural tax of the eleventh tax is still a heavy tax based on the current production, Rurik has not even ordered a poll tax!

The agricultural tax rate in the ancient East can be as low as 30 tax and 1 tax, but the poll tax must be collected. First, the poll tax allows the state to accurately know the population of its subjects, and secondly, it encourages the people to open up wasteland to grow food, and offset the loss of tax revenue through new harvests. As for the large households keeping slaves, the method to curb the large households is to collect heavy taxes. For example, if the slaves are charged double or even three times the head tax, the tax must naturally be paid by the master.

This set of models has both advantages and disadvantages. In a country like the rising sun in the morning, its advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

There is a poll tax, even if it can be as low as a silver coin, or the equivalent of ten pounds of oats. Not only the local Slavs, this tax is for the owner of the principality, and those who are eligible to pay this tax should be regarded as the real subjects of the Rus principality.

The poll tax is a very new thing for everyone. They only fully accepted the agricultural tax this year. In order to avoid complaints, Rurik decided to suspend the poll tax. He still needs to think about it.

Because the number of Slavic people in this region is not at all the 30,000 people on the books!

Rigus revealed that Governor Medved has been on an armed expedition with more than 300 men in the jungle, and the "expedition" is still going on and will not be suspended until the autumn harvest.

Medved's work is said to have made some progress, but the methods used are very violent.

Some of those "hidden people" were not really isolated, small farms with paths in the woods to hide in contact with the lakeside farms. The residents of these farms are usually only a hundred or so people, but they are very large, just like a large group of dim stars around the bright stars in the night sky.

A messenger passed the news to Novgorod that Medvedt had used military means to force as many as ten small farms to forcibly relocate! These people were relocated to the reedy desert not too far south of Muskiysk to build settlements. According to the description of the messenger, these forcibly relocated people feared the powerful force of the new ruler. After learning that they could freely develop the fertile land by the lake , most of them are really willing to stay, but I only hope that the adults will allow them to at least harvest this year's grain so that they can survive the winter smoothly.

Rurik believed the messenger's description, and he might have been able to count thousands more when he went to the east bank of the lake and headed to the new settlement of forced immigration there.

He has no doubts about Medved's methods. Although they are both Slavs, their positions are completely different, because Medved is a foreign relative of the principality.

Medvedt and his guys in the name of bears are all imitating authentic Rus warriors in their dresses. It must be the converts who are fanatical. He will first use force to force the immigrants. Immigrants' last resort is a happy one.

"Perhaps forced immigration is actually a good strategy for long-term rule, but the method is too violent. It must be appeased! I will also canonize the new Boyar, give them new farming tools, and provide them with crops and so on..."

In the future, more and more people will be pulled out of the jungle. Those people will be the losers of the competition, so they must leave the lakeside farming area with better water and soil. Rurik doesn't care about their emotions. A large number of labor forces are further developed. From the perspective of the monarch, Rurik now needs the labor force loyal to Rus to reclaim the land and grow wheat to pay taxes. If the area actually has a Slavic population of 200,000, then all of them will be pulled out and pulled to the lakeside area to build one village after another.

Is 200,000 people a huge population for Lake Ilmen?

Even in the current purely agricultural society, the villages that can be formed by 200,000 people and the corresponding farmland, people living around Lake Ilmen, a large inland lake, are not short of resources.

As for why a large number of people stay away from the lake, one practical reason is clear to Rurik - the old pine needle manor does not want others to plunder their interests, the entire lake was once its sphere of influence, and the manor that is allowed to continue to settle must report to the pine needle manor tribute.

The leader of Pine Needle Manor did have the qualifications and strength to be a self-proclaimed prince, but it was a pity that he was instantly turned into powder under the attack of Ross's powerful military strength.

Rurik fell asleep after all. He is undoubtedly with his wife, you and me. He just arrived in Novgorod for a short rest. In the next month, because of the wheat harvest, the labor force in the entire region will be busy. I'm afraid my arms will be sore.

The three-day fleet in the berthing area continued to move forward. The immigrants took a rest and got some supplies. The next stop, the hopeful Mstissk!

Soon, a huge lake came into view. The Rus people who are used to seeing the sea don't think it's a big deal. They pay more attention to the eastern area of ​​the fleet, the flat area near the shore under the dark green pine forest, and the scenery there is indeed something you have never seen before.

There seems to be a vast meadow with green grass everywhere?

Indeed, if a flock of goats were released, they would ruthlessly clean up the spring oats Kendall that was just beginning to head.

The first batch of oats sown in late April entered the heading stage, and those that were delayed until early May had the heading stage further delayed. Heading or not, these crops are all grasses, they are grasses.

