Chapter 22 Saladin’s Tithe
In his rural survey, Gallis learned a lot from the Hunanese, including visits and seminars.
At the seminar, four or five villagers from the village each had different family backgrounds, different responsibilities, and different lands.
There may be conflicts and disputes between them, or there may be kinship relationships.
At first, I was quite restrained because I had never been exposed to this kind of seminar format, but when the chat box was opened, all the trivial matters in the village for more than ten years were poured out.
The uncle at the entrance of the village has cattle. The young man at the back of the village has planted so much land that he likes the daughter of a family. How much income can he get from herding sheep? How much of the staple food grown on the land can he eat? How many times a year do he have to pay Taxes, the tax collectors who collect taxes are really nothing...
From the sparse information, Garris began to sort out the economic outlook of the village.
This village is called Monterey Village. It has a short history. It can be traced back to when Baldwin I led his army to conquer Transjordan and established the Montreal Fortress, which was in 1115 of the Christian calendar, which is only seventy years ago.
Of course, even if it was seventy years, for medieval farmers, this was four generations. It's enough to make them think that the land under their feet is their hometown, and it's enough to create a divide between rich and poor among them.
However, the differentiation that can occur within four generations is not exaggerated, and the kind of landlord class that occupies an overwhelming amount of land in the countryside has not developed.
There are roughly 80 families in Monterey Village, which is larger than the previous Skaar Village. There are no full-time craftsmen in these families. Even if there are two people who know some carpentry, they still need to cultivate their own land to support themselves.
These 80 households are basically self-cultivating farmers. If divided into compositions, they can be regarded as mainly middle farmers.
As for the so-called landlords, they were actually just rich peasants, with a total of five households. These wealthy households have a lot of land they have reclaimed, and they cannot plant it all by themselves, so they let some families with less land rent part of it.
If the land is rented from a landlord's family, the tenant and the landlord each provide half of the seeds, and then the tenant contributes. When the harvest comes, the landlord takes half of the harvest first, and the rest goes to the tenant.
Typical representatives of such wealthy landowners are Cardoso and the village chief.
As for the landless farm laborers that were 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 area during this period were very different from those in the Celestial Dynasty.
After all, when you own the land and become a landlord, you not only provide half of the seeds, but also only ask the tenants for 50%? Compared with the evil gentry and landlords in the Republic of China, they are really as kind as a Bodhisattva descending to earth.
It can be said that the rural areas of the Dead Sea region represented by the village of Monterey are not outstanding in the contradiction between man and land. The bigger problem actually comes from the exploitation and oppression of superior lords and the relative backwardness of productivity.
Taking the average farmer in Monterey as an example, if all the income is converted into currency, a family can have a balance 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 rich.
But after paying the food tax, poll tax, and servant money, anyone who can live without borrowing money in a short period of time can be considered to have some wealth.
Of course, many errand money and tax items have only appeared in the past ten years and did not exist in the past. The birth of these temporary tax items is mostly related to Leonard. Ever since he married the widow lord of the Transjordan Territory and obtained this territory, the lives of the big guys have become worse day by day.
Because of this, Monterey Village, as a village where Christians gather, appears to be a bit dilapidated and deserted. It has actually been raided quite a bit by the authorities in recent years.
During the investigation seminar, many villagers complained about their lord.
After hearing this, Garris and Isabel looked at each other and smiled. They both knew how much of a beast Leonard was, so where did he go...
After chatting with these villagers, Garris finally had a clear understanding, and he also learned one thing: it was not long before the tax collectors came down to collect taxes.
After all, it has been a few days since the grain was harvested. If the tax collectors do not collect the taxes before the farmers have completely processed the grain, then it will be very troublesome to take the grain out of the farmers' mouths.
As the villagers said: "Those tax collectors of the lords come to us every year. They will extort and extort, and try their best to steal every coin and take away all the food we have left! Then You bad sons of bitches, why don’t you go to hell?”
In addition, Garris did not directly kill the original village chief and Thomas. This was not because he was worried about causing dissatisfaction among the villagers, but because it would not have much educational significance, so Garris chose to take them into custody first and ignore them later.
As for some of the frivolous wealth of the village chief's family and the herbalist's family, Garris kept his promise. After arresting these two people, he kept none of it and distributed it to those people in the village who were willing to follow him at that time.
Of course, Garris was not in a hurry to distribute livestock such as cattle and sheep. Garris would have other plans for those animals in the future.
As for the village chief's house, Garris used it for his own use. After all, it was not suitable to live in the Cardoso family all the time.
But even so, Garris's prestige in the village became more and more prosperous.
According to word of mouth, Garris has become the savior of poor people like them, a figure truly like Christ Jesus, and even better than many others.
Families who received the money immediately felt that their lives were better. When praying every day, they would deliberately add Garris's name, hoping that he would pray to God.
But Gellis knew it, Cardoso knew it, and even the villagers who got the money knew that as long as the tax collectors walked into their homes with soldiers, nothing would change.
But what Garris didn't expect was that after the so-called tax collectors came down, "violent officials came to my hometown, clamoring from east to west, and thundering from north to south; those who made an uproar were frightened, even the chickens and dogs could not rest in peace." ." In the scene, he was accurately blocked again.
To be precise, this tax collector should have come to block the village chief's door. However, due to the lag in information, the other party did not know that the people involved in the village had changed, and thought that the person living in this house was the village chief.
"Hey! It's time for your village to pay Saladin's tithe!"
An Arab with a turban and a sinewy face, and two thugs with wooden sticks, blocked the gate and stood in front of Garris.
Chapter 21: Due to some circumstances, I made changes
(End of chapter)