Lady of the Lord From the East

Chapter 191

After dealing with the piled-up official duties, entertaining distinguished guests, preparing banquets, inspecting the autumn harvest, hunting wild animals, and preparing for the new civil service exam, after returning to the territory, the duke and his wife were almost so busy.

Felix, in particular, has accepted a new territory. Naturally, these new territories should be added to his autumn parade. Although he can send competent subordinates to help him share the work of cruising and hunting beasts, the couple feels that this is the first time. It is better to go in person for the inspection, so Felix, who had only returned to Sardinson for a few days, greeted the other nobles who came to visit after the banquet to celebrate his promotion as Duke, and hurriedly led the team and left Sardinia. Dinson went to inspect everywhere.

One thing to mention here, the standard area of ​​a duchy is thirty times that of a standard earldom, while Sardinson was originally the area of ​​two standard earls, that is to say, all the noble counties received by Felix after he became a duke The size is as big as fifteen Sardinsons. Of course, because he has a standard-sized earl of Slot, so his new fief is fourteen standard earls, according to the size of the surrounding county of Sardinson. In the end, the new territory that the king assigned to him was six counties, the largest of which was 25 times the size of Sardinson, and the smallest one was smaller than the standard earldom, but it was still considered an earldom.

So many counties are connected, with a total area of ​​more than 2.58 million acres and a total population of more than one million people, accounting for nearly one-eighth of Prady's population. There are more than 200 nobles in the territory. The right to rule that a duke can enjoy is no worse than that of the monarchs of some small and medium-sized countries.

Of course, the total area of ​​these territories does not represent the area of ​​land they have developed. Prady's forest coverage rate is not low, and animal husbandry is as prosperous as agriculture, so many aristocratic territories occupy forests and grasslands. The area is the largest, and the farmland is more determined by the population. The poorer the area, even if the territory is large, the farmland will be less.

And the population in Felix's new fief, to be honest, is not too much, who made them originally beside Sardinson, and in recent years with the development of Sardinson, the duke and the couple decided With various policies to benefit the people, more and more free people came from other areas with their families and their families. The lords couldn't stop them. After all, they couldn't be as generous as Felix, although their development also had their advantages. Some improvement, but still not enough to attract the freedmen to stay, Felix's acceptance of the freedmen's behavior will damage everyone's interests, but it is in line with the regulations. Nobles can protest if they want, and he and the nobles of the surrounding countries There is cooperation, and in the face of interests, no one really dares to protest, and it is not even good to block the choice of those freedmen - even if it is blocked, the freedmen can sneak away without even their belongings, and some nobles try By taking people back and turning them into serfs in other names, the result is that the remaining free people are all in danger and run faster. Some people, but now there are no free people in his territory at all, and the free people in other places don't dare to come to his fief after knowing this, and people who don't have free people are not willing to go there, and the final result is an economic depression. The population has plummeted, and the aristocrat has almost no other income except the taxation of the fields. The land in the territory can only be cultivated by purchasing serfs. If it hadn't been for the increase in the yields of the fields over the years, the family would have fallen into bankruptcy.

After the other nobles saw his results, they naturally did not dare to mess with the freedmen. They could only helplessly learn from Sardinson County improved the treatment of some freedmen, and reluctantly kept people behind.