Seeing that all the recalcitrant knights had put down the weapons in their hands, Zhao Hu began to command his soldiers to clean up the battlefield, and the dozen or so tents sewn from sheepskin were all in Zhao Hu's pocket. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Although he didn't capture the Marquis of Cato alive this time, he didn't let him run away, and the corpse was also a lot of money, and if the successor of the Cato family wanted to rightfully inherit the position of the head of the family, he would have to spend a lot of money to redeem the old marquis's body.

Just when Zhao Hu happily commanded the soldiers to clean up the battlefield, his cheap father-in-law, Lord Liu Ming, was wearing a tattered chain mail in embarrassment, and ran out of the castle with a dozen servants, hugging Zhao Hu with a face full of grievances and crying bitterly, which made Zhao Hu, who was still cleaning up the battlefield, angry and scolded: "I am fighting bloody battles in front, but you are here to negotiate with the enemy, if you can't give me a reasonable explanation, I will send someone to take back your territory!" ”

"Reclaim the territory? Okay, okay, I don't want to stay in this place for a long time, you take back my territory, I'll be a knight under you, it's better than staying here and suffering the revenge of the Kesto family! ”

Contrary to Zhao Hu's expectations, Lord Liu Ming was not only not the slightest frightened when he heard that he was going to reclaim the territory, but instead showed joy on his face, and even his originally embarrassed demeanor seemed to exude an uplifting look, and he was a mess of gratitude.

"My lord, to recover the territory of an independent lord, you must give a title and land compensation!" Seeing that his sovereign was inexplicably sluggish, Adjutant Starn leaned over with an embarrassed face and explained in Zhao Hu's ear in a low voice.

"According to the decree of the Empire, the annexation of an independent lord's territory is that the lord must be compensated with a certain amount of property and land in order to continue the blood of this lord." It was this decree that ensured that although there were sometimes constant wars within the nobility of the empire, as long as they did not rebel against the emperor, the bloodline of the nobility would always last for a long time, and many of the knights themselves were descendants of the previous lords.

This time, Lord Liu Ming not only pretended to be a robber to rob the caravan of the Cato family, but also colluded with the Falcon family to ambush the Marquis of Cato, resulting in the death of the Marquis of Cato.

The revenge and anger of a marquis's family is not something that a little lord can bear, and now his intimate son-in-law is willing to take back his territory, which of course makes Lord Liu Ming ecstatic.

Take it back, take it back, fortunately, my cheap father-in-law only has three villages, Zhao Hu sighed secretly, the original owner of this body seems to be really autistic, and a lot of popular knowledge is not even known.

"If I could, I'd like to meet my two fiancées!"

Zhao Hu sat down in the hall of Lord Liu Ming's castle, just now the two sides had already negotiated the relevant matters of recovering the territory, Zhao Hu allocated two villages to Lord Liu Ming from a dozen villages near his castle in exchange for Lord Liu Ming's three villages.

"Of course you can, but my two daughters are still learning aristocratic etiquette from Lady Vena in the castle of dreams, and I am afraid that they will not be able to return until next autumn, and I will definitely bring them to meet the adults at once, and they will be thirteen years old next year, and the wedding will be held." Lord Liu Ming's face was relieved, and he picked up the title deed of the village from the table and handed it to Adjutant Staen.

"Thirteen!" The age that Lord Liu Ming spit out of his mouth startled Zhao Hu, who was sitting in the main seat of the hall, and after a long time, his fiancée and sister were still two thirteen-year-old girls.

"There's no rush to this! No hurry! Now that the agreement has been settled, I will lead the army back first. Zhao Hu stood up from the main seat in embarrassment, no matter whether the two sisters were beautiful or not, Zhao Hu was not evil enough to destroy the little girl.

"My lord, in this battle, a total of one hundred and thirty-eight ordinary soldiers were killed, seventeen knights were captured, a ransom of three thousand five hundred gold coins was received, sixteen villages were allocated, and the population was three thousand seven hundred and eighty-six、、、、、

Starn respectfully handed over a thick stack of data sheets in his hand and the village's head table to Zhao Hu, and Starn knew that the battle in Lord Liu Ming's territory not long ago had made his lord a small fortune.

In order to redeem the body of the hapless Marquis Cato and the captured squadron of family knights, the Cato family paid another 3,000 gold coins and divided thirteen neighboring villages to redeem all the captives.

