The Barony of the July Valley was busy, and Art, as the leader of both the military and the civilian government, kept shuttling between the army and the territory every day.

On the fourth Friday of July, Art finally had a day off, and was going to take two hound hounds into the mountains for hunting and recreation, but received news that an old friend had come to the valley.

The visitor is none other than Art's knight brother, David, the palace guard knight? Patrick.

It had been more than half a year since they parted in Solburg last year, and the spring appointment had been delayed for several months, but by the time they said goodbye, Art had become a baron.

In the hall of the lord of the wooden castle in the valley, the commanders of the armies of Yat and Odoangus accompanied David and his party to a simple dinner.

After a few delicious beers, David began to talk to the crowd, "Baron, ladies and gentlemen, forgive me for breaking my promise, I have been fighting the Swabens since the beginning of this spring, and I really can't come to see you. David apologized to Art as soon as they met.

Art also had a general idea of what would happen after David's return north. After returning north from Provence, David knocked on the door of the Count of Balwyn's mansion with a gift of five thousand pfennies under the recommendation of Art's handwritten letter. Patrick, for his prominence in Provence, was given the title of a village on the northeastern border of the province of Jonne in the Count of Burgundy......

“...... There is no way, it is not easy to get a piece of the fief, and after I was entitled, I sent the bones of my brothers who died in battle back to my hometown along with the consolation money, and then took a few surviving old brothers to the fiefdom to take up their posts. ”

"I don't expect that the fiefs bestowed by the court will not be rich, for a rich fief will never be enjoyed by an insignificant man like me. However, to my surprise, I was really excited for a few days when I heard that the land in the place that the palace had given me was very fertile, and the village was also very wealthy, with more than 100 households and more than 400 people in the territory. ”

"But I couldn't be happier in less than two days, and after a closer inquiry, I was already the third lord of that place in two years. Because almost every time that place was brought back to life, the Swaben would come and raid and plunder it. By the time I arrived in the territory, most of the people had already left, and there were only about 200 people left in the territory. ”

Art listened to what happened to David, and then glanced at the fine weapons and armor of David and the retinue behind him, and expected that this brave knight must have a wonderful story.

Art raised his hand toward David and motioned for him to continue.

David took a sip of his glass and drank it at Art and the others, wiped his ugly face with his hand, and continued: "My brothers and I who followed me to the territory crawled out of the pile of dead people, where the Swabians could tolerate oppression and plundering of my territory. Soon, I gathered the remaining twenty or so young people in the territory, purchased a batch of weapons and armor to equip them, and then trained non-stop in the territory......"

"Finally, in early spring, when the snow and ice had just melted, we ambushed a group of Swabians who had come to plunder, killing eight people on the spot and repelling more than thirty. The battle was so encouraging to the people that many of the people who had fled to hear of our success returned to their hometowns, and soon I had gathered about fifty young and strong people, and the monk Chaucer of my territory joined me in defending against foreign enemies, helping us to fight back the enemy and defend our homeland on God's behalf. ”

David said as he turned sideways to give Art a glance at the thin monk sitting beside him, and Art bowed slightly.

"With the advice of Brother Chaucer, we not only resisted two retaliations by the Swabians, but also took the initiative to attack the outposts of the Swabian army and several small garrison camps, killing more than 30 enemies and seizing a lot of weapons, armor and heavy money......

David recounted some of their most intense and thrilling battles, which made the blood of all the officers at the banquet boil.

"I have to thank you for your generosity, Lord Baron, if it weren't for the twenty-thousand-pfennig you lent me, I would not have been able to knock on Count Balwin's mansion, and without Count Balwin's help, my military exploits would have been unsuccessful, and the acquisition of the fiefdom would have been far away."

"Thanks to your generosity, I have the money to gather young people to buy weapons, armor and equipment, and lead the people to fight against the Swabians......"

David raised the wine glass in his hand, got up and bowed deeply to Art, and said sincerely: "Lord Arte, from the battlefield of Provence, you stretched out your righteous hand to rescue me from hellfire, to your generosity to show me the way. Without you, there would be no me and my buddy today, this glass of wine represents my most sincere respect for you! ”

David poured the wine into his stomach in one gulp.

Art also raised his glass in return and took a sip.

"This time I brought with me twenty thousand finneys and a horse seized from the Schwabians. The coins are returned to you, and the horses are given as a gift for your promotion to barony. The profits of the war were enormous, and after a few battles, David's purse was swollen and he acted generously.

Art is really short of money now, so he is not polite to David, "Sir David, I have taken 20,000 Fennig and war horses......"

David and his entourage did not stay long in the Barony of the Vale, because this time he went south to visit the Earl of Balwyn in Besançon, and Balwyn secretly gave David the mission of "training the soldiers to be ready for driving", so he had to hurry back to the mining to continue training the soldiers, and accept the call of the Earl of Balwyn at any time.

............

At the end of July, Yat convened a council (military council) in the civil administration and the army, which did only one thing - to proclaim the decrees of the army and the civil code.

The recruitment of new recruits has not yet been officially launched, so the current number of troops in the army is not too large, and all the combat team leaders under Yat (including other soldiers who enjoy treatment} soldiers and officers are all trained in the officer academy, so there is no need to call for another call. At the Military Council, Art personally signed and read out the Legion Decree.

The Legion Decree is divided into three major sections, including 18 articles of prohibition, 15 articles of military governance, and 6 articles of promotion and retirement.

The most important thing in military law is the eighteen prohibitions, including "five beheadings, six tartlets, and seven punishments".

