King of Mercenaries

Chapter 118: Develop the islands

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Marin is in a good mood now, of course, that's because he didn't know that the Duke of Saxony picked his peaches. Marin was very happy to acquire a large area of territory at once.

In particular, the four large islands of Terschelling, Ameland, Vlieland and Schiermonnick are of great development and utilization value.

For example, Terschelling Island has such a large area and sufficient fresh water resources. On the Weibo that Marin's friends showed off in later generations, Marin remembered that there were three or four villages on the island, and thousands of people lived there. According to Marin's estimation, it is not a problem at all to reclaim 2,000 Ugrams of arable land on the island. In other places, grazing can also be vigorously developed. The situation on Amran Island is also relatively good, and it is possible to reclaim less than 2,000 Ugrams of arable land. As for Vlieland and Schiermonnick, there seems to be only one village on each of the later islands. Obviously, there is only one source of fresh water. Therefore, each of these two islands can reclaim at most one village. Almost, the total of the two islands will not exceed 1,000 Ugrams of arable land.

All in all, on the four islands, about four to five thousand Ugrams of arable land can be reclaimed. In addition, other large areas of the island, although not suitable for arable land, can also be used for grazing. After all, these areas are islands with a humid climate. Precipitation is abundant even without freshwater rivers and lakes. Therefore, the pasture is not bad, and it is more suitable for grazing.

In addition, each island has a very suitable small fishing port. For example, West-Terschelling on the island of Terschelling is a famous port in later generations. There was also a nautical school and a nautical museum on the island.

Marin snatched more than 3,000 fishermen from the Frisian coast, and he planned to resettle half of them in West Terschelling. The rest are scattered across the other three islands.

In addition, there were more than 700 fishermen and 100 farmers on the four islands. Counting the more than 3,000 people who immigrated from Marin, there are already more than 3,800 people.

However, most of these fishermen are fishing. Land reclamation must rely on experienced farmers. For this reason, when Marin went to Württemberg to recruit soldiers, he also sent people back to the Ruhr River area to recruit surplus serfs from his hometown.

Unlike recruiting fishermen, recruiting those surplus serfs will not be hostile by the local lords at all.

Why is this? Because the land is limited, the serfs who can support them are also limited. When the serfs in the manor had too many children, the population would be too large. But fishermen by the sea are different. The sea is infinite. As long as you have a fishing boat and know how to fish, you can basically get something. Of course, this is also because the fishing technology in the Middle Ages was backward, and there were not as big ships and modern fishing equipment as later generations. Therefore, as long as there are fishermen, there must be harvests, and there must be taxes. Although, that tax is just stinky dried salted fish.

However, don't underestimate those stinky salted fish. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had too much influence and had many rules. Catholics have about 100 nights without meat every year. But, everyone is greedy, what if you can’t eat meat? Then eat fish!

Therefore, when meat is not allowed for hundreds of days every year, many people buy dried salted fish to eat back during these fasting days.

Therefore, there is still a lot of salted fish business. If it weren't for the high price of salt in this era, selling salted fish would definitely make money. Of course, then again. If the price of salt drops, the price of salted fish will definitely drop accordingly. It seems impossible to make a fortune selling salted fish. Unless, you can get low-cost salt to pickle salted fish. At the same time, other fishermen can only use high-priced salt...

Relying on the show, Marin quickly recruited a new phalanx of 1,250 people in Württemberg and Alsace. In addition, the 39 people lost in the previous phalanx were also made up. And the people who were sent to recruit serfs from their hometown in the Ruhr area also successfully recruited 2,000 people. If it weren't for the fear of too much movement and the dissatisfaction of the local lord, Marin would have wanted to recruit more people.

In addition, Marin also purchased 500 cattle, which were first used for spring plowing and then directly grazed on the island. It is now April, and the spring plowing is almost over. Therefore, after Marin recruited people, he quickly sent them to Terschelling Island, and first planned to cultivate 1,000 Ugrams of arable land. Otherwise, the end of spring plowing will not be able to catch up.

