King of German Mercenaries

The work of spring ploughing is in full swing. For the pre-industrial era, agriculture was the most fundamental event in a country. Therefore, no matter how important it is, it is not an exaggeration.

All went well, and Marin's collection of manure and ash was going very smoothly. The people were extremely supportive for Lord Earl to help clean up the excrement. Towns such as Aurich and Emden are no longer stinky since Marin started organizing people to clean up the feces in the city every day.

It's just that the leftovers from the slaughtered fish shipped from the Wadden Islands are far from enough. Because the scale of the Wadden Islands fishery is so large, it also supplies more than 10,000 Eugram arable land on the archipelago. Originally, with the arable land in the Wadden Islands, it was absolutely enough to kill fish and leftovers, and there were a lot more.

However, Marin suddenly increased the 60,000 Eugram arable land, and the 10,000 Eugram arable land of his subordinates would also kill fish and scraps. So, the gap suddenly becomes huge.

In desperation, Marin had no choice but to turn his attention to the coastal areas of the newly conquered East Frisian...

After winning East Frisland before, Marin gave priority to the agriculturally developed Leer County area, as well as the Emden and Aurich areas. Then, for the nobles in the inland, they carried out some sweeps.

However, for the seaside area, Marin's control is not enough. It happened that there was an urgent shortage of fish scraps here, so Marin dispatched troops to patrol the coastal areas and the East Frisian Islands in the sea, count the fishermen's household registration, and organize the collection of fish scraps.

Such a statistic shocked Marin. It turned out that there are more than 60,000 people in East Frisian, and more than 20,000 people are fishermen.

Marin is actually overjoyed that so many people are fishermen. For the more fishermen, the more sailors there are to choose from.

Marin made a rough estimate. From the 20,000-odd fishermen, it was entirely possible to draw 2,000 sailors. However, for a big voyage, 2000 sailors are not too few, but they are not too many. Still, it's better than nothing...

East Frisian fishermen are not doing well. Their burden is heavy. Similar to the West Frisian fishermen, the fishermen need to hand over 40% of their catch to the lord and 10% to the church. However, because the salt used to marinate the salted fish needs to be produced by the fishermen themselves. Therefore, the salted fish they need to hand in actually accounts for as much as 70% of their harvest.

If Marin wanted to recruit these fishermen for his own use, of course, he must first reclaim the lordship of the seaside. There are also many lords on the seashore. These lords occupy a large area of ​​land, but the degree of development is very small. The little lord here makes a profit entirely by reselling the salted fish handed in by the fishermen. However, the profit of selling salted fish is very low, and the shipping cost is high. Therefore, these fishermen lords are actually very poor, far less wealthy than those agricultural lords. They are often called "salted fish lords", full of ridicule and ridicule.

Therefore, after Marin took out 5,000 Ugrams of arable land, he replaced all the lordships in the seaside area.

Although the salted fish lords used a large area of ​​seaside territory to exchange hundreds of Eugram's arable land, their profits did not decrease. Because the income of cultivated land is no lower than that of reselling salted fish. Because of the inconvenience of transportation, the high cost of land transportation, and the high price of salt, there is no profit in selling salted fish.

Marin only used 5,000 Ugram arable land, and the same amount of other types of land, to exchange the land of a group of coastal lords.

In fact, these coastal lords are also stupid. The area of ​​land they occupy can at least reclaim 20,000 to 30,000 Ugrams of arable land.

Of course, reclaiming land in coastal areas requires huge investment. These poor salted fish lords can't afford that money either.

If nothing else, turn the coastal areas into farmland,

It is necessary to dig irrigation canals from some large rivers and connect them to the coastal plain. The cost of digging irrigation canals is quite high. Even if it is replaced by Edsard I, the original count of East Frisland, it may not be affordable. Only local tyrants like Marin can afford to reclaim wasteland on a large scale and dig irrigation canals.

However, the huge investment is also worth it. Because Marin holds the secret of increasing grain production, and the price of grain is so expensive. So, no matter how big the investment is, the returns are also very high.

The only thing to consider is whether the fertilizer is sufficient. There is no shortage of manure and potassium fertilizer. As long as the population is sufficient, manure must be available every day. As for potash, since Marin has access to bitter salt mines that are rich in potash, there is no problem. Only the leftovers from killing fish need to look at the scale of fishing.

After Marin took over the lordship of all the fishing villages by the sea, he began to revise his strategy. Because of the limited salt production in Yancheng, Marin could not reimburse some of the salt to the fishermen for the time being, nor could he provide cheap salt. Therefore, Marin can only temporarily sharpen 10% of his catch and turn it over to reduce the burden on the fishermen. The original 40% of the catch was turned over to 30%.

However, Marin demanded that these fishermen must turn in the leftovers from the usual killing of fish, except for the poisonous fish gallbladder, to be used as fertilizer. They usually eat fish bones left over from fish, and they also need to collect and hand them in...

In addition, the fishermen usually return from fishing, and they have the habit of sorting fish, discarding some unpalatable and unsellable fish and throwing them into the sea.

But Marin forbade them to do so in the future, and the fish that would otherwise be discarded, Marin intends to collect and use as fertilizer. In Malin's view, these fish that were to be discarded were all phosphate fertilizers! Sun dried fish, ground into powder, mixed into dung, properly nourishing farmland...

There are more than 20,000 fishermen. Although there are not as many fishing boats as the fishermen in the Wadden Islands supported by Marin, there are more fishermen here, and the total number of fishing boats still exceeds the Wadden Islands. Therefore, there are more fish and leftovers here than the Wadden Islands. As soon as Marin collected it, he found that there was no shortage of phosphate fertilizers this year...

In response to the fact that East Frisian fishermen also lack fishing boats, Marin also plans to set up a bank that will be responsible for low-interest loans to buy fishing boats for fishermen. With fishing boats, fishermen can catch more fish. With more fish, more fish-killing scraps can be produced. Marin will also get more natural phosphate fertilizer... In short, it's a win-win thing...

Even, Marin was not satisfied with the huge scale of more than 20,000 fishermen. Because these fishermen can provide a limited number of sailors.

Therefore, Marin plans to recruit more surplus serfs from the mainland, select good water-based serfs, make them fishermen, and loan them to buy fishing boats. In this way, the fishermen expanded and Marin had more options for recruiting sailors.

You know, the sea is infinite. In this era, human beings have not yet used large fishing boats driven by machines or super large trawl nets driven by machines. Therefore, the fish in the sea have not been caught to the point of being endangered. Even, human fishing ability is still very, very weak in this era, and it has little impact on the sea.

Therefore, in this era, as long as you have enough fishermen and fishing boats, you will never be able to catch all the fish in the Beihai fishing grounds.

The more fish caught in the sea, the more salted fish the big lord Marin gets. And salted fish is food, and the more food there is, the more people can be fed.

At the same time, the fishermen catch more fish, and there will be more scraps for killing fish and more fish for sorting and discarding. In this way, Marin's farmland can also get enough phosphate fertilizer...

In a word, vigorously developing fishery can not only bring a large amount of salted fish as food, but also bring a large amount of natural phosphate fertilizer... No matter how you calculate it, it is very cost-effective...

Therefore, Marin must be very supportive of the development of fisheries. With the development of the fishery, his income will be more and the salted fish will be more. Salted fish is also food. More salted fish can feed more people. Moreover, fishing more will bring more natural phosphate fertilizer, and the phosphate fertilizer is sufficient, and Marin's arable land can also produce more food...