"Five beheadings" means disobeying military orders and beheading in wartime; Flee and behead in wartime; disturb the morale of the army in wartime and behead it; In the army, he was killed in a private fight and beheaded; Possess a huge amount of war captures and behead them.

"Six tarts" refers to six situations of punishment by military sticks, that is, confrontation with commanders on weekdays, private fights and injuries in the army, theft of military supplies, loss of weapons in wartime, training to steal and cheat, oppression of good people, and the crime of whipping in the opinion of the commander.

The "seven punishments" generally refer to minor punishments such as confiscation of military pay or confinement and confinement, such as unqualified officers' literacy, failure to meet soldiers' training standards, competition between soldiers for merit and profit, and noisy marching formations.

The 15 articles on administering the army include the content standards for soldiers' training, the skills of battle formations, the salaries and benefits of soldiers, the maintenance and equipment of weapons and armor, the marching camp, patrol guards, and the collection and transportation of military baggage.

The 10 articles on promotion and retirement include the accounting of military merits of soldiers and officers, the standards for the issuance of military rewards, the requirements for military merit for promotion and promotion, and the punishment standards for demotion and demotion.

The entire "Legion Decree" is less than 50 articles, and the content is simple and popular, without cumbersome textual embellishments.

Art demanded that all soldiers and officers above the head of the army's combat team memorize the Legion Decree, and that the content of the decree must be passed on to all soldiers under his command in the future. The future training of the recruit corps has also added a proficiency in the Legion Ordinance......

............

Compared with the simplicity and strict rewards and punishments of the Legion Decree, the code of the civil administration system is much more complicated and cumbersome.

The law promulgated by the civil administration is named the "Territorial Code", which covers many fields such as land distribution, tax collection, military service, public order and stability, and workshop commerce.

There are four areas that are at the heart of the Territory Code.

The first was the distribution of land, the Code of Territories clearly stipulated that the two estates of the Barons of the Valley were to be attributed to the Baron of the Frontier of the Court, Arter Wood Wells, and that the freedmen of the realm (the people) were entitled to a "share of the land" of the lord's land for life on the condition of fulfilling their land obligations, and the "right to share" was based on the number of people working in the farm, and the amount of land that each household could obtain was determined by the number of people engaged in agriculture in his family. The specific allocation of land is controlled by the civil administration, but it must be based on the principle of justice.

The "land-sharing" of the people was a class between serfs and yeoman farmers, who had a free status but no private land. Every free lord who has sworn allegiance to the lord, fulfilled the obligations of the lord, and has the ability to farm, can receive a share of the land from the lord, and the lord has the right to unconditionally repossess the land if the lord loses the ability to farm, refuses to fulfill the land obligation, or violates the territorial code.

In addition to the most commonly applicable "land shares", the Territorial Code also provides for several special land distribution systems, namely "land rights", "land rights" and "communal land systems".

The lord of the lord shall personally grant the land of honor in the case of retirement or death due to war wounds or major merits, and the land shall be privately owned by the awardee, and the holder of the land only needs to pay the war tax, and the rest of the taxes will be reduced or exempted, and the land can be inherited through a certain procedure. Art once granted eternal land to soldiers who were killed and wounded in battle, and {retired} was "honored land".

The "right of grace land" is essentially the "right to share the land" of the people, but the "grace land" enjoys the right to tax reduction and rent reduction for a certain period of time. The first few groups of lords who received the "land for five years" enjoyed the "land right", and the land they rented and cultivated was reduced from land tax for ten years.

"Public land" is the land directly under the jurisdiction of the civil government, which is financed by the civil government to hire farmers or recruit war slaves {reformed criminals} to cultivate, and the harvested crops are completely owned by the civil government and used by the civil government in a unified manner.

The second is tax collection. With the expansion of the territory of the Barons of the Valley, the land tax will become an important part of the territory's fiscal revenue, so Art increased the share of the land tax collected, dividing the land tax into land rent (1/10), poll tax {1/10}, security tax {low}, territorial construction tax {low}, and tithes collected on behalf of the church.

The third is the issue of service. Art was determined to establish an army in his territory that would be based on a standing army, with a professional army under his command and an auxiliary conscription {peasant soldiers}. Therefore, the Territory Code replaces the forty-day annual military service period of the subjects with the payment of a shield tax, which is used to support the army, and at the same time, the Code also stipulates that the subjects must be trained for a fee according to the arrangement (receive a certain period of military training, and the lord will give the trained subjects food supplies and symbolic remuneration} and respond to the call-up without compensation in an emergency (unconditional enlistment in a state of war and when the territory is threatened}; At the same time, the "Territorial Code" also made provisions for the issue of servitude of the lords, in order to allow the farmers to work full-time for production, Yat allowed the consuls to replace the levy tax, as long as the tax was paid, the subjects did not have to work for the lord on the basis of the farm work in their hands, and the servant tax they paid would be used for the employment of labor.

Fourth, there is the issue of public security. In the face of the rapid increase in the population of the territory and the increasingly severe problem of law and order, the "Territory Code" stipulates the code of conduct that the people must abide by, and the punishment measures after violating the norms and laws.

The content of the Code of the Peace was matched by the creation of two institutions - the Magistrate of the Peace and the Territorial Judge. The sheriff is concurrently the commander of the valley garrison, and the standing peasant soldiers of the garrison corps are also in charge of the security guard; Territorial judges, who are also civil magistrates, are responsible for trials, convictions, sentencing, and interpretation of the Code.

The Code of the Territory was written on parchment and read throughout the territory.