Herald of Steel

Chapter 454 The Spring Planting

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Alexander's message was received by surprise, alarm, and even fury by many of the 12 nobles.

This was because most of them knew they had nothing to do with the attack and saw it as Alexander's way of intimidating and encroaching upon their land.

And they were totally right about this, as Alexander really had only found a small portion of the called-up nobility to have actually taken part in the battle.

Thus this was really a way of demanding vassalization, or at least free trade with the powers.

Understanding this, the nobles quickly asked for aid from Amenheraft, but they were destined to be disappointed.

For they would get no real reply, just flowery words and encouragement, followed by a description of the many types of difficulties Amenheraft was currently facing.

Now they were certainly true to an extent, but there was also the fact that Amenheraft had received an offer from Ptolomy, proposing that if Amenheraft looked the other way as Alexander annexed those lands, Ptolomy would not withhold the funds promised to him as a way to retaliate against the recent attack.

This was of course something that Alexander requested and the king was happy to oblige.

While Amenheraft was also happy to accept the offer, both because he needed the money, and also because the time and money needed to defend these small fries were not worth it.

Hence, these few men really had no choice but to negotiate with Alexander.

But that fateful meeting was still a bit away, as in the meantime they busied themselves with overseeing the spring harvest and then follow it with a spring planting.

For the window for this was relatively short.

The peasants first had to collect some of the spring crops such as cabbage, onions, and garlic they planted in the winter, and harvest many of the fruits from orchards.

But more importantly, they had to prepare the fields for the winter crops- oats, and barley specifically, which would be the staple food for many of the farmers and their livestock.

They also needed to plant a variety of legumes and vegetables such as peas and beans, onions, and leeks, amounting to around twenty percent (20%) of the total crops, while some would choose to grow cash crops such as flax for making linen that was then used to make clothes, grapes for producing wine, and olives for olive oil.

Thus, as this was the time of planting and due to all of this frantic plowing, the sight of farmers driving their plows powered by horses or oxen with great urgency from sunset to sundown was a common sight to behold.

And this was specifically true in Alexander's fiefdom, which cultivated so much land that the demand for pack animals skyrocketed to the point that the pasha had to even temporarily decrease his industrial production of various materials and temporarily reallocate many of the draft animals used in those sectors to carry materials to the field.

This increase in demand as well as the land cultivated as compared to the winter was fueled by two factors.

One was the large influx of refugees who now were being employed on the farms.

And two because Alexander had decided to capitalize on his win and expanded his area of influence, taking over a huge swath of empty, fertile land around Zanzan, and starting to plant his crops there.

Acquiring this land was relatively easy for him, as the area around Zanzan was originally Pasha Muazz's personal land, the entirety of which was owned and administered by his house.

And since that family had been driven away, the lands naturally fell into Alexander's hands.

Now technically there were men living in those lands who acted as its owners, their origins being that they had been appointed by Pasha Muazz as supervisors to oversee and administer his vast fields, and tasked with managing, controlling, and directing the peasants and slaves who worked there.

And with over close to 8000 sq km of land that Pasha Muazz controlled around Zanzan, there were a lot of such men, who were called by a special name- Neta.

These men were not strictly nobility, but labeling them as servants would also not be correct, as the latter had too low of a connotation.

Perhaps a steward or butler might be a better translation, or an even better approximation would be the medieval knight, who was also not a peerage-holding lord, but a pseudo one.

And similar to how a knight would be a great force in battles, these netas too had a small number of armed men under them, present there to enforce order and disciple on the farmers.

Some of these had chosen to stay in Zanzan even after Pasha Muazz had left, as they saw Alexander as weak and a fool with only a few days on his hand.

Hence, a few of the bold ones had even begun to rule over some of the lands as its lords, erecting fortifications and acting as the leader of their community.

Alexander of course knew about these courtesy of Camius's intelligence, but when he had first gotten here in November, he had not had the manpower or time to deal with them.

And then, when he had finally decided to deal with them, which was also one of the objectives of his Jabel campaign, that originally intended to go north and then turn east to take care of these small fries, things developed in such a way that things stood as they were currently.

The benefit of which was that he did not need to any longer strong arm these little fishes.

He could just send a battalion (600 men) with his coat of arms around and plant the flag down in front of the rudimentary forts, and that would be enough to make all inside fold without question.

These men had certainly heard what Alexander had accomplished and were smart enough to recognize that their paltry garrison of at best a few hundred men would not be able to resist such a juggernaut.

Thus they quickly surrendered when they got the promise of amnesty from Alexander, though not before they were required to hand over all their food and valuables to him.

'Darn it, I should have ran when I had the chance,' These men would then lament regarding their greed and wish they had followed the path of some of their colleagues.

A key note here would be that Alexander did not deal with these netas personally, for he felt they were too down the pecking order for him to deal with personally.

And so his retainers got the honor of leading the forces to reclaim the lands and decide these men's fate.

Now Alexander had advised against killing them outright as he kind of learned his lesson about killing people left, right, and center.

But then there was the dilemma of turning the loyal servants of one's enemy into regular citizens.

That was out of the question, as this was just waiting for a disaster to happen.

So the netas were offered either the choice of leaving the territory or being turned into farmers employed by the lords, or basically slaves.

And naturally almost all chose the former, as the cushy job of neta made it so that they had grown to most certainly abhor physical work, not to mention work as tiring as farming.

Thus these destitute lackeys made the long, slow march to where Pasha Muazz was temporarily residing, or toward territories that were friendly to them, though many failed to do so, instead dying or worse being captured as slaves by bandits, slavers, and even nobles.

This happened because Alexander had effectively death them a death sentence by forcing them out of his territory with no provisions or mount to speak off, causing them to resort to banditry and thus subsequently being caught by the authorities.

Hence only a small cadre of loyal servants would actually get to join forces with their master.

While Alexander would get himself enough fields that would triple his current lands, going from 36,000 hectares to around 100,000 hectares or from 360 sq km to 1,000sq km.

Which meant that with him practicing a three-crop rotation system, and having already plowed 24,000 hectares in the winter, he would have to plow around another 42,000 hectares of land.

Alexander just barely had the capacity to do this, in no small thanks to the new horses and prisoners, as he employed close to 20,000 men and a few thousand pack animals just for this endeavor alone.

He had to even create several thousand heavy plows for this expansion, which he did by reallocating much of the weapons-grade steel into making the plow head, and then even redirecting much of the military-industrial base into making the wooden body of the tilling device for a time being.

The reason for this being that a large portion of the new land, about one-third or 15,000 hectares to be precise, was to be planted with beetroots, which would be used to make sugar, the economic benefits of which need not be said.

While the other 27,000 hectares would be allotted for grains, vegetables, and other cash crops.

So in this way, farmers all over the country were seen engaged in their craft for the time being, toling under the heavy hot sun to grow sustenance for themselves and their lords.

While Alexander in the meantime got two very good news.

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