The Rus people have lived a good life with wheat every day for many years, but they have never seen a large area of ​​wheat fields. Quite a few pure Rus women were taken aback when it was pointed out that this was a wheat field! On the contrary, the local Slavic women who married into Rus were very proud.

The pier in Mstisk has begun to take shape, but the huge fleet moored in Ross still seems to be unable to handle it.

Arriving here again, a sense of the vicissitudes of history blows. Rurik stood on the deck, and the south wind with a faint grassy smell was blowing head on. The wind was strong, and the calm lake was blown into sparkling waves, and the water waves kept beating on the reeds on the shore.

Compared to three months ago, the settlement has seen significant development to the naked eye.

A system of defensive and windproof walls has been constructed, with timber-framed towers erected at intervals. Some Rus flags flutter in the wind on the wooden walls, indicating that this is the home of the Rus.

Rurik is very satisfied with their construction. After all, it is necessary to guard against others. As outsiders, Russ immigrants are in the sea of ​​Slavs. When the national integration has not yet been completed, to avoid gang rebellion, any settlement will be To do city defense. It is not even the Slavs who live along the lake that should be guarded against, but the Slavic national group further south, the Krivic League.

There were many men fishing on the lake, and some even drifted to Lake Ladoga.

After the fleet entered the pier, the immigrant crowd walked out of the trestle in great spirits and stepped on the sturdy lake on the flat ground. The so-called pastures that the immigrants saw clearly, and the wheat fields that were about to mature were actually connected by the lake!

No one can ignore such a fleet, and the people stationed in Mstissk have been informed that the hit in their hometown has arrived a few days ago.

Arik looked forward to the victory of the tribesmen entering the port. When the boat docked, he brought a group of strong men rolled up their sleeves and drove a pony cart, or a push-pull two-wheeled cart, and happily came to help.

Men are the most positive, and what they greet is not others, but their own wives and children.

The women who landed looked after their own pots and pans, as well as boxes for money, and spare leather and commoner bundles. Young children were held in the arms of their mothers, and some urchins began to run around happily on the spot.

There are also those tribal elders who immigrated, who had completed the last and longest voyage in this life when the wind and candle were dying, and finally arrived at this warm and fertile land that the prince had won for everyone. When they die, they will sleep here, and they will be happy in their old age.

It takes a long time just to unload the goods, and a large number of net bags are unloading all kinds of people. The furniture as a whole is not heavy, but it is the daily necessities of up to 600 families, and everyone estimates that the unloading will have to be tossed until tomorrow.

Rurik organized the people to unload the cargo on their own, and was also pleased that some fishermen had suspended fishing.

Those fishermen are young soldiers of the first flag team. They found their wives and children as soon as their boats landed. They didn't feel bad when they learned that their old house was sold. , the whole body also has inexhaustible strength.

Arik came in time with his guys, and the young and strong people immediately joined the unloading work.

"Brothers, pay attention, find your wives and children, and transport your belongings first. Come back immediately to help when they are at home!"

"Make good use of the trolley and help other brothers deliver goods. Put your child on a trolley or a carriage, and keep your children from running around."

"Don't quarrel, if someone quarrels, they will be punished by me!"

Arik gave orders this time. He is the manager of Mstissk, and the brothers of the first flag team admired him, making the entire unloading and transportation scene seem chaotic, but in fact there are rules. Some families who have packed their supplies have pulled their carts down the dirt road in the countryside to the gate of the city, and more and more families have begun to sing songs and leave.

Rurik finally let out a sigh of relief, and a big hand patted his shoulder hard.

"Arik? Is there anything else?"

"It's nothing." Arik smiled, "Is there no clan in my hometown?"

"There are still a group of people left behind."

"Why?"

"Because we have to control the mine and our shipyard. Even if we emigrate, our hometown must not be lost."

Arik nodded in relief. He still had a concern in his heart, and he felt at ease when he heard it like this: "In this way, I don't have to rush to move my father's tomb here."

"Uncle's tomb? Don't worry, the tribal cemetery in my hometown has always been taken care of. Many of those New Rus who joined us later still live in Roseburg. The Harrodsen family is still in charge of management. We desperately need iron ore from our hometown, and also There is salt from further north. We are just people who have left our hometown, and we will still have very frequent contact with our hometown in the future.”

"Alright. It looks like we're going to light a lot of bonfires tonight and have a good celebration. Now we're going to continue unloading, come on!" Arik patted his brother on the back, "Boy, you're already a strong man, as a Maharaja, you have to show your masculinity to your brothers. Let's unload the cargo together, finish the dock work early, and eat grilled fish in the evening. By the way, let me tell you about the good situation of this farmland, and the south side. Those new guys."