After the summer grain was put into storage, the reserve grain in the Haaland territory increased to about 35,000 tons.

This year, 8,000 tons of grain were brought from the Barony of Harden, and only about 2,000 tons were consumed in recent months to feed the indentured slaves who migrated from the Barony of Harden.

Coupled with last year's grain reserves and this year's summer grain, the huge warehouses built in the territory are a little insufficient.

Looking at this year's year, I am afraid that the autumn grain will also be harvested.

In addition to the grain harvested by the freedmen, 35,000 tons of grain could be harvested by indentured slaves.

The Haaland territory now has a population of more than 100,000 people, and it simply cannot consume 70,000 tons of food.

Although the population of the territory increased, Richard was no longer burdened by the rations of the freedmen, and Richard only planned to reserve 10,000 tons of food. 30,000 tons of rations were left for more than 80,000 indentured slaves to grow grain.

The remaining 30,000 tons of grain can be sold.

30,000 tons of grain will seriously impact the grain price in the Heihebao market.

Once again, Richard approached Sanji Tara to see if he could continue to trade grain for slaves this year.

Dealing directly with the Duke of Edward can save a lot of time and procedures. The absence of grain merchants and slave traders would be beneficial to both sides.

Although the Duke of Edward has had a bumper harvest this year, the grain reserves are still far from enough.

After Richard came to the door, Sanji Tara said directly: "This year's grain price is lower than last year's, and the grain premium is gone, 30,000 tons of grain is estimated to be worth 60,000 gold coins, which can be exchanged for about 4,000 households." Half of the population is about 12,000.

After all, the elderly and children are not worth much, they are all gifts. The price of young men and women is about ten gold coins on average. ”

Buying people from the slave market, male slaves in their twenties and prime of life cost about twenty gold coins.

An ordinary person's annual salary is between three and four gold coins, and in addition to food, clothing, housing and transportation, the income of raising a slave for a year is two gold coins and six silver coins. It takes eight years to buy a prime-age slave to pay for itself, and the longer a slave lives, the more profitable he becomes.

Therefore, normal slave owners do not treat slaves harshly, and can basically let them eat and drink enough.

Because the old people and children who bought money and bought slaves as a family unit, the price of slaves in the prime of life was often about 30 percent cheaper.

When slave traders capture slaves, in order to prevent the slaves from rebelling and fleeing, they usually take away all their wives, children, and parents.

With family members as hostages, strong slaves will not resist.

Many lords, in order to settle down the slaves and not escape easily, often bought the entire family to enrich the household registration.

In fact, even the farmers of America in the previous life did the same thing when buying slaves, often buying black slaves from a complete family.

The farmers in the south also went to the slave market to buy female black slaves, and gave wives to male black slaves, so that the slaves could reproduce more people.

Richard completed the grain delivery at Heihe Fort, waited for more than ten days, and received 4,000 serfs from Duke Edward.

In the last two years, Richard has purchased 4,800 serfs from Edward's domain, adding up to 16,500 people.

If the administrators of Edward's realm weren't fools, they would have planted spies among them.

After all, the Haaland family is already the most powerful nobles in Geda Province, second only to the big nobles in importance.

In addition, Haaland's territory has also developed many new technologies and produced many high-value goods.

The Duke of Edward must have put a lot of effort into getting his hands on the steel production process, hemostatic ointment formula, weaving process, and brown sugar production process in the Harland Territory.

Richard knew this.

Slaves purchased from Duke Edward's dukedom were not trusted by Richard.

It is also impossible to recruit and recruit from this group of people.

For these indentured slaves, Richard would only scatter them in the two baronies of Stopa and Dirham, and let them engage in agriculture.

Because of the decree prohibiting migration in the territory, it is difficult for these spies hidden among slaves to get access to the secrets of the territory, and the secrets of the territory will not be revealed at all in a short period of time.

Even the indentured slaves transferred from Barony Harden were more reliable in Richard's mind than the slaves he received from Duke Edward's Lordship.

After settling the new indentured slaves, Richard immediately arranged for men to count the population of the territory.

By August, Haaland's territory had a population of 118,000.

Because the fertility rate in Haaland's territory is very high, it can reach about 5 percent, and by the end of the year, the total population should be close to 120,000, catching up with the Cisse family.

The autumn harvest has already begun in August.

The autumn harvest has been very busy in the past few days, and even the students of Riverside Primary School have been mobilized by Richard to count the harvest of autumn grain and be responsible for the collection of public grain.

The Haaland Territory stipulates that when the freedmen pay the land tax, they can pay money and grain in kind.

Ordinary commoners had very little cash income, and if they had to pay money, they would have a heavy tax burden on the freedmen.

The middle and upper classes of society, such as merchants, gentry, professionals, and bureaucrats, would use deflationary means to pass on taxes, and with very little cash, they could get physical goods of higher value.

In exchange for money and taxes, ordinary people can only sell grain, fruits, livestock, and even farmland at a low price.

