The lavish ceremony of the canonization of vassals by the Count of Nijmegen, and the grand banquet that followed, have become the talk of the nobility and commoners after tea and dinner in recent times.

Those who were fortunate enough to attend the banquet added fuel and vinegar to the audience who gathered around them, stretched their necks like ducklings waiting for milk, and told the grand occasion of the time, and did not forget to raise their figures to show their differences.

Of course, this also included the merchants who took advantage of this opportunity and made a lot of money, and they carried carts full of gold coins and local products, and rolls of strange dark blue strips, and swayed on to the next market, and at the same time spread the wealth and generosity of the Count of Nijmegen to the farther land.

As they spread throughout the continent, there was also news that Lord Earl was going to hold a merchant conference in the near future.

However, when many people learned the news, many people used it as a joke for grinding their teeth after eating, and only those big businessmen who really grasped the pulse of commerce could smack the peculiar rusty smell of gold coins from these simple words, grinned and smiled with their big mouths full of smooth front teeth polished with expensive tooth powder, and sent their most capable butlers to the country castle where the words were awkward, and their sense of smell was extremely good.

The knight of the knight packed his clothes, took his servant and the seal of the earl, and a letter of appointment from an eagle with his head held high, and came to the fiefdom in the dust, hoping to start a completely changed new life.

The selected clerics, and the cavalry that protected them, were divided into small groups and sent out in all directions to survey the terrain and make a map, and before setting out I gave them a brief intensive training on how to convert relatively accurate and complex scales, and to make a map that would be useful at the critical moment.

A month flies by, and the spring slowly blooms from the sultry little by little to the fullest, until all the life in the heaven and earth is full of vitality and grows fresh hair and branches, and the eyes are full of green covering the bare woods in the middle of winter, as if they are coming out of the ground, and instantly fill every corner.

The farmers had planted their first crop of wheat and before they could catch their breath, they began to pick up their big animals, and this year all the lords were able to receive a newborn piglet from the lord of the castle to take home and raise.

There are two newly attached people, one of them is a sow, and when the slaughter is out at Christmas, every family can eat fresh pork, which is of great significance for stabilizing prices and improving the lives of the people, but ordinary people only know that at Christmas, there is finally something decent that can be placed on the table to comfort the family's hard work for a year, and at the same time, they are extremely grateful to the wise and merciful Earl.

After finishing the work of organizing a mutual aid group to help each family build a pigsty, I couldn't be idle, so I mobilized everyone to go to the lord's exclusive fish pond to catch fish fry, go back and put them into my own fish pond, and use the manure in the pigsty to feed the fish, and after catching fish in autumn, clean the water in the pond, and the fertile mud below can be used to fertilize the field and store soil power.

The people will be suspicious to follow me to do this and that, these new things they have never heard of when they grow so big, a long, long time ago, the grandparents counted everyone lived like this, suddenly changed a way of production, more or less will be a little unaccustomed, and even resistant, but obeying the authority of the lord compared to following the old system of the ancestors is more deeply penetrated into everyone's bones, so my whole set of plans can still be well implemented and implemented.

But I know that many people are hiding their mouths behind their backs, especially the short-sighted and greedy aristocrats, who seem to me to be purely kind to the head kicked in the head by a donkey, caring for the peasants like ants, wasting a lot of resources more than worth the losses, and doing strange things that God can't stand to do.

It was only intimidated by my authority that they had to bow down to it, but they were ready to see my jokes in the fall, a big joke that the Earl thought he was whimsical.

In the middle of May, the teams sent to survey and map all over the country returned to the castle, and after more than a month of eating and sleeping in the open made them all thin and dark, with a whole thin circle, and their faces were covered with unwashed vicissitudes, and one of the cavalrymen died to protect his companions when they were attacked by thieves, which cast a shadow of sadness over what should have been a victorious operation.

The priests put together a map of their area of responsibility and then transcribed it on another complete piece of parchment, with forests, rivers, and mountains, each marked with letters of different colors, which was both striking and vivid.

Thus I finally saw for the first time a map of my whole territory, a maple leaf-shaped land, the Rhine like a curved vein on a leaf, turning in the middle of the territory, flowing from north to west, and important villages and towns, along the Rhine and its parallel tributaries, the Vaal and the Maas, were evenly arranged, and the tridents generally divided the whole fertile interriver plain into four equally rich parts.

The hall of the castle was lit with dim oil lamps, and the young man who had succeeded Hans as the new squire was busily removing the tableware from the table after dinner, and outside the castle there was the sound of the guards who had finished their shifts, noisily beckoning their partners to go to the tavern for a drink, and a few dog barks in the distance sounded from time to time, setting off the moonlight and watery night to make it even quieter.

"Look, my lord, this is Herusbeck."

