After sending away the officer corps of Spain and the Teutonic Kingdom, Marin immediately turned his attention back to domestic construction. Now that an agreement has been reached, the 18,000 Saxon youths will all belong to Marin's private serfs in the future.
As a feudal landowner, how could Marin tolerate these people eating idle food? Therefore, Marin immediately broke up and reorganized the 18,000 strong men, and began to form a construction team. Because, Marin is going to dig a ditch...
Of course, Marin still has a task-to expand the city of Aurich. As the capital of East Frisia, Aurich naturally cannot be as small as before.
Moreover, the palace where Marin lives now is too small and dark. Marin also plans to expand the palace, at least into a place with a large garden.
Right now, there is no farmland cultivated around the city of Aurich. Therefore, Marin allowed the city to expand without expropriating farmland.
Although digging ditches is important, Marin feels that building a new capital is also more important. Therefore, Marin decided to separate a group of people from the 18,000 youths as a construction engineering team to expand the city of Aurich.
For this reason, Malin specially sent people to pick out about 3,000 people who know the crafts of masons and stonemasons among the 18,000 youths, and formed a construction team separately. As for the other 15,000 people, they formed a reclamation team, responsible for digging ditches and clearing swamps...
In addition, Marin estimated that the Duke of Saxony must give priority to redeeming those knights when redeeming people. Therefore, the 7,000 regular infantry prisoners of war will not leave for a while.
Naturally, Marin would not raise them for nothing. Therefore, under the supervision of the soldiers, the 7,000 regular infantry prisoners of war were also pulled by Marin to work as coolies...
As for those knights, Marin really wanted to send them all to work. However, Marin was afraid of being sprayed by the European nobles, so he finally gave up this tempting idea. The last time Marin asked the musketeers to hammer a large number of plate armor heavy cavalry before the battle, it has already been criticized by many people. Sending the knight captives to the ground as coolies would probably be hostile to the knight class. Therefore, Marin had to support these people first.
Of course, Marin will not provide these uncles with delicious food and drink. Usually, let them eat some black bread. Moreover, these black breads are not the black bread made of pure rye eaten by Marin's own army.
It was not pure black bread for the 18,000 young coolies. But because he was afraid of breaking the teeth of these coolies, Marin ordered that no stones should be mixed with the black bread. In addition, Marin also forbids adding soil to black bread. Because the soil is indigestible after eating, which affects work.
However, it was impossible for Marin to feed the prisoners of war pure black bread. So, with what adulteration? There must be wild vegetables. This is food in the first place, and it can also increase vitamins. Sawdust can also be added, and it is rich in cellulose...
In addition, Marin has also introduced a new cheap additive-grass bran...
In the last life, Marin, who lived in the countryside, also raised pigs at home. Before pig feed was popularized, pigs were often fed with bran at home. There are two kinds of bran - one is rice bran, which is obtained by crushing the husk of rice. This kind of bran is very nutritious and is a very good feed. Similarly, there is the bran of wheat. Of course, in Europe right now, because of the low grain production, wheat bran is also an important grain, which is mixed with flour to make bread. Even the "pure" black bread eaten by ordinary people contains wheat bran. Only in the pure black bread eaten by the nobles, the wheat bran was separated.
As for another conventional raw material for feeding pigs, it is the chaff obtained by crushing rice straw or wheat straw. The nutritional value of grass bran is far less than that of rice bran, but it is also a little nutritious. Before the popularization of feed for pigs in rural areas, the most common food for domestic pigs was straw bran. As for the bran, it can be regarded as the "concentrate" of pigs. Of course, fattening pigs do not eat grass bran because of its general nutrition, because it will not grow fat if eaten. Generally speaking, grass bran is given to old sows. Because old sows do not need high nutrition when they are not giving birth and breastfeeding, as long as they are not hungry. Only when it is time to conceive and breastfeed is it time to switch to more nutritious bran.
In other words, grass bran is a kind of hunger, but it has little nutrition. The black-hearted Marin, although forbidding bread to be mixed with stones and soil, quietly ordered people to mix chaff into the cheap black bread...