In addition, 6,400 civilians and 1,250 soldiers were suddenly added under the rule, and the food pressure on the Wadden Islands suddenly increased a lot. Marin now regrets that he sold a lot of rye to the UK. This basically led to Marin now going to the mainland to import a lot of rye to feed the newly added 7,650 people.

This is seven to eight thousand people, and each person has one mouth, which consumes a lot. Fortunately, there are many fishermen among them, and they can offset part of their food by eating fish. However, many of these fishermen are so poor that they don't even have their own small fishing boats. In desperation, Marin had to allocate 20,000 gold coins to help those fishermen go to mainland port cities to buy various fishing boats. If you want to harvest, you must pay. The newly added 4300 fishermen (including the 600 fishermen robbed from Harlingen), once fully activated, can produce a large amount of dried salted fish every year, dedicated to him, the lord...

And in order to have enough cheap salted fish to marinate those dried salted fish. On the island of Texel, Marin also added a batch of salt cooking pots to concentrate on the production of "cheap" salt for the fishermen under his rule.

Not only that, Marin also personally inspected the grasslands on the island, and found that the grasslands on several islands were mostly weeds, which were not good for grazing.

For this reason, Marin sent people to various places to buy a large amount of alfalfa seeds, intending to destroy the original wild turf and plant alfalfa after the spring plowing is complete, so as to facilitate grazing.

Speaking of grazing, Marin couldn't help but get angry again. Those bastards from Friesland roasted and ate hundreds of sheep that they smuggled from England with great pains when they sacked Texel.

Those sheep are all intended by Marin to breed and expand, so as to facilitate the development of the wool spinning industry in the future. Before Europeans planted cotton in North America, wool spinning was thriving and profitable.

At the beginning, when the British were still a weak country and did not dominate the sea, they relied entirely on the wool textile industry to make money. As for pirates, although they are profitable, they are full of dangers and very uncertain. Only the wool textile industry has brought a lot of profits to the British. In order to obtain more profits, the British even engaged in the "sheep cannibalism" enclosure movement for hundreds of years.

Therefore, raising sheep and selling wool is also very profitable. Otherwise, the Brits wouldn't have been engaged in the land enclosure for so long. It was not until the late 18th century that the cotton textile industry rose and replaced the important position of the wool textile industry, and the enclosure movement stopped...

The reason why Flanders in the Netherlands is economically developed is valued by the Habsburg family because it is the most developed region in Europe's wool textile industry. There are many wool spinning factories there. In the past, most of their wool was imported from England. However, after Henry VII came to power, he was jealous of the profits of the wool spinning industry and ordered the ban on wool export. He vigorously developed the wool spinning industry in England to compete with Flanders. Therefore, the current shortage of wool in Flanders has caused the price of wool to rise sharply, and raising sheep is absolutely profitable.

However, because the smuggled British sheep were eaten up by the bastards in Friesland, Marin had to spend a lot of money and send people to the UK to secretly buy wool-producing sheep again, and then smuggle them back to the Wadden Islands.

Now, Marin has a large land area in his hands. Although there is not much arable land, most of the rest of the land can be used to graze sheep.

Although the Wadden Islands (West Frisian Islands) are isolated overseas, their area is not small. 5 main islands - Texel, Terschelling, Ameland, Vlieland and Schiemonnick, each island can be engaged in agriculture, fishery and grazing at the same time, very have an economic future. As long as it is well developed, whether it is agriculture, animal husbandry or fishery, it can bring a lot of profits to Marin.

Of course, the profit of fishery is not as high as that of agriculture and animal husbandry. However, Marin's original intention was not to make money, but to train and select sailors to participate in the hugely profitable voyage. Thinking of the great voyage with dozens of times the profit, Marin couldn't help drooling...