Chapter 1030： Rurik and Ella

With the return of a large number of laborers, the laborious spring ploughing work was immediately improved.

The war has been going on for a whole year, and a large number of strong laborers are not in the agricultural areas, and the women and children who are left behind have to face difficult problems in farming.

Women and children are not as strong as men in their prime, and they need to spend more time to sow and harvest as they are relatively weak.

But they have already enjoyed the economic dividends of Ross's expansion, and the old and new Ross families who immigrated to the Yinermen Lake area have accumulated a lot of cash wealth. They have not forgotten to work hard to get rich, but out of human instinct, they desire to do less work but to gain more. Any tool innovation in agriculture is for this purpose, but it really lacks sufficient strength in the face of spring ploughing and autumn harvest.

As a result, the women whose husbands were away from home and stayed at home were unexpectedly earning money by working in handicrafts. During the autumn harvest, they not only started working with their children and scythes, but also hired local Slavs to work and paid for the wheat. remuneration.

Such an employment relationship emerges naturally, and both parties are satisfied.

The autumn harvest is like this, just like the spring ploughing, you can hire someone to sow the seeds.

Even if the expedition people do not come, half of the farmland in the entire Yinermen Lake area has been sown. Some wise old Rus women discovered that the most important planting and harvesting of the year does not require their own dispatch at all, and they can easily recruit Slavs to work with silver coins or real food as payment.

Some women who are meaner will take their children to supervise, and those who are kinder will prepare clean water and dry food to provide logistics for the working people.

The old and new Rus families who have been divided into land due to the victory of the war have tended to become landowners. The first thing is to ensure that food production is guaranteed when the strong family members are away. Now, returning men are reunited with their families to discuss the great things about the war, but also about farming.

Men are concerned about whether their wheat has been sown. As a result, some people were pleasantly surprised to find that the fields were either completed or half sown. It is true that I have to work during the farming season, but it is very different from what I estimated when I was drifting on the ocean.

Smart people are acutely aware of this situation.

"Why does my family have to be exhausted during the sowing and harvesting seasons? Just spend some money and let the Slavs handle it. Give them a sum of money, and they are very happy."

Because it took nearly four hundred years for each Viking tribe to enter the agricultural era, there was no farming even before the expansion of the Ross tribe. The Viking tribes know rough agriculture, they are very interested in sowing and harvesting, but they have no concept of watering and fertilizing. The output of the autumn harvest is regarded as the gift of the gods, so in terms of sacrifices, more sacrifices are made to the **** Frey, who is in charge of wealth. a bit.

It took only a dozen years for the Rus tribe to expand from a small tribe to a kingdom. Although the old Rus had the highest social status in the country, they did not have the same high obsession with farmland as the Slavs. Even if there is no farmland, fishing, fishing, and even trawling by boat, fishing is the way of the ancestors.

It was not a problem to outsource the planting and harvesting of farmland to the Slavs.

Of course, the Ilmenslavs, who depended on farming for a living, were just as rough on farming issues. Their skills were only a little more advanced than those of the Rus who had just learned farming. At most they knew how to weed and collect some lake mud and throw them into Just the field.

From Rurik's point of view, the level of agriculture on both sides can be described as a brooding dragon and a phoenix. He provides brand new farming tools and advanced seeding technology for farming tools.

However, the transformation of agricultural planting consciousness is not achieved overnight.

Even the Slavs, they still don't apply a lot of farmyard manure, and they still don't bother to dig canals to irrigate.

For the old and new Rus people, there is a hectare of wheat field at home, and during the autumn harvest period, they can usually produce more than 2,000 pounds of wheat. This is actually a very crazy output. After paying taxes, the family can have a lot of surplus food. Because they were Vikings, it was custom to fish and eat meat. Wheat was considered an important addition, and it was best to have a lot of wheat. Without it, there was nothing to complain about.

Many people are easy to be satisfied, and the old and new Rus people have all solved the problem of food and clothing and have a balance. Even though they are struggling to have children, the family wealth has not been diluted.

This is the fundamental reason why they firmly support King Rurik the Great. Everyone believes that under the leadership of the king, their wealth will only increase.

Thus, classes began to appear in the agricultural area around Yinermen Lake.

The laborers of the bottom Slavic farms, after sowing and harvesting their own farmland, bring their own tools to work on the Varyag farmland to earn money.

The old and new Rus are the local Varyags in a narrow sense. Most of them want to sow the harvest themselves. With the obvious benefits of hiring the Slavs to work, the employment situation will only become more and more common. However, the old and new Rus people generally do not sit back and enjoy the success, even women will do more value-added work, especially in the leather processing industry and other handicraft industries that the old Rus people are best at. They are in the same rank as the White Tree Manor from the earliest dragon.

