Today, Majiazhuang is the largest village in the nearby area. Their industry is also relatively simple, that is, at the request of the government, they grow wheat and other crops.

Therefore, in this regard, the villagers of Majiazhuang are more experienced and relatively more organized.

The unit of 100 households was originally a military-civilian establishment. When the Purple Horde was first established, Guo Gai and others directly copied the name of ancient Rome in the book in order to facilitate everyone's understanding, and made some changes with reference to the experience of the Central Plains. Of course, at the grassroots level, the situation in Rome and Seris is not much the same, both of which unify military units and administrative units. Theoretically, a village under the jurisdiction of 100 households is an army of 100 households.

In the ancient Roman republic, this kind of centurion was even more important, because it was still a political unit. At the Sentorian Congress, each hundred-member team had one vote to elect high-ranking officials such as consuls and procurators, and had the most important power to declare war and pass laws.

Scholars at this time in the Purple Horde generally believed that although they were not as literate as the Greeks at that time, these Romans had a thorough understanding of power. The basis of power is violence, and the right to vote is a quid pro quo that allows participants to renounce violence and agree on a final disposition in a peaceful and orderly manner.

The power of a single citizen is relatively limited, and the reason why a team of centurians has the right to vote is actually that a single citizen does not have too strong opposition ability, but Rome has a total of dozens of centuries, and a centurion can really turn a proposal into a waste of paper. Therefore, it is necessary to give them a platform to express their opinions peacefully, and a relatively fair procedure.

On the contrary, if there is no corresponding violence behind this voting power, it will not be meaningful. Just like some Italian city-states now, it is just a random signboard for the rich and powerful. Even Rome itself, with the expansion of its size and the proliferation of its army, the vote of this centurion assembly gradually lost its value. The current situation is as an ordinary administrative unit.

In reality, it is actually difficult to say how many people there are in a hundred households. Changes to administrative divisions involve a lot of things and are often troublesome, so the government always tends to do less if it can. Now that the administration of the Purple Horde was becoming more and more mature, everyone was going to serve in the army according to the registered population. The selection of field soldiers from the local garrison is not limited to where they come from. Therefore, there are many people, and gradually no one cares.

In a place like Majiazhuang, where there are five or six hundred households, in actual operation, it is already a little too large, and it is difficult to carry out detailed management at the level of 100 households. However, they also have some spontaneous organizations that fill these gaps.

The most common organization is a joint venture group called a "society". This concept appeared very early in the Central Plains, and there are many records in the Han Dynasty at the latest. Since the late Spring and Autumn period, iron farming tools began to appear and became rapidly popular, and ploughing cattle and ploughing horses have also been more widely used, which on the one hand has improved the efficiency of farming, and on the other hand, it has also made the initial cost of arable land much higher. When a single family cannot afford it, it is natural for someone to organize and work together to purchase more advanced farming tools and raise livestock together to improve the efficiency of farming.

By the time of the Han Dynasty, this phenomenon had become very common. Judging from the slips left over from that time, many people would choose to operate agriculture and commerce in partnership, and take oaths and sign contracts in the sacrificial "shrine". This kind of organization is called "society" or

"Bullet", therefore, there are organizations such as "Tianshe", "Boat Bomb" and even "Father and Elder Bullet" (everyone partners to pay for people to serve as the elders).

These associations also had a lot of influence on folklore, and the Book of Yi Zhou called it "eating and drinking, exuberant and mediocre, and working together". The people are accustomed to organizing and cooperating, often farming together, and also having dinner together from time to time. The government was also affected, and some contracts were signed by officials after notarization, and the policies of the imperial court would also be taken into account.

In the last years of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, in order to restore the national strength, Zhao Guo was appointed as the commander of Sosu and was responsible for improving agricultural technology. Zhao Guo synthesized the technology of the time, proposed the "Shirota method", and experimented in the open space in the palace, and achieved success. Later, demonstrations were held on the public fields and the fields of people with titles, so that officials and three elders from Guanzhong and various places in the northwest came to study, and then went back to teach the people. This is also a standard process that has been carried out by successive government offices.

