It took almost a month before Marin struggled to get the whole family used to bathing. And it's July, the hottest time of the year. If everyone doesn't take a bath, God knows what kind of smell it will emit.
According to Marin's estimation, Charles VIII will not enter Italy until the end of August, and it will take September for the news to reach Vienna. Then, the Imperial Diet quarreled for a while longer before agreeing to a tax hike, or at all. And when the first batch of taxes comes up, it will have to wait until at least November. At that time, Maximilian I, who had money, had the confidence to recruit mercenaries again.
However, Marin, who has read history, is more optimistic that the emperor can receive taxes from Austria and Burgundy under his control. In other regions, it is too difficult to receive taxes. But even if taxes were received in these two places, it was enough for the emperor to expand his army on a small scale.
Therefore, taking advantage of these few months, Marin plans to reorganize Hoffman Manor. Because, once the emperor started recruiting mercenaries, he would definitely go to Vienna to "earn fame", and he would have no time to take care of the Hoffman estate.
Time was limited, so Marin seized the time and carried out drastic reforms in the manor. And the reason for his reform is to use the advanced knowledge he learned from the very developed Eastern Empire from his non-existent great virtuous teacher—Einstein.
Because of the previous success, although they still can't trust Marin 100%, the Hoffmans also believe in the powerful knowledge Marin has learned. So, with the mentality of giving it a try, they let Marin let go to carry out reform experiments in the manor.
After promoting the problem of bathing, it is natural to have a matching change of clothes. Therefore, the next thing Marin promoted was to wash and change clothes frequently.
And the reasons given by Marin are also very strong-bathing and changing clothes frequently can prevent the growth of diseases to a large extent. This theory is actually considered a modern hygiene theory. However, the reason of eliminating diseases greatly deterred others. Therefore, the family is very supportive. Anyway, for the Hoffman family, they don't know how to do laundry by themselves, they just hire any serf woman in the manor, and it doesn't cost money, just enjoy the food. Before that, Mrs. Mary actually changed her clothes frequently. Only the old Hoffman, Adler and other elders didn't change their clothes often. Therefore, there is no resistance to the promotion of this plan.
Then, Marin asked the whole family to wash their hands before and after meals, so as not to eat dirty things in their mouths and carry them on their bodies. In this regard, Mrs. Mary, who loves cleanliness, expressed her support. Therefore, the plan was passed.
The previous bathing, changing clothes, and washing hands, in fact, belong to personal hygiene. After solving the problem of personal hygiene, Marin began to solve the problem of environmental hygiene. The main environmental sanitation problems are actually the concentration of feces, the accumulation of garbage, and the cleaning of residential areas.
Medieval Europeans were very sloppy. Don't look at the dog-like clothes worn by the Europeans of later generations, pretending to be a force. But in the Middle Ages, Europeans were sloppy.
In medieval Europeans, except for the educated nobles, most ordinary people had the bad habit of defecating everywhere. This also makes the cities of medieval Europe smell of feces everywhere. The main road is fine, and local officials will organize people to clean it. And in those remote small streets and alleys, there are many people who defecate indiscriminately. Therefore, as long as you leave the main street and enter the remote areas of the city, you can definitely smell the stench. And these feces everywhere can also breed flies and mosquitoes, which will bring terrible infectious diseases.
Marin couldn't control the city, but when he was wandering around the manor the day before yesterday, he accidentally stepped on a big poop, which made him sick for a long time. Therefore, going to the toilet together and strictly prohibiting defecation anywhere has become a big problem that Marin urgently needs to solve.
When Marin proposed the plan of going to the toilets together and strictly prohibiting defecation anywhere, no one in the family objected. It doesn't matter to the men, they go to the bathroom anyway, and Mrs. Mary is more welcome. After all, she is also disgusted with the feces that are everywhere.
It is very simple to promote this in the Hoffman family, but when Marin summoned the serfs in the manor to announce the promotion, he was protested by many serfs:
"Master Marin, why are you so serious about such a trivial matter? Everyone is like this..."
"Yes, yes, other manors are like this, and people in the city also solve it everywhere..."