The history that Richard knew in his previous life, Zhang Juzheng in the Ming Dynasty carried out tax reform, that is, he required to pay taxes with silver money, which increased the burden on the common people and accelerated the speed of land annexation.

The tax system of the Han and Tang dynasties was both physical and coinal, and there was no problem of fire consumption. Even in the last years of the dynasty, the burden of the common people was lighter than that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the treasury had more income.

In the Manchu Dynasty, after the apportionment of the land into the mu and the return of envy to the public, the burden on the people was also reduced, and the government had more taxes.

The Tang, Song, and Qing dynasties were not because of tax issues.

Even in later republics, when collecting land taxes, they still mainly paid public grain.

It was not until the nineties that cash was mainly levied.

However, when the cadres who collect taxes go to the countryside, if they have no money, they can still use grain to offset their taxes.

Therefore, in the era of deflation, taxation must be collected in kind and in money.

By the fall of this year, there were more than 8,000 freedmen at the end of their five-year contract.

But this year they did not divide the land, and they did not need to pay taxes for the time being.

After gaining his freedom, Richard divided his family into a house, arable land, farm tools, food rations, seeds, and clothing. These supplies will be converted into coins and repaid slowly in the form of low-interest loans.

The interest on this loan is very low, around three percent per year.

Now this money is counted in the installment purchase payment, and after a year, it is about a few hundred gold coins.

After the beginning of spring next year, the city hall will also rent them ploughing cattle.

Judging from the field tax, the increase in tax revenue this year is relatively small, and the exchange of gold coins is only about 4,200.

By next year, the field tax will be increased to more than 6,000 gold coins.

The annual land tax of 6,000 gold coins is second only to steel and wool spinning, ranking third in the territory's fiscal revenue, which is already an important income of the territory.

As the number of freedmen increased, more and more fields were divided.

If all the indentured slaves in the territory become freemen and divide the land, the land tax can reach 30,000 gold coins a year.

Today, despite the small taxes, Richard actually severely squeezed the labor force of indentured slaves, and could earn more money in kind every year.

This year, more than 60,000 gold coins of grain were sold. It's just that Richard exchanged 60,000 gold coins for 12,000 people.

If the 120,000 people of Haaland's territory are exchanged for money, they can be exchanged for 600,000 gold coins in cash.

Richard has been operating the territory for eight years, and has accumulated a population of 120,000, more than 500,000 acres of farmland, more than 20 mines, more than 10,000 acres of orchards, thousands of acres of brown sugar plantations, and hundreds of acres of medicinal herb plantations. Hundreds of thousands of sheep, thousands of cattle, thousands of skilled workers, four thousand well-equipped troops.

Combined, these assets can't hold two million gold coins.

He has been running the territory for eight years and has already caught up with the accumulation of three generations of the Cisse family.

Such an achievement can be called shocking.

Even the big names in the royal capital began to pay attention to Richard, knowing that there was such a young hereditary nobleman in the northern Xinjiang region who was good at inventing and creating, managing the territory, and being brave and good at war.

Before the autumn harvest was completed, Richard received information that more than a dozen people were missing in the Haaland Valley.

More than a dozen people were missing, and Richard did not dare to slack off, and immediately dispatched strong generals from the territory to set up an investigation team.

The investigation team totaled more than a hundred people, and in addition to the experienced demon hunters, Richard also drew thirty people from the Warcraft cavalry.

In order to ensure that nothing went wrong, Richard and Sophia personally participated in the investigation mission.

In the investigation team, there are also Powell, Ruiz, Luciano and other talents with special talents.

Through Powell's extraordinary sense of smell, the investigation team carefully searched the Haaland Valley and soon discovered the anomaly.

It turned out that near the Haaland Valley, there was an ogre tribe that migrated over.

Ogres are the two overlords of the Eagle Mountains, mainly active in the western part of the Eagle Mountains.

There are some ogre tribes in the northern part of Duke Edward's Duchy, who come down to the mountains every winter to hunt some humans for food.

There are also occasional ogres in the province of Gascoigne, but they are not very common.

An ogre appeared in Haaland's territory, and Richard did not dare to slack off, and immediately reported it to the Church of Dawn.

The ogre tribe has a strong backer behind it and cannot be killed easily.

Exterminating the Ogre Tribe will provoke the revenge of the legendary Ogre.

Richard also couldn't figure out if the Grant Kingdom had signed a contract with the legendary ogre, if he killed the younger one and provoked the old one, the Starlight Necklace would have to be exposed in advance.

Exposing the bottle of starlight will definitely attract the prying eyes of the great nobles, and there will inevitably be trouble in Haaland's territory.

As a last resort, Richard wouldn't let things get to this point.

After receiving the news, Sanders rushed to the Haaland Valley with two priests.

Ruiz had extraordinary vision, personally carried out reconnaissance missions, and quickly figured out the size of the ogre tribe, and found that this ogre tribe had twenty male ogres, sixteen female ogres, nine ogre cubs, and a two-headed ogre, which seemed to be a high-level professional.

Despite their small numbers, the strength of this ogre tribe is quite impressive.

(End of chapter)