However, at that time, this farming method required two cows to work in groups. Some people did not have the financial resources, so Zhao Guo advocated the use of au pairs or calculation of work value to organize personnel and ploughing cattle. It can be seen that as far back as that era, this kind of organization was already very popular and accepted by the government.

This kind of folk behavior is actually a kind of self-organization ability. Although nominally called the "small-scale peasant economy", this model is not closed to the private sector at all, on the contrary, there have always been many spontaneous organizations, and everyone is willing to engage in commercial and operational work in their leisure time.

On the contrary, after the collapse of the Han Dynasty, people were forced to gather in Wubao manors for military and security issues, and a self-sufficient and inward-looking economy was formed. But this state is actually very inefficient, even the ancients at that time did not like it, so that some of the dock fort owners themselves, after believing that the world should be peaceful, want to take the initiative to abandon the dock fort and return to the normal economic model.

This has not been the case in the local history of Eastern Europe. First of all, it is because of the lack of technology, after all, if you rely on manpower every day and hold a traditional Slavic stick farming tool, then there is really no need to organize field community cooperation, or hire a farming team or anything......

Of course, the influence of culture and institutions is also important. The Europeans were not entirely incapable of inventing things, and they also made some heavy agricultural tools like the Saxon wheel plow. As the name suggests, the plough was so cumbersome that it needed a two-wheeled rack like a gun cart to support it to move and work.

Different sizes of wheel ploughs require different amounts of animal power, and it seems that there are eight to twelve oxen, and there are also four horses and six oxen, four horses and four oxen, such a mix and match, but it is certainly not something that ordinary farmers can afford. A smaller heavy plough also requires at least two oxen to do it. However, the invention and spread of these agricultural tools did not allow the locals to form a cooperative style like the Han Dynasty, but instead allowed the wealthy nobles to annex land more quickly.

As for horses, although horse farming seems to be a European feature, according to later statistics, in the Middle Ages, at most, only 5% of arable land was cultivated by horses. The main reason is that horses are too expensive. For example, the Dalke family in the village of Donremi is specifically described as "farmers who use horses to plow the land", because their family is actually quite wealthy and can even use horses to plow the land. In most places, even if horse farming is more efficient, everyone can't afford to use it, so they can only use cows, donkeys, and even manpower.

Moreover, in a backward place like England, heavy ploughing was not popular. Everyone is still adhering to the law of the ancestors, using the light plough brought by the ancient Romans more than 1,000 years ago. The situation in the Rus region was similar, and it was only after a few hundred years that the Germans brought their farming methods to the Volga valley and finally cultivated it. As for the native Slavs in the area, there are no domestic animals, and if you go to pull the plough yourself, you will definitely die of exhaustion. So the conclusion is that you don't plow, just lie flat.

Until the establishment of the Red Horde, agricultural livestock was a scarce possession. When the Ulan army and the Chahan army confronted each other, the Ulan army once ordered a ban on the use of poison gas in the villages, on the one hand, because most of the soldiers had a worrying cultural level, so they would not use it; Another important reason is the presence of horses in some villages. Although the Slavic peasants were worthless, horses were too precious to be killed with weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, the Ulan army generally used gentle means such as hostage-taking to force the village to cooperate with them. As a result, many villagers abandoned the more brutal Chahan army and supported them to achieve the final victory. As you can imagine, it was all like before.

The reason for this, Guo Kang himself doubts, is it a problem with iron. What makes Seris special compared to the rest of the world is that it has long been able to produce iron from blast furnaces.

The iron on agricultural tools has high requirements for hardness and wear resistance, and also pays great attention to yield and low cost, and does not care much about the quality of other aspects, which is just suitable for early pig iron. Perhaps because of this, the popularization of iron farming tools in the Central Plains was very early, and may even be earlier than iron weapons - just as the drainage needs of shallow coal mines gave birth to the industrial age, local iron mines also promoted the rapid development of agriculture, which can be regarded as forced out by extremely poor iron ore quality......