After all, the cost of grass bran is extremely low. The raw material for the production of chaff, that is, those rye straws that are used as fuel for rural earthen stoves. However, one thing that gives Marin a headache is that the raw material of grass bran is easy to obtain, but it is very difficult to process it in this era.
Because Marin doesn't have a high-speed rotating grinder in his hand, he can't quickly break the rye straw into grass chaff. Therefore, the current method of processing grass bran is still very primitive stone milling—that is, putting dry rye straw on a stone mill for grinding...
However, it is really difficult to grind rye straw into powder. Put ten catties of rye straw on it, and it is not bad to grind one catty. If it is replaced with more difficult-to-grind straw, Marin estimates that half a catty of straw will not be able to grind out. After all, wheat straw is more brittle than straw and relatively easier to grind. Fortunately, Marin has now built a lot of Dutch windmills that drive stone mills, which does not require much manpower. Then, rye stalks are everywhere. Although it is a waste of time, adding grass chaff to black bread is a very cost-effective and excellent business practice...
Originally, Marin was still very disturbed in his heart. He felt that his heart was too dark, and he let those coolies suffer. In order not to make the taste of the black bread worse, Marin also specially ordered the bakers to add less chaff.
However, Kohler, who is in charge of logistics, did something darker than him. Marin ordered to add 20% grass chaff to the bread, and Kohler directly asked for 30%...
In Kohler's view, Marin asked people to add grass chaff to the bread, which was definitely a genius idea. Moreover, Kohler felt that adding grass chaff was much more kind than adding stones and soil.
You know, black bread with mud and stones added is almost as hard as a brick, and it can be used directly for fighting. It hurts my teeth when I eat it.
But after replacing the soil and stones with grass chaff, the black bread is not so brick-like, and it tastes much softer. Although it cannot be compared with pure black bread, it is much better than those "black stick" black bread.
At least, Kohler, who used to eat "black stick" bread for a long time, believes that black bread with grass bran added is more like food than "black stick" bread, and the taste is better.
In this way, under the insistence of Kohler, who is in charge of logistics, all the prisoners of war, except those knights and lords, usually eat black bread, which is a "mixed" black bread with 10% wild vegetables, 10% wood chips and 30% grass bran.
In other words, this kind of bread, only half is rye flour...
But what surprised Marin was that those prisoners of war who were born as civilians did not reject this kind of bread at all...
This is also because Marin has never eaten real "black stick" bread, the kind of black stick bread that can be used as a brick, and the black-hearted boss can mix 20% of the soil in it. When the soil is dried in the oven, can it not be hard? Therefore, when eating black stick bread, it is often necessary to melt it with hot water. Because, you need to use hot water to soften those soil components, otherwise you can't drink it...
The black bread mixed with grass bran is different. Anyway, grass bran is also edible—although the grade is too low. But for the poor people in the Middle Ages, the ingredients in the bread were all edible, which was considered a very good treatment. After all, grass bran can also be digested by the stomach, but it is not nutritious, but at least it can satisfy hunger.
Even Kohler intends to promote black bread with grass bran throughout the country. Because this technology is too cost-effective. Switching from rye to cheap grass bran is a huge cost savings in itself. For Europeans who advocate business, it is really a bargain...
But Marin opposed letting his citizens eat black bread containing 30% grass bran, because he needed healthy citizens. Although grass bran is edible, it is not nutritious. If the nationals are not too thin, when Marin needs to mobilize the nationals to serve as soldiers, they will recruit a bunch of thin monkeys with little strength.
Therefore, Marin has no objection to Kohler's promotion of grass bran bread in China. However, Marin requested that the proportion of grass bran be reduced by half and changed to 15%...
This black bread with 15% grass bran quickly became popular in East Frisia and became the staple food of East Frisian townspeople and fishermen. Then, this kind of bread, also named "Kohler Brown Bread"...
As for the real creator Marin, because he felt that this matter was disgraceful, he gave the credit to Kohler who presided over it. But what surprised Marin later was that Kohler had gained huge popularity because he "invented" the toothless and cheap "Kohler Black Bread", which made Marin a little jealous...