…
Marin is very angry, is it reasonable to co-operate with you to defecate anywhere? So he enacted coercive measures—
"Whoever is found to defecate indiscriminately in the manor residential area in the future will be caught once, beaten with a board, and fined a Finney!"
This measure made the serfs who were used to sloppy lament. The penalty of hitting a board is nothing to them. After all, the serfs were submissive and used to being bullied. But fine a Finney, that's a big deal. At this time in the German region, ordinary helpers, working in the city, only had 2 Finneys a day. And serfs in the countryside can only earn one pfennig a day. So, fine a Finney, basically let them work for nothing!
Although very dissatisfied, they could not resist. After all, this is an age of nobility. The status of serfs is slightly better than that of slaves. They basically have no right to speak and can only passively accept the rule.
Free citizens with higher status (most of the uprising revolutions in Europe were initiated by citizens) might resist fiercely, but the serfs did not have any confidence to resist. Thus, the plan was successfully implemented.
In order to cooperate with this plan, Marin organized manpower to build several public toilets in the serf-inhabited area, all of which were divided into men and women. As for my own house, I don't need it. Although knights are the lowest rank of nobles, their living habits are still close to those of nobles. There is already a toilet in the house, so there is no need to build a new one.
After that, Marin planned the garbage dumping area, and arranged for people to clean the main house of the Hoffman family every day, and pile up the garbage in the garbage dumping area. Then, he also set up a garbage dump area in the serf settlement area, requiring the serfs to pile up the garbage together instead of dumping it everywhere.
What's more, Marin asked the manpower in charge of the barn to remove cow dung and horse dung every day, pile them up together, and go down the pit with human dung.
As for why he did this, it was the question of gunpowder that Marin suddenly thought of. Gunpowder needs saltpeter, and saltpeter is the main ingredient of gunpowder.
But there are no saltpeter mines in Europe. Europeans want saltpeter. In this era, they either imported from the Middle East or collected soil saltpeter from cesspit...
But with the rise of Ottoman Turkey, the land trade channel with the East was blocked, so from this moment on, Europeans had to go to the latrines to find soil salt to boil saltpeter.
Marin has heard of boiling soil nitrate, and knows some principles, but the specific process is not clear. But that's not a problem either. Because, now there are more people in Europe who know how to boil soil. Maybe, no one in a country like Hoffman Estates understands it, but someone in some big cities must understand it. When the cesspit is ready, Marin plans to spend money to ask the craftsmen in the city to teach him how to boil the soil and nitrate.
The price of saltpeter is not cheap now. As far as Marin knows, the price of a pound of gunpowder is as high as 10 pfennigs. The price of saltpeter reached 11 pfennig per pound. And among the saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal needed for gunpowder, the most expensive one is saltpeter. Because Europeans find saltpeter from latrines, the quantity is really limited, so the price is very high.
There are more than 100 people in Hoffman Manor, plus dozens of livestock, and the amount of manure is a lot every day. Marin dug multiple long manure pits in one breath in the remote downwind of the manor, specially used to collect nitrate. The feces produced by so many people are used to produce nitrate, which is estimated to be a considerable income...
After solving the sanitation problem and setting up a saltpeter industry by the way, Marin reformed the farm tools in the manor. First, wooden farm implements were all eliminated. Later, Marin introduced Eastern shovels to make it easier for farmers to manually dig and loosen the soil.
Not only that, Marin also vigorously promoted the drill and hole planting techniques. Europeans are currently spreading sowing, shallow sowing, and uneven seed distribution. In some places, it was not sprinkled, and the seed distribution was very sparse. In some places, too many seeds are sprinkled, and the seeds are too dense. When the seeds germinate, it is easy to cause multiple plants to get too close together and compete to absorb soil nutrients. Then, every plant didn't grow well. The artificially controlled drill and hole sowing can solve this problem well. Originally, Marin planned to introduce the columbine cart invented in the Han Dynasty in China. However, Marin had never seen a columbine car, so he didn't know what to do. Therefore, for the time being, he can only promote artificial drill and hole sowing. If there is a chance to send someone to the east, he will definitely introduce the columbine. Because the sowing efficiency of columbine trucks is much higher than that of manual on-demand...