And these technologies also provide the basis for new ways of organizing. The various rapid developments of the Warring States period and the emergence of these technologies should also promote each other. This kind of organizational ability, naturally, also has many advantages in the military.

Even here today, it is easy to see that those who are accustomed to all kinds of organized activities in peacetime can adapt to the war more quickly. On the battlefield, their discipline and speed of reaction are far superior to those of the confused European peasants, and the citizens who are always inexplicably reactive. If you think about it, in addition to regular training, there should also be this factor.

These habits, in turn, affect the character of the locals. The so-called one side of the water and soil to raise one side of the people, probably that's it.

Villagers like Majiazhuang have developed the habit of spontaneously organizing themselves at any time according to their needs through the continuous attempts of a generation. Guo Kang previously felt that for the traditional agricultural society, this period of time did not seem to be long. But judging from the situation here, this time is enough to change their thinking, and they are much more active than their neighbors.

Things like organizing farming teams, renting out livestock, and hiring craftsmen for specialized work are all common activities in the village. Many of the measures of Xianggongmiao Village were also learned from them.

The initiative of these people is also more obvious than that of their neighbors. On the one hand, they do their best to do whatever they are interested in. Even if their Zhuangzi is not the richest in the area, the villagers are willing to spend money in key places. They will take the initiative to squeeze out money, set up more schools, and hire teachers and instructors to train their children, hoping to lay a good foundation and gain an advantage in the competition within the army in the future.

On the other hand, they will also be very active on other issues. Everyone knows where the special status of Xianggongmiao Village comes from, and they generally don't compete with them much, but the people of Majiazhuang are very "motivated", and they have always been unconvinced by this, thinking that it is nothing more than their village's luck, and they can do the same if they change their own.

As a result, these villagers appear to be shrewd and reckless in their admitting death. They are not afraid of Xianggongmiao Village, which has a close relationship with the Guo family, and often takes the lead in fighting for good things; But every time, he also picks the opportunity, shows his abilities and advantages to his superiors with a clear eye, and has the opportunity to get close to the pillar country and have a relationship with Lala. This time, when their family came back, the people of Majiazhuang really started to act again.

Their village chief, Ma Shizhu, was a sturdy man of about forty years old, who had previously served as a cavalry officer in the army, but now he has not completely retired, and he is still leading new recruits in the local war regiment. He also teaches veterinary trades, from equestrianism to caring for mounts. The cattle ploughing team in the village also has his contribution.

The hundred households in Majiazhuang are another young man named Ma Wanjun. After Ma Shizhu withdrew from the front line of the legion, he gave up the seat of the hundred households to him.

The people of Xianggongmiao Village have been saying that Ma Shizhu is very cunning all the way, but they are more polite to the taciturn Ma Wanjun, because this person is very capable of fighting. It is said that when he was just twenty years old, he was able to defeat the cavalry besieging him with one enemy and three enemies. The first time he was a ten-captain, he hacked to death the Alemanni knight who came to challenge him when he was fighting. Everyone thinks that he is the most likely to become a general in Majiazhuang in recent years, so it is inevitable to respect and fear him.

Although the surname is the same, Ma Shizhu, Ma Wanjun, and even the legendary old village chief Ma Polo are not relatives of each other, and even their ancestral homes are different. Ma Paul and Ma Shizhu can still be regarded as people from the Bulgarian region, and Ma Wanjun's family simply moved from the southern side of the Balkan Mountains. It's just that everyone settled here, and they all followed the surname of He, so they were commensurate with each other with the same surname, and the neighbors added some friendship. But in fact, they are not members of the same family by blood.

The name of their village is quite distinctive, because the village has always believed in the worship of God. The name of the village chief of Mapaul is a tribute to the apostle Paul. Later, with the spread of the Central Plains culture, the villagers became more and more proficient in names, and the use of words gradually became much smoother. Like the Ten Pillars, which actually means the cross; Hosts are the Lord of hosts. In short, they are all allusions picked out from the scriptures. Although Guo Kang doubts whether this kind of name is considered arrogant, it can be used in the name, which also shows that the cultural level of the local villagers is indeed much higher.

(End of chapter)