Nothing is more advanced than the royal family. Rurik has a huge area of ​​​​wangtian, which is definitely not something that the emperor can handle by himself.

It was Rurik who was the first to hire Slavic labor to sow and harvest his vast fields, and others simply followed suit. After Rurik led his army on an expedition, the Supreme King Otto calmed down the entire lake area like a **** and Buddha to ensure that order remained. The work of taking care of Wang Tian was handed over to Queen Svetlana in name, and finally it was the local Slavs.

So far, Rurik has only determined the grain tax system, and the corvée system has not been determined.

No one is willing to sow and harvest Wang Tian for free, unless they give money.

This is the case with Svetlana, who, as queen, has the right to use her own funds to hire labor. After all, she was from the second young lady of White Tree Manor, and the labor force she hired also recruited strong and young men from her own family to do errands, and the remuneration given was also satisfactory to the young people.

At present, the management system of Ross is still simple and rough, and the treasury does not have a clear distinction between internal and public funds. Although the bureaucracy began to be established, management was still highly dependent on the feudal aristocracy, the squire boyar, the governor and the army.

A group of young bureaucrats have been born, they are all from good families in the old and new Rus, and simple boys in the White Tree Manor. Because of their inherently weaker physical fitness, they are considered unsuitable for taking up arms and serving as soldiers. In the past, such people were considered cowards and despised by traditional society.

Now it is different. They are the first to receive cultural education. They have been tested and assessed. They are excellent in mathematics and Latin. They can master calculation and writing proficiently, and further learn more advanced knowledge.

They were the first technocrats, numbering more than fifty. They are willing to serve the king and receive regular stipends, all under the management of the highest scribe Ella.

These people are most busy in the tax collection process after the autumn harvest, and they also act as teachers at other times, teaching the extremely important mathematics knowledge to younger children, and educating the cubs according to the textbooks compiled by Rurik himself.

When the spring ploughing is over, the school in Novgorod will start classes again.

To popularize compulsory education for all subjects, even if it is only two years of compulsory education, even if Rurik has ambitious teachers to face the current embarrassment, it will not be able to do it.

Now only Novgorod and Novgorod have established schools, of which Novgorod's school is the largest, with 4,000 children receiving education at the same time.

They need to learn languages ​​and scripts, to understand the phonics of the Latin alphabet, to learn Slavic and Norse, and Latin. All language learning is mainly for everyday language, there is not much content to learn, and it will not be difficult to master.

The hardest is math. It was Ross who first used the Arabic alphabet in Europe, and it was very mature. It is far better than the long-used Roman alphabet. Students must be able to use the nine-nine multiplication table and be proficient in adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing operations, including the operation process. For ordinary students, it is such a mathematics education, in which the intelligent will stand out in the test to receive more advanced knowledge, and this kind of person will be selected as a scribe with a high probability, a bureaucrat who earns a salary in the city.

Selecting smart people from the children of the people through mathematics as a bureaucrat is Rurik's method. After all, he needs such smart people to work in order to implement a large number of calculations and written records.

One of the most intelligent is Ella, one of his wives and concubines.

Now, Ella must solve a fundamental problem for Ross - establishing the national myth of the Rus Kingdom.

The spacious wooden house in the city is Ella's office, and even if she is pregnant, she will continue to work as a eucalyptus. Now that the child has just been weaned, she wants to continue her job, especially when the king returns.

On this day, Rurik, who was in a good mood, specially arranged to be alone with Ella.

Even the queen Svetlana had to take the prince to avoid it for the time being. She felt that this was the king's whim, wanting to favor sister Ella and have a baby in the future. She felt a little lost in her heart, she was clearly...

Svetlana, who has been away for a long time and newly married, has been pestering Rurik several times. She wants her man to fill the emptiness in her heart, and she also hopes to have another prince or princess to continue to consolidate the status of the royal family. She was the queen after all, and she was older and more feminine, and Rurik was pleased with it.

That's all, Carlotta also clings to it. The Duchess of Ostara is not an ordinary person. For the frontier official who guarded the southern gate of the kingdom, Rurik felt that he had to satisfy her when it came to having more sons.

"The Bull of April" was very busy. Kagan, who was staying in Novgorod, wanted to have a good talk with the Rurik brothers, and he ran to his wives and concubines without thinking that this guy would come back...

Anyway, as long as you make sure to return to your hometown before the fall, Kagan can board for a few more days and have a good talk with Rurik.

In other words, Kagan also needs some time to inquire about the intelligence. All the returning soldiers are narrating the huge war, and there is unheard of news circulating in their ears. Those Pecheneg warriors who no longer belonged to the cavalry slaves and joined the Rus cavalry still have feelings for their former master Kagan. They are happy to tell the old master what they have seen and heard in the far western world. Surprised.