The priest in charge of the map pointed to a place on the parchment with several spired towers on the parchment, and a thick blue ribbon snaked past it.

"It sits on the banks of the Waal River and has a small cargo ship dock."

"Not bad! It's clear! I can easily find anywhere I'm looking for. ”

I nodded with satisfaction, pretending to be thoughtful, and lightly covering up the fact that I was illiterate at all, although most of the nobles in this era were like me, a coarse person who was illiterate, and did not regard literacy as the standard of civilization, but I don't know why, I always thought that my illiteracy was the most embarrassing thing, as if I was standing in front of the public without clothes, and I couldn't raise my head, especially in front of others.

"We have reduced the distance proportionally according to your requirements, so the distance displayed on the map is basically equal to the actual distance, and according to the scale marked in the lower right corner, it can be greatly converted and applied more accurately in practice."

The priest, who wore St. Peter's haircut and wore a linen gray robe, pointed to the map excitedly, and said with a fluttering eyebrow, as if the scale was familiar with such a thing as a long time ago.

I paddled down the river with my hands, absentmindedly spelling out words I couldn't read, and asked the priest, "Have you found any suitable place to build a castle by the river?" ”

"Let me think about it...... There really is a nice place to be! ”

The priest quickly found the place he said on the map and pointed it to me, his eyes shining strangely.

"The Vaal River turns a corner here, and there is a raised plateau by the river, surrounded by water on three sides, which is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and it is a good terrain to build a city."

As he spoke, he dipped his hand in a drink and drew a simple sketch on the table next to him, so that I could see the local situation more intuitively.

"What about the raw materials for building the city, is it easy to transport?"

I thought about the details of building a castle, after all, the cost of building a castle in this era is tantamount to building a department store on a commercial street in the city center, and it must be saved if it can be used to save money.

"We can transport the stone by boat, which is much cheaper than by land, and there is a quarry not far from here, and the woods have enough timber and the villages along the river provide plenty of labor, which I personally think is a godsend."

The clergy were very sure of the logistical problems I was worried about, and it seems that they did do a good job of researching and figuring out everything around the fortified site.

"Very well, let's get started!"

I pointed my finger at the place on the map and told him to continue to be in charge of the matter, and the latter bowed with joy, his expression of excitement beyond words, and his enthusiasm for his work was so keen that he was going mad with the dull and monotonous study life of the church, and it was better to find something to do for himself than to stay with the priest and wait to put on his red robe.

Twenty days later......

On the fourth Thursday of May, the merchants who had received the news had arrived here one after another a week earlier, and the tavern that doubled as an inn was packed to the brim.

With their own chips and business bottom lines, worried and newly acquainted peers exchange the latest news they have heard in the market, hoping to take the lead in making a big profit than others.

Because everyone who walked into the county found that it was different from the other lifeless noble fiefdoms, and everyone, including the old man who picked up dung on the street, was busy with his own business in high spirits, and the confident and optimistic smiles on his faces were all from the heart.

Whether it is the neat and clean stone road, or the smoke billowing from the workshop that produces toilet paper, which is already famous on the mainland, the thick but vigorous vitality is not pretended, it is particularly firm to show the vitality of Nijmegen, like the spring jointed bamboo straight and straight.

"Please be quiet!"

As the chief minister of the palace, Wangcai knocked on the scepter in his hand to remind the merchants gathered in the hall to stay quiet, and the investment conference will start soon.

After the attendants had read aloud a long list of titles, I entered, dressed in comfortable robes and cloaks, and walked past the stooping merchants to step up to my throne in the aisles, waving to Wangcai to announce the main topic of the day.

Wangcai nodded understandingly, and the clerk beside him began to read aloud the investment regulations that had been prepared a long time ago, which recorded the main matters that I racked my brains to list and the responsibilities of both parties, and was interrupted by businessmen who could not understand from time to time during the reading, and Wangcai, who had been prepared for a long time, gave them satisfactory answers one by one, so as to ensure that everyone could understand what kind of thing they were about to participate in.

"I don't think everyone has any objections to the agreement, right?"

I leaned back in my cold seat, looking down at the dense crowd of human heads below.

"When everyone enters the door, they receive a number plate with a number written on it, and when the public bidding begins, they only need to hold up their number plate and shout out the amount loudly, and there will be a special person responsible for recording, and the person with the highest bid will get the development right of the project to be auctioned."

As soon as my words fell, there was a buzzing whisper below, and these business-minded people naturally understood the meaning of the auction, and quickly discussed with their partners the amount of money they could afford with the business forces they represented.

"As revealed in advance, the final project of this auction is that I am about to build the right to build a new lord's castle, and its contractor will receive the title of honorary knight, become a vassal under my command, and have his own domain to join the noble circle." I deliberately stretched the last few words very long to whet everyone's appetite.

The scene was completely messy......