After three days of feasting with the smiling Duke of Flanders and the local nobles, good news finally came from Sleisburg, eight miles away, that about 10,000 artisans, merchants, and gentry who were healthy and free from the plague had been selected and brought to William's camp.

Among these were weavers, women, blacksmiths, carpenters, stonemasons, etc., who William urgently needed, and the gentry and merchants could also be used by William as employees in William's subordinate government and chambers of commerce.

Of course, William was most pleased with the more than 3,000 textile craftsmen and female workers, because the textile and woolen industry in the Duchy of Flanders was the most developed, and the silk fabrics and woolen fabrics produced were favored by the nobles, and even the cloth used by William to bury Duke Robert was also from the high-end silk fabrics produced in the Duchy of Flanders.

With these textile craftsmen, William's Normandy consortium could finally say goodbye to the history of producing only cheap cotton cloth, and from then on William's textile enterprises could also produce high-end silk fabrics, cloth and woolen wool, which was a big business and very profitable.

More importantly, William's acquisition of this total can be said to have directly destroyed the textile industry in which the Principality of Flanders was superior, and also interrupted the economic source and rise of the Principality of Flanders, which was particularly important for William to strengthen his control over the Principality of Flanders.

Of course, in addition to these noble craftsmen and merchants, there were also about sixty thousand healthy refugees with complete families who were also selected first, and they would become all the serfs of William, and they would cultivate the manor land for William's newly conquered areas, and in return they would be given a piece of land sufficient for food and clothing and a shelter from the elements.

Risking the plague in three days to select a suitable serf from among the more than 600,000 refugees was undoubtedly a terrible price.

During this period, nearly 600 people fell ill with the plague, and more than 300 of them died from the plague, and the number continues to grow.

Of course, the Norman soldiers who were far away from the area where the plague was spreading were only responsible for supervising the work of the soldiers of the Duchy of Flanders, and were not on the front line, only a few soldiers fell ill with the plague, and after isolation and treatment, fully two-thirds of the patients were cured.

As for the poor Flemish people, William did not care, but continued to urge them to speed up the screening of refugees and to step up the isolation of those suffering from the plague.

"Count Hubert, there is nothing important here, just leave it to you to supervise the resettlement of the refugees, and remember not to expose the soldiers to the plague, some of which must be handled by the soldiers of the Duchy of Flanders.

I returned to Rouen first with the Guards Brigade, the Third Legion of Phalle, the Knights of Evre, the Knights of Rouen, and the Knights of Urburg, as well as the 70,000 refugees who had been screened. William commanded, looking at Earl Hubert.

"Leave it to me, Your Highness William, and I will take care of everything in the Duchy of Flanders." Count Hubert nodded solemnly and bowed in response.

"Very well, Hubert, after you have taken care of the affairs of the Duchy of Flanders, you will lead the soldiers of the First Legion to be stationed in the Earldom of Erbourg, responsible for guarding the central and eastern roads of the Duchy of Normandy, ready to deal with any contingencies." William then instructed in detail.

"By your will, His Highness William."

After receiving an affirmative reply from Count Hubert, William was relieved, he was most worried about the threat in the two directions of the middle and east roads, especially the revenge of King Henry I of France and the intervention of Henry III of the Holy Roman Empire, as for other threats, William was not worried, he was confident that he could suppress some of them with this front army alone.

Just as William was about to leave the Duchy of Flanders, he received the heartwarming news that Jofrois, Duke of Anjou, had given in and had personally walked out of the castle of the county of Tours and surrendered to Count Rodrigo.

Although William's Assassins did not kill the Duke of Jofroy, the news was enough to make him excited.

With the surrender of the Count of Jooffroy, the war against France, which lasted for nearly a year, finally came to an end, all the major wars had stopped, and the Duchy of Aquitaine, which had already concluded a peace treaty with William, no longer had a single war in France.

Of course, this does not mean that William can relax, in fact, the two counts in the west of the Duchy of Brittany are still stubbornly resisting and refuse to surrender and surrender their territories, and there are still nearly 600,000 refugees on the side of the Duchy of Flanders to resettle, and one bad will cause chaos.

However, with a stable external environment, both of these problems can be regarded as Normandy's own problems, which can allow Willian enough time to solve them.

William calculated his own territory for a moment, and his territory was nearly four times larger than it had been when he had defeated the invasion of the Duchy of Anjou two years earlier, and there were large swaths of newly conquered territory to deal with in the east, south, and west.

He not only owned Rouen, Erbourg, Evre, and Mortan in the Duchy of Normandy, Enman, Anjou and Vendée in the Duchy of Anjou, Rennes, Nantes, Domenia, Brolinck, Corneff and Leon in the Duchy of Brittany, Amiens and Wissan in the Duchy of Valois, and Boulogne, Genie, Bruges in the Duchy of Flanders, and the northern regions of Artois and Yplin, totaling 19 counties of various sizes, of which 15 were directly under William.

In order to deal with the rule of the newly conquered territories, William had to rush back to the county of Rouen in the Duchy of Normandy and consult with Adolf and others on how to deal with it.

......

William led a huge team all the way, and the number of up to 100,000 people almost overwhelmed William, he had never managed such a large crowd.

Seriously, he really regretted that he had brought so many people back in one go.

Fortunately, the steward of Osborne heard of William's predicament, and immediately rushed to the county of Boulogne, specifically for him to deal with the problem of the placement of these personnel, with his help, William felt much more relaxed.

Osborne's method of dealing with these refugees is very simple, that is, from the stewards and servants he brought over, he is responsible for leading some of the refugees to the manors they need to be responsible for, and each manor steward is almost responsible for rehousing as many as two hundred refugees, but the stewards of three or four hundred manors are arranged, and they directly divide up the more than 60,000 refugees brought by William.

In this way, the craftsmen who have as many as 10,000 people are much easier to manage, and they can be easily packed up.