Today Rurik is in casual clothes, and he still does not forget his golden laurel.

Ella had already handed over her infant son to the nanny, who was plainly dressed, gentle and shy. Because the brave sister Carlota had whispered to her before, and now that the king is here in person, he must seize the opportunity.

She took the opportunity to take the king's arm first, leaned forward boldly, and said a few more words with a blushing face.

"Oh? Then tonight I'll tell the squires that there won't be a palace. I can take a good look at our son, the lovely Amberman, and you. I hope your bed can be big."

"This... I'll arrange for someone to make the bed bigger now." She scoffed.

"Yes. But I have something important to do today, and you know what it is."

Ella nodded and whispered softly, "I've been actively compiling."

"put

Heart, I will help you compile. This year, you and I will spend more time together. "

The last words made Ella elated. She knew that the king really needed her talents, so she should not let his attention be paid to her. The second is to solve your own personal problems.

Ella's office is very large. In fact, it is a complete and independent residential woodcut. It is divided into a living room, an office and a bedroom, and has a separate toilet.

Rurik gently pushed open the wooden door, and he was greeted by the smell of ink.

He looked at the living room now, and said, "Yes, you redecorated it again."

"Yes." Ella replied with joy: "If I am simple here... I will embarrass you."

"There's no need to hang an axe and a round shield on the wooden wall, you're not a warrior."

"Hey, just to look good."

"Go in and see." After saying that, Rurik took off his coat and hung it on the nails on the wall.

Coming here is the same as returning home. He knows that a large number of documents are kept in this large woodcut, and Ella's office has essentially become the archives of the Kingdom of Ross.

The key to the archives is the information to be preserved. When the information carrier becomes paper, it becomes better preserved and can be preserved in large quantities in a small space.

As she entered the real office, there was a more intense smell of ink, which Ella was used to. She pushed open the wooden window with glass panes to let in the air, and then began to introduce the sorted documents related to taxation.

Rurik moved to a wooden chair, sat down, and reviewed the documents to clarify the results of the tax collection last autumn.

The autumn of 840 was a normal year, the grain production in Novgorod increased and the tax situation was normal. But his order last year was to be tax-free for the whole year. When the messenger arrived in Novgorod with the order, the agricultural tax had already been collected.

"Very good! Very good." Rurik simply swept through the document, but he couldn't see the details at all.

Ella felt that this was perfunctory, so she could only laugh with embarrassment, and did not dare to ask more.

Rurik cleared his throat: "I meant to be tax-free last year. Since the tax has been completed due to some things, it will be tax-free this year. You and the scribes won't be very busy in Jinqiu."

This is a good thing, Ella's embarrassed face immediately turned into pleasure, and she replied quietly and comfortably: "That way I don't have to be tired."

"Do you want to relax?" The Rurik listener turned his head to look at her face: "You still have a lot of writing work to do. This year I will not take the initiative to launch a war, but I will do a lot of things internally. I I need you very much."

Rurik's eyes were bright, staring at Ella's eyes, this young woman was in love, she couldn't help trembling, although she didn't know what big things Rurik was going to do, since she had to do it herself, she must do it it is good.

"Yes! Leave it to me! You can leave everything to me!" Her eyes were firm and full of expectations for the future.

"Very good." Rurik nodded. "The myths I asked you to sort out, what are your results? And Ross's past historical records."

"As far as I can, it's sorted. Just waiting for your inspection."

Ella said this with her eyes bright and confident.

"Then show it to me."

"As ordered!"

That's all, Ella hurriedly ran like I was, and with a rumbling sound of rummaging through boxes and cabinets, she took out the wooden box from under the bed and picked up a stack of documents strung with twine personally delivered in front of Rurik.

"That's it? It's quite thick. And..." Rurik glanced at it, admiring the woman's graceful handwriting. He simply flipped through it again and determined that this stack of documents was indeed a collection of various mythological stories.

"It's already a book!"

"How... how did I do?" Ella asked cautiously in a low voice.

"Very well, I'm going to take a good look at it, haha. I'm sure people will love the story in it. This is an object I care about a lot, and I'll be writing more about it. It's time to name it, this It's our Roth classic, Roth Saga, which will be at the heart of our beliefs. It's also our strongest weapon."

Ella didn't understand Rurik's explanations. She only saw that her man was very satisfied, so her work in the past two years was very worthwhile.

Rurik stood up slowly and brought another wooden chair. "Sit down too. Let's read the content of the book together. I'm like a student. As a writer, you have to give me a good explanation."

Ella tidied her hair and sat down next to Rurik with a serious attitude: "Okay. Then from the beginning, Thor and Yemengard...":,,.