For Guo Kang's suggestion, everyone has a lot of discussions. Father Marco looked at the numbers and calculated.

"Why don't we try it in Greece?" "The initial investment can be paid by the church, and it won't be too high anyway," he suggested. And it's good for us to integrate the various congregations. ”

"Okay, you can remember it, and I'll show it to Lao Yang tomorrow." Grand Lama Wang nodded and ordered, "Didn't I remember last time that someone had come to ask us for help?" It's a good time to take this opportunity to talk to people. ”

"We can help connect the villages where cotton is grown." "The cultivation there requires a lot of irrigation, so the government has a good understanding of the local situation. And this plant is still being introduced and improved to this day, and our priests often come and go to these places. I think we still have a good foundation in this regard. ”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Here, the scale and number of water conservancy projects are basically directly proportional to the degree of local management and control by the government. If you look at which place has developed water conservancy, you will know that this is most likely the basic plate of the imperial court.

This is true even in Greece.

Traditional villages and plantations are relatively closed, and although they often engage in trade, selling cash crops such as olives and grapes, they rarely interact with outsiders. In addition, in the past 200 years, there have been continuous invasions, and thieves from all directions in the southeast, north, and west can come out to rob, causing the locals to become more and more self-contained, and when they see strangers, they must first suspect whether the other party is a spy and is ready to take people into the village to rob.

In many places, civil organizations have regressed to the pre-Solon era, where clans large and small are pitted against each other, occupying the mountains as kings, beware of each other, and indeed plundering each other. Compared with them, those city-states in the classical era can be regarded as united and friendly.

By the time the Purple Horde ran the Greek region, according to the complaints of his uncle Guo Di, there were two typical characters left: one was the old Greek nobles who lived in the city by the harbor and saw who took refuge with whom, including the pagans; The other is the old Greek bandits who live inland, especially in the mountains, and see who robs whom, including other Greek neighbors.

And more ordinary people are caught between these two kinds of people and can only be vassals for them.

In this case, the operation of the Purple Horde revolved around irrigation and cultivation. The construction of large-scale water conservancy projects has far exceeded the capacity of local villages and cottages, so it has been monopolized by the government from the beginning.

Although there are not many floods here, and the current level of water conservancy is sufficient to cope with the existing agriculture, there are indeed many places where there are gaps. Cotton, for example, needs additional irrigation when it is grown in Greece. In this case, a larger-scale water conservancy project can bring direct benefits to the local people.

In addition, when resources increase and utilization increases, many things can be solved in normal times. If there is a demand, you can directly find the boss and ask for coordination, instead of fighting with the village next door for three days to compete for water sources. Over time, conflicts between different villages decreased, and larger organizations were re-established in the process of working together to maintain this larger source of water.

These agricultural organizations, based on a network of ditches, soon began to squeeze out the scattered stockades. Every time a project is successful, more people will want to follow suit and try to get more resources for themselves by actively joining. Villagers who were attached to the cottages went down the mountain to take refuge, and many of the cottages disintegrated as a result.

Moreover, there was also a phenomenon at that time, that is, the Greek region was actually relatively "vast and sparsely populated".

It is true that there are very few plains here, and most of them are mountainous. However, before that, the Turkmen and Western Europeans fought here, which led to a significant reduction in the population. After the Purple Horde expelled the mercenaries supported by Naples and Aragon and occupied the Greek region, there were not many people left in many places.

Due to the previous situation, there is even a surplus of fields in this place. With the introduction of more productive technologies, it is indeed possible to accommodate quite a few people.

And the culture of bandits and bandits was quickly eliminated.

- That's right, these bandits also have their own culture. They admired force, despised labor, looked down on the weak and women, and believed that real men should live on sorgon and plunder. This kind of thinking is similar to those half-people and half-bandit associations in the Rus area, which makes Guo Kang wonder if bandits all over the world are like this.

But the biggest problem is that being fierce and fighting well are actually two different things.

Although the Greek bandits were fierce, they were actually very mediocre in combat, and even the Latin bandits and Turkmen bandits could not defeat them - they were regular bandits, often organized by the state, forming huge war groups and going out to raid. These stockades of the Greeks were simply not enough for them to fight. Fortunately, there are many mountains here, and if you can't beat them, you can hide back, otherwise these local bandits would have been suppressed by regular bandits a long time ago......

And in the face of the farmstead where the legion is stationed, the bandits have nothing to do. If the legion took the initiative to go into the mountains to search and suppress, they could still fight it, but the Purple Horde really had little interest in the mountains at that time - even the march into Greece was forced by the Empress Dowager Helena with her own political resources, and it was a political task arranged by the imperial court. More of their minds were to occupy an area and then start to settle the fields.

In this way, the offensive and defensive situation of both sides was reversed. The bandit leaders had to constantly descend the mountains to harass and venture into the plains to attack those who were tidying up the fields and digging ditches. Otherwise, there will be people who will continue to waver and go to the other side.

In short, they can't afford to wait.

Even if you look at it only from the military level, with this mentality, you have lost more than half.

Moreover, in the course of the attack, it was inevitable to cause damage to ordinary people along the way. These bandits were also not very disciplined groups, leading to even more serious destruction. The more they sorted, the more the locals took a position in favor of the corps. Some people who didn't care began to take the initiative to defect, because otherwise, they would not be able to get a safety guarantee.

In this case, even many bandit leaders felt that the environment had changed, and they had to hurry up and find a way to see if there was a chance to accept Zhao'an. Those who were unwilling to give up this identity and way of life retreated to the mountains of central Greece and gathered to find a way.

In the end, they elected the great bandit Cannodes as their leader. He has always claimed that he is a descendant of some ancient royal family. Whether it's true or not is another story, but he did use the eagle pattern of Eastern Rome as a banner all year round, hence the nickname "Mountain Eagle".

Under his call, many bandits gathered and prepared to resist for a long time and fight the Purple Horde to the end.

However, after the Purple Horde occupied a circle around Athens, it lost the impetus to move on. Probably thinking that the symbolism here was enough, the legions sent to the local area did not continue south at all, but hurried back to take care of the fields.

After two months of gathering of bandits, they could no longer hold back. There were not enough supplies on the ground for them to consume, and during the stalemate, the internal conflict intensified.

In the end, in order to compete for several stolen women, another big bandit openly questioned the leadership of Cannodes. The dissatisfaction of the crowd broke out, and the two sides directly began to fight. In the midst of the rebellion, the cottage was burned down and several bandit leaders were killed. "Mountain Eagle" Cannozes fled in a hurry.

In the midst of the rebellion, several minor leaders gathered their men and ambushed Canolzes, successfully killing him in one fell swoop. With their heads, they came to the legion station to ask for merit, hoping to get a better placement. The largest bandit organization in the region was destroyed in this way.

I was so busy yesterday that I forgot about the update, and I only reacted today......

In the past two days, I have made up for the missing two chapters

(End of chapter)