Except for the knight with red feathers on his head, because he was the captain of the guard of the Marquis of Cato, Stu Iron Shield Knight, due to the death of the lord of grievances, the captain of the guard Stu has been stripped of the title of Iron Shield Knight by the new patriarch, and reduced to a subordinate guard without a territory.

Zhao Hu admired the loyalty and command ability of this knight captain Stu, if it wasn't for this Stu who organized the panicked knights to resist stubbornly, maybe these knights would have been defeated a long time ago.

Zhao Hu forcibly left him in the castle on the grounds that there was no ransom.

Because the Marquis of Cato was in an encounter with the Falcon family, who was invited by Lord Liu Ming to help fight the bandits, during the invasion of Lord Liu Ming's territory, he died in a heroic duel.

According to the tradition of the Imperial Knights, this is a battle between two knights of high moral character and incomparably brave, it is a fair and sacred battle, and it is a matter worth reciting, so the Cato family cannot be held accountable for the attack of the Falcon family, unless the Cato family is willing to admit that their lord was thrown off the horse and fell to his death when he was suddenly attacked, which will make the already disgraced Cato family completely become the laughing stock of the nobles.

"After doing so many things, I earned two thousand gold coins, it seems that if you want to make a fortune, you still have to find a way from your own territory!" Zhao Hu simply looked at the report submitted by Stairn, although this battle was very fruitful, but the cost was also very large.

Because of the bounty marked before the battle, these two battles consumed their bounty of nearly 600 gold coins, and these peasants who participated in the battle continued to flee after returning to the territory, with a lot of money, who was willing to stay in the castle stupidly and work hard, they all tried their best to run to their homes, and finally the 200 peasant soldiers ran away to only about 70 people.

The hunters also retreated to the mountains to spend the winter under the leadership of the leader, although the hunter leader promised that as long as he received his own requisition order, the hunters would come back immediately, but these situations that had never been considered before made Zhao Hu question his idea of "governing the army with money", is there a need for knights to really form a standing army?

After three days of hard thinking, Zhao Hu promulgated a new policy in his territory, the "Land Reward System".

"All soldiers who have participated in ten battles with the lord will be automatically promoted to the rank of sharp, transferred to the castle as the lord's guard, and the lord will allocate a piece of the richest land near his castle to him.

All soldiers who have hunted more than three enemy heads in battle will automatically become the head soldier and will serve as the commander of three in the army, and all soldiers who kill the opposing knight in battle will become the commander of the ten men in the army and will be entitled to one percent of the spoils after the battle、、、、、"

"Money is the driving force that drives people's desires, and land is the foundation of retaining talents!"

This is the conclusion that Zhao Hu came to after meditating for a few days.

In this world where the productive forces are not developed, most of the peasant households are gathered in the villages, and in other places there are often large tracts of wasteland, especially the "light commander" who does not even have a knight under his command, so to speak, "the poor are left with land."

Zhao Hu deliberately allocated a piece of land on the edge of the river outside his castle as the garrison and production of his castle garrison.

He is not rich, and it is impossible to always keep a large number of soldiers in the castle, so it is better to set aside land for them to cultivate by themselves, and only need to hand in a very small amount of food, and serve as a soldier in wartime, serve the people in peacetime, and conduct military training every day after dinner.

This system of ploughing in the morning and training in the afternoon allowed the soldiers to feed themselves and maintain a well-trained army for themselves, and also to promote the commercial trade around them, instead of the former situation where the peasants were led back to their territory by knights after returning from battle.

The new policy promulgated by the lord shook the farmers in the farms in the territory, and it has always been the privilege of the knight lord to accept the lord's reward land, but now as long as he joins the lord's army, he has the opportunity to get the lord's land reward, and he can also share the spoils of battle,

Farming in the garrison camp outside the castle required very little food, which made many destitute peasants feel like they had seen heaven, and it was the lifelong dream of these extremely poor peasants to be fed.

With the free propaganda of the fleeing peasant soldiers, the peasants in the realm knew that their lord was the most generous man in the empire, and now the good name was even greater, and all of them knew that their lord was a generous and well-spoken man.

However, only ten days after the post was posted, more than 1,300 peasants gathered outside the castle to ask to join the army.

This frightened Zhao Hu, who was not mentally prepared, a thousand soldiers were in the heyday of the Falcon family, and they only had a military strength of eight hundred, including more than a hundred knights.