Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 22 Saladin Tithe

In his rural investigation, Garys learned a lot from the Hunanese man, including visits and seminars.

At the seminar, four or five villagers from the same village, each with different family backgrounds, different responsibilities, and different pieces of land, were presented.

There may be conflicts or disputes between them, or there may be kinship.

At first, they were quite restrained because they had never been exposed to this kind of seminar format. But once the conversation started, all the trivial matters in the village over the past decade were poured out.

The old man at the entrance of the village has cows, how much land the young man at the back of the village has planted, which girl he likes, how much profit can be made from herding sheep, how much staple food can be eaten by oneself from farming, how many taxes should be paid in a year, and the tax farmer who collects taxes is really a piece of shit...

From those fragmentary pieces of information, Gellis began to piece together the economic picture of the village.

This village is called Monterrey Village. Its history is not long, dating back to the time when Baldwin I led his army to conquer the Transjordan region and established the Montreal Fortress, which was in 1115 in the Gregorian calendar, only seventy years ago.

Of course, even if it was seventy years, for the peasants in the Middle Ages, that was four generations. It was enough for them to think that the land under their feet was their homeland, and it was also enough to create a divide between the rich and the poor.

However, the differentiation that could occur in four generations was not very exaggerated, and there was no development of a landlord class that occupied an absolute majority of land in rural areas.

There are roughly eighty households in Monterey Village, which is slightly larger than the previous Scarr Village. There are no full-time craftsmen in these families. Even if there are two people who know some carpentry work, they still need to farm the land to support themselves.

These eighty households are basically self-cultivating farmers, and if we categorize their class status, they are mainly middle peasants.

As for the so-called landlords, they were actually just rich peasants, a total of five households. These rich households had a lot of land that they could not cultivate on their own, so they would rent some land to some families with less land.

If you rent land from a landlord, the tenant and the landlord each provide half of the seeds, and then the tenant does the work. When the harvest comes, the landlord takes half of the harvest, and the rest goes to the tenant.

Typical representatives of this type of wealthy landlords are Cardoso and the village chief.

As for the landless hired farmers who were more common in China during the Ming, Qing and Republic of China eras, they did not exist.

It can be said that the rural conditions in the Dead Sea region during this period were very different from those in China.

After all, when he owned the land and could be a landlord, he not only provided half of the seeds, but also only asked the tenants to split the profits 50-50? Compared with the evil landlords in the Republic of China, he was truly as kind as a bodhisattva descending to earth.

It can be said that the rural areas in the Dead Sea region, represented by Monterey Village, do not have prominent conflicts between population and land. The bigger problems actually come from the exploitation and oppression of superior landlords and the relatively backward productivity.

Taking the ordinary self-employed farmers in Monterrey village as an example, if all the income is converted into currency, a family can have a surplus of about four gold dinars a year.

Four gold dinars are four gold coins weighing about 3.6 grams to 4 grams, which is quite generous.

But after paying the grain tax, head tax, and corvée money, anyone who could live without borrowing for a short period of time was considered to have some assets.

Of course, many corvée fees and taxes have only appeared in the past ten years. They did not exist in the past. The birth of these temporary taxes is mostly related to Reynald. Since he married the widowed lord of Transjordan and obtained this territory, everyone's life has been getting worse day by day.

For this reason, Monterey Village, as a village where Christians gather, appears to be somewhat dilapidated and desolate. It has really been severely plundered by the authorities over the years.

During the investigation and seminar, many villagers had complaints about their lord.

Garys and Isabel smiled at each other after hearing this. They both knew how ruthless that old man Leonard was. This was just the beginning...

After talking with these villagers, Garys had a clear understanding, and he also learned one thing: the day when the tax farmers would come down to collect taxes was not far away.

After all, it has been some time since the grain was harvested. If the tax farmer does not collect the tax before the farmers have completely processed the grain, it will be very troublesome to take the grain away from the farmers.

Just as the villagers said: "Those lords' tax farmers have been causing trouble for us every year. They blackmail and extort us, trying every way to take every coin and take away our little food! Those bad sons of bitches, why haven't they gone to hell yet!"

In addition, Gailis did not kill the former village chief and Thomas directly. This was not because he was worried about causing dissatisfaction among the villagers, but because this would not have much educational significance, so Gailis chose to detain them first and deal with them later.

As for the floating wealth of the village chief and the herbalist, Gailis kept his promise. After arresting the two men, he did not keep any of it for himself, but distributed it to those in the village who were willing to follow him at the time.

Of course, Garys was not in a hurry to distribute livestock such as cattle and sheep. He would deal with those livestock elsewhere in the future.

As for the village chief's house, Garys took it for his own use. After all, it was not appropriate to always live in Cardoso's house.

But even so, Gailis's prestige in the village grew.

Through word of mouth, Gaillis became the savior of these poor people, a true figure like Jesus Christ, even better than him.

All of a sudden, the families who received the money felt that their lives were better. They would deliberately include Garys' name in their daily prayers, hoping that he would intercede with God.

But Gellis knew, Cardoso knew, and even the villagers who received the money knew that as long as the tax farmers brought soldiers into their homes, nothing would change.

However, what Garys did not expect was that after the so-called tax farmer came down, the scene of "the fierce officials came to my hometown, shouting and yelling in the east and west, rushing around in the north and south; the uproar and fear were so great that even chickens and dogs could not rest." did not happen. Instead, he was blocked at the door again.

To be precise, the tax collector should have come to block the village chief's door, but due to the lag in information, the other party was not aware that the person in charge of the village had changed, and still thought that the person living in this house was the village chief.

"Hey! Your village should pay Saladin's tithe!"

An Arab man with a turban and a fat face, accompanied by two thugs holding wooden sticks, blocked the gate and stood in front of Garys.

　Chapter 21 Due to some circumstances, I made some changes
　　
　
